Quote:
Originally Posted by bigrangy
Everyone who’s come up and played on the 4th line with Rooney has looked like a tweener because playing with Rooney is like being on a permanent penalty kill.
It cannot be overstated how much his usage limits this team.
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It's pretty crazy that he's still being rolled out as the 4th line center and that Huska wasn't willing to give Kerins a look there.
Flames w/Rooney:
xGF%: 37.3%
GF%: 30.4% (7 GF - 16 GA)
Flames w/o Rooney:
xGF: 51.4%
GF%: 54.1% (72 GF - 61 GA)
At 5v5 they are +11 without Rooney, and -9 with him.
I know he generally gets tougher minutes than other 4th lines, but it's not helping when you're getting buried in those minutes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Am I a Rooney fan? Nope ... I think he's over his skiis as this level. But I think it's likely a Lomberg problem as well.
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It's for sure a Lomberg problem too, and IMO it's a Lomberg problem in two ways.
1) His underlying stats haven't been great...but Rooney is actually better with him than without him, and Lomberg is much better away from Rooney.
Rooney+Lomberg: 39.2% xGF / 33.3% GF (5 / 10)
Rooney w/o Lomberg: 30.2% xGF / 25% GF (2 / 6)
Lomberg w/o Rooney: 48.1% xGF / 62.5% GF (5 / 3)
2) Him being present on the 4th line is a big reason why the team can't move to a different 4th line structure (younger, and more offensive) but the coach doesn't seem to want to do that anyways, so it's a bit of a moot point regardless.
Something like Stromgren-Kerins-Klapka would be a lot of fun to see as our 4th line right now, but Huska wants no part of that...I think Huska would much rather call up the Hunt / Bishop types than the Kerins / Stromgren types.