Quote:
Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce
Was it overly optimistic to think 120 points from a third line of Bennett (45), Brouwer (40) and Versteeg (35) was realistic?
Maybe.
Flames are elite if this is 3rd line production.
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Maybe? Definitely.
The question of what can be expected from 3rd line production comes up a lot. So I decided to run some numbers.
First of all, it is impossible to definitively determine who is on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd line for each team, so I simply ranked them by points. And I believe that is the fair way regardless, because other things like PP points come into play. Also, injuries cloud things, but when one guy is injured, another guy is getting points. So again, the only fair thing is to just rank them on points and it is what it is.
Okay, so what I did was count how many forwards are on pace for 40 points, then determined what the next forward has, and finally, what the #7 forward has.
(team / # on pace for 40 / next pt total / pt total for the #7 forward):
MIN / 7 / 36 / 36 (#8 has 32)
CBS / 6 / 34 / 34 (#8 has 27)
CAR / 6 / 33 / 33 (#8 has 22)
NYR / 6 / 33 / 33 (#8 has 28)
WAS / 6 / 30 / 30 (#8 has 27)
TOR / 6 / 29 / 27
CHI / 6 / 27 / 27
BOS / 6 / 20 / 20
EDM / 5 / 34 / 31 (#8 has 27)
BUF / 5 / 32 / 28
TBY / 5 / 31 / 29
ANA / 5 / 31 / 24
DET / 5 / 31 / 24
PIT / 5 / 30 / 28
NAS / 5 / 29 / 28
STL / 5 / 29 / 28
WPG / 5 / 29 / 23
CAL / 5 / 27 / 23
MTL / 4 / 34 / 24
DAL / 4 / 31 / 27
FLA / 4 / 31 / 18
OTT / 4 / 30 / 27
NJD / 4 / 30 / 19
SJS / 4 / 27 / 19
PHI / 4 / 26 / 16
ARI / 3 / 26 / 25
LAK / 3 / 31 / 19
VAN / 3 / 32 / 24
COL / 2 / 30 / 18
MIN leads the league with ONE 3rd liner on pace for 40 points. They also have, by a fair amount, the most points for their '3rd line' of 36 - 32 - 22
So yes, hoping to have a 3rd line that averaged 40 points would not only be elite, it would be
by far the strongest 3rd line in the NHL.
The average point total (current points) for the 7th forward on each team is 25.1 points, about a 29 point pace. And only 6 teams have a 7th forward with at least 30 points (MIN, NYR, CAR, CBS, WAS, and EDM) and only one team (MIN) has 8 forwards with 30 points.
One thing I found interesting about this was that the number of forwards on pace for 40 points (the first number) had a pretty high correlation with team success. No real surprise, but interesting.
A couple teams that really jump out in that regard are OTT and SJS. And what's interesting with them, is that they are the only two teams that have a defenseman leading their scoring. So basically, having a Karlsson or a Burns simply replaces a forward who would otherwise have had those points.
The other one that jumps out is LAK - maybe if they had a couple more goal scorers, they'd be in better shape for the playoff picture.
One final observation: when we look at the teams with the highest point totals for the #7 and #8 guy, they tend to be teams that don't get a lot of scoring from the D. And the teams that have high scoring D tend to have fewer high scoring forwards, relative to their league standings.
I once looked at total points from the defense, and I found that if a team got more than 150 points from the D, they made the playoffs, and if they got less, they didn't (this was a few years ago, and maybe that number has dropped a bit now, but the correlation would remain).
Similarly, if you have at least 5 forwards that get 40 points, you have a good chance of making the playoffs.
So if you can get 150 points from your D
AND get at least 5 forwards with 40 points, you're going to be in great shape.
(To answer your question, the Flames D currently has 153 points, on pace for 177!)