Monday Review: You Shouldn't Care About Potential 2C's Face-Offs
Plus Jets weekly review and preview, prospects update, and trending news.
In the latest edition of The Five Hohl's Monday Review, we'll recap the Winnipeg Jets' 2-0-0 week, preview the upcoming match ups, updates on the performance of top prospects, discuss face-offs and the Jets looking for a 2C, and suggest that Kevin Cheveldayoff contributed to some of the credit Rick Bowness has recieved.
JETS WEEKLY REVIEW
The Winnipeg Jets won both games, one in regulation and one in overtime, this week, placing them third in the league as of Sunday evening. However, they sit in first for points per game pace. They still lead the Central Division in points (64), points per game (0.727), and goal differential (+45).
Analyzing even-strength performance through RAPM adjusted via evolving-hockey.com, the Jets continue to perform well in all three major metrics. They are first once again in goal differential relative to ice time and sit in tenth for Corsi and ninth for xGoal differentials.
Looking at the general trends in overall performance from hockeyviz.com, we observe some movements.
(Top Left) Jets' 5v5 offense creation maintains its ever-so-slightly above-average output.
(Top Right) Many were hoping the power play would get a significant boost with Kyle Connor returning to health, and the results are mixed. The Jets' offensive production per hour has improved, but their results relative to the league have dropped, as the league has actually picked up on average more than the Jets.
(Top Middle) Jets' finishing drops from four goals over expectations to just 2.5, essentially placing the team fairly average in finishing and offensive chance production at evens.
(Bottom Left) The team’s 5v5 defensive numbers remain relatively unchanged and are still among the best in the league. Their penalty kill defense (Bottom Right) has mostly maintained a slightly below-average performance, with too many shots coming from in front of the net.
(Bottom Middle) Jets’ goaltending machine goes brrrr. What separates the Jets from average is their elite defense and their even more elite goaltending. The Jets are already elite defensively at 5v5 and just slightly worse than average on the PK. This means with average goaltending, we’d expect the Jets to have allowed 119 goals on their shots against. The Jets have only allowed 95, 24 fewer goals than expected!
Fun fact: That’s more value than if the Jets became a top-10 power play and penalty kill team.
THE GAMES
The Winnipeg Jets hosted the New York Islanders, defeating them 4-2. Overall, the Jets outchanced... but in a weird twist due to winning the special teams battle!
At 5v5, the game was a bit more even, with a slight edge in shots and chances for New York. The Islanders' top line caused some problems, significantly winning their head-to-head against the Jets' top line in all areas except in goals scored.
The Jets' performance at even strength, aside from goaltending, continued its recent slumps. Apart from the third period, it was heavily a special teams game, but at 5v5, the Jets were a one-line team—their third line of Cole Perfetti, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Nikolaj Ehlers.
It’s weird. For a span of a month and a half, Ehlers showed that he was one of the most dominant top-line players in the entire NHL, scoring more points and outscoring the opposition by more goals than any other player at 5v5 over his entire promotion. But, as soon as Kyle Connor came back, he was demoted to the third line.
Maybe playing Connor with more defensively responsible players like Adam Lowry and Gabriel Vilardi makes some sense, but playing Ehlers fewer minutes than Mason Appleton does not.
Ehlers still scored in overtime, and the Jets' streaks of allowing two goals or fewer and allowing three goals or fewer continue.
JETS WEEKLY PREVIEW
The Jets' streaks face their toughest challenge yet—an away game against the Boston Bruins. The Bruins are an average team in 5v5 creation and slightly above average in defense but are strong finishers and have a very good power play. Their goaltending performance has also been exceptionally strong thus far this season.
Boston has a lot of depth, but their team’s overall performance has been led by David Pastrňák, Jake DeBrusk, and Charlie McAvoy. Those are the three to look out for.
The Jets then have a home-and-home series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
These are not the Dubas’ Leafs. Toronto is fairly mid at 5v5, in shots, chances, and goals. Ironically, they have become what people wrongfully thought the Dubas’ Leafs were before: decent offense but give back a fair bit.
Like Boston, Toronto has a power play that the Jets will want to avoid at all costs if they are going to try to continue their strong defensive performances.
Unsurprisingly, the Leafs are driven by Auston Matthews. He is by far their best-performing forward, with William Nylander having a strong season as well. Mitch Marner and Tyler Bertuzzi have also produced value, but at very different costs. The Leafs' blue line seems to be a conglomerate of second and third-pairing defenders, with Jake McCabe being the strongest compeitor on their blue line, both physically and analytically.
PROSPECT RECAP
MANITOBA MOOSE
The Manitoba Moose have struggled this season, and hopes were that Ville Heinola would be a big boost to a team that struggles to get out of their own zone.
Well, things did change: while the seven-game losing streak extended to nine games, the pointless streak was ended with the Moose getting a point with an overtime loss on Friday.
