Game 24 Quick Recap:
I saw someone on Twitter comment that struggling teams circle Nashville on their calendar in hopes that the team can find their game once again.
The Winnipeg Jets were a struggling team and I think they were able to find some reprieve in their 5-2 win over the Nashville Predators.
Let’s take a quick look at things.
But first, a note from our owner, me.
It’s currently 11:16 PM here. My alarm is set for 6:00 AM for non-hockey related reasons. Combining that fact with this being the fourth post in four days when I said I wanted to decrease the load a tad so I don’t burnout like last season, and I’m going to make this a bit of a speed run for this recap.
We also have four Jets games coming up this week. So we’re going to have a small change in our typical program of one weekly post and recaps to each game.
I’m still going to recap each game, but my weekly post will only include the prospects and Moose updates. My plan is to use time to try and finish catching up the tracking so we’re at a full 24 games.
Once I’m caught up, I’ll do a post just for paid subscribers with a full update on all microstats with per hour rates.
Cool? Cool.
It wasn’t the prettiest of games, but the Jets got it done. There were two moments where I felt the Predators were putting the attack on the Jets, but for the most part it felt like Winnipeg was finally able to play their game.
One could argue that part of the reason why is that Nashville is measurably and objectively one of the few teams slower than Winnipeg, and that Nashville was playing its second game of a back to back after a road trip and it was their third game in four days.
On the other hand, Winnipeg basically had the exact same recent schedule other than being in Nashville for this game.
Whatever the case, Winnipeg did transition the puck a bit better than they have been on average this season, and were able to create more from it.
Now, I track microstats for this blog, like zone exits and entries. And when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Of course, microstats are not the only thing I have in my arsenal for analysis, but it likely does colour my observations of the game that I’m tracking live all the zone exit and entry successes and failures.
It stands out to me that Luke Schenn skates out the puck with pretty much every skater on the ice in front of him except his defensive partner. He waits until he gets close to the Predators blue line which slows down the entire Jets squad as they don’t want to go offside, and it allows the Preds to position themselves effectively enough to cut off all options for Schenn.
This led to Schenn being forced to attempt a dump and chase entry, which one Predator picked out of the air and started their own attack. Schenn got on his horse and quickly made it to the bench, leaving five skaters other than himself to take all the Corsi and xGoal against hits as repercussions to his mistake.
Nashville then drew a penalty, which led to an eventual goal against.
Butterfly effect and all, but that shows how microstats performance and shot metrics can be very different in telling of a player’s performance in the very short run.
It was not a great game for the Dylan Samberg Luke Schenn pairing, nor was it a fun one for the Jets fourth line.
But look. Secondary scoring.
The Jets middle six scored two 5v5 goals and an empty net goal. 5v5 performance and secondary scoring support was some of the biggest issues with the Winnipeg Jets over their losing skid, so this was likely a huge monkey off the coaches’ backs.
Another change was that Eric Comrie actually had a Quality Start. That’s not being mean, but Quality Start has an objective analytical definition. A QS is any game where a goalie was good enough statistically that had the skaters in front of them performed at or above league average capabilities, the team would win.
And now to look at decision making and actions of individual players with microstats such as scoring chances, chance passes, zone exits, zone entries, forechecking, and entry denial tracked manually by moi…