It’s the small things in life.
The season has been fairly disappointing for Manitoba, and disappointing for any prospect not named Brad Lambert or Nikita Chibrikov. While those two have scored well, there hasn’t been much anywhere else.
Chaz Lucius has looked good while playing, but he’s now missed as many games as he’s played while his injury proclivity problems continue to plague him.
Danny Zhilkin, Simon Lundmark, Daniel Torgersson, Dmitri Kuzmin, Tyrel Bauer, and Henri Nikkanen haven’t shown that they have even call-up potential, let alone NHL regular potential.
At the pro-level, the cupboards are fairly bare other than at the top.
AROUND THE WORLD
Last week we started saying Rutger McGroarty is back, after tallying four assists in two games since returning to Michigan. Well, he’s since put up back-to-back four-point games, with three goals and five assists. McGroarty is now tied with teammate TJ Hughes for the NCAA points lead, despite the Jets winger playing five fewer games.
Julien also continues to perform well, scoring two goals and an assist since we last saw him. While it’s been a while since we’ve seen much from Colby Barlow, he also had a strong week, putting up three goals and three assists in two games.
While Elias Salomonsson hasn’t scored much in the SHL, he has been very productive for his team in the Champions Hockey League tournament. Salomonsson has two goals and three assists in the tournament, placing him in the top 20 for defenders and top five for drafted prospect defenders.
Aside: Nice to see former Jet prospect Jan Kostalek performed well at this tournament.
BONUS PROFILE: WHO IS JACOB JULIEN
Jacob Julien has been scoring quite well in the OHL, and a few readers were curious to hear more about the relatively lesser-known prospect.
He’s a 6’4, 181 lbs centre playing top-line centre and first power play for the Ontario Hockey League’s best team, currently riding a 14-game win streak. He currently ranks 4th on his team in points per game and third for forwards.
The Jets’ fifth-round pick had his production rocket this season ever since being moved onto the top line, between the London Knight’s second-highest point-per-game scorer, Denver Barkley, and fifth-highest scorer, Ruslan Gazizov.
Lauren Kelly, OHL scout for Elite Prospects and Elite Prospects Rinkside, was kind enough to give The Five Hohl readers a little scouting report to add some qualitative data and projections:
Julien strikes me as an intelligent, defence-first player who should easily be able to carve out a checking role at the next level. Although his tools are likely NHL-average at best, and his skating won't earn him many advantages at the next level, he's an intense, driven player whose motor and work-ethic are never in question. He reads opponents well, using stick checks and lifts to eliminate threats. He flashed high-end playmaking abilities last season, and those have come to the forefront with better linemates and increased minutes this season. He's likely a longer-term project in the Jets organization, as he continues to hone and develop his offensive skills, but the defence and intelligence makes him a promising player in their prospect pool.
If you’re curious to see more, Elite Prospects did do a full scouting report on Julien for the 2023 draft.
CURRENT NEWS: WHO CARES ABOUT FACE-OFFS FOR A 2C
There is a lot of debate on who the Jets should go after for a potential 2C upgrade, and sometimes face-offs are being brought up as an important factor to focus on for that role.
The vast mountain of evidence suggests that there is no reason the Jets, or most anyone, should focus much on face-offs for player acquisition.
That’s not to say face-offs don’t matter. They do matter. Winning the face-off means that a team started with possession of the puck, which puts the team at an advantage.
While that advantage is very marginal for neutral zone face-offs, it can have a very real and easily measurable impact in non-neutral zone situations.
The general issues with face-offs and why it’s not normally something people should focus on for player acquisition are as follows:
FACE-OFFS THAT MATTER ARE RELATIVELY RARE
The impact of almost all neutral zone face-offs is indistinguishable from a neutral zone giveaway or puck battle. You are typically looking at about 60-65 face-offs per game, with just under a third happening in neutral zone situations.
This means you get about 40-45 non-neutral zone face-offs a game on average.
To compare in scale, I record about 200-300 Jets’ events per game when tracking microstatistics for zone entries, zone exits, zone entry denials, puck recoveries, and scoring chances… with scoring chances being quite a small percentage of that 200-300.
MOST TEAMS AND PLAYERS ARE CLOSE TO 50%
The span of team performance is 45-55 percent at face-offs, with the bulk of teams being closer to 50 percent than that.
With an average of 18 high-value face-offs a game, a 45% vs 55% split constitutes a 20 win vs 24 wins (i.e., -4 vs +4).
Also, there is a tiny bit of bias in the sample. The NHL scorers must declare a winner, and teams that are in the defensive zone tend to be scored losses in close calls more often than the offensive zone team. This means there’s some reverse correlation in possession and face-offs, where weaker teams may receive more false losses than deserved.
THE VALUE OF A DZONE FACE-OFF INCLUDES THE IMPACT OF A ZONAL ADVANTAGE
A chunk of the value in the perceived value of a face-off win is due to people seeing shots and goals appear after a win. However, a defensive zone team winning a face-off is still very likely to be the next team shot and scored upon because they are at a strong territorial disadvantage.
The value of winning a face-off is the difference of those two things. In the above graphs, we can see that represented in the gaps between the blue and green line, or the red and turquoise line.
THE TRUE VALUE OF IMPORTANT FACE-OFF WINS ARE STILL SMALL
A +100 face-off differential (winning 100 more than you lose) in the neutral zone at even strength, on average, is worth a +0.9 goal differential improvement.
A +100 face-off differential in non-neutral zones for even strength, on average, is worth a +2.45 goal differential improvement.
A +100 face-off differential in non-neutral zones for special teams, on average, is worth a +3.66 goal differential improvement.
For scale, the best face-off team differential for all face-offs is +199 (Dallas Stars), and the worst is -181 (Chicago Blackhawks).
FACE-OFFS DON’T HAVE MUCH RELATIONSHIP WITH WINNING
Looking at longitudinal performance, there’s not much relationship between face-offs and winning games. Teams that tend to win face-offs don't necessarily win.
Looking at every team from 2007-2008 until the present, the R-Squared value for all-situations face-off differential and goal differential is 0.07. This essentially means that how well a team performs at face-offs explains about 7% of how well they outscore opponents, and that’s without accounting for the previous bias against defensive zone teams I spoke of.
To compare, expected goal differential and goal differential had an R-Squared value of 0.62 over the same sample.
EXPECTED GOALS AND CORSI ALREADY ACCOUNT FOR FACE-OFF PERFORMANCE
Why do you want to win a face-off? Because starting with possession of the puck puts you at a relative advantage to get the next shot, chance, or goal. This means that a player’s impact on Corsi and expected goals already includes their face-off performance.
A player’s impact on shot metrics looks at the overall impact of a player’s performance in all face-offs, zone entries, zone exits, board battles, puck retrievals, turnovers, takeaways, etc.
We discussed this already two Friday’s ago when comparing Dividend Irrelevancy and face-offs.
REGULAR SEASON FACE-OFF PERFORMANCE IS A POOR PREDICTOR OF POST-SEASON FACE-OFF PERFORMANCE
The auto-correlation (i.e., R-Squared of regular season to post season) of FO% is just under 0.34. In other words, there’s still a huge variation between how good a team is in the regular season versus the playoffs when it comes to face-offs.
So, you have a fairly sizeable chance that you may invest in something that doesn’t persist.
IT WON’T MATTER FOR THE JETS EITHER
There’s two reasons why this shouldn’t really matter much for the Jets.
As mentioned earlier, face-offs have a fairly weak relationship with outscoring. The same is true for the Jets, with only about 4% of face-off performance explaining the Jets’ performance in goal differential.
Also, most of the Jets poor face-off performance can be isolated to one player: Vladislav Namestnikov. Removing Namestnikov’s -80 face-off performance, and you get a team that is a very typical 48.5 FO%, or -64.
Whoever is traded to center between Ehlers and Perfetti replaces Namestnikov and is very likely going to perform better than 39%. Just closing your eyes and throwing a dartboard will likely get you similar results in improving face-offs than actively trying to acquire someone specifically for face-offs.
Most players are closely knit around 45-55%. Of the 200 non-Namestnikov centers to take 65 or more face-offs this season, 155 are within that 45-55 gap. Ignoring face-offs and getting the best player available at a cost you are willing to pay likely gives you a 75%+ chance that you get average face-off performance, which would be an upgrade.
CURRENT NEWS 2: MAYBE BOWNESS’ IMPACT IS ACTUALLY CHEVELDAYOFF’S
Don’t get me wrong.
The Jets are better defensively this season, and the Jets’ current system and buy-in to that system has a part to play. The Jets are very suffocating in their play-style, and Bowness likes that.
The Jets are a good defensive team this year, and you have to attribute some of that to the coach.
That said, I noticed something. The Jets' defensive performance started in-season last year, not over the summer, and it coincides with some heavy roster changes.
The red line above shows the Jets' expected goals against rates. We can see that the team started to become what they have been all season this year at around late February, early March.
This coincides with the Jets adding Vladislav Namestnikov and Nino Niederreiter to the roster, and the return of Nikolaj Ehlers.
Ehlers is not an overly effective defensive forward, but he’s less of a negative influence than most of the Jets' top-six caliber forwards. Niederreiter and Namestnikov, on the other hand, are highly positive influences on improving the Jets' defensive results.
Additionally, the Jets added Alex Iafallo and Gabriel Vilardi over the summer while losing Blake Wheeler and Pierre-Luc Dubois. This represents significant upgrades in defensive performance.
So, yes, the Jets are winning, and people want to give a lot of credit to Rick Bowness. I think he should get credit for the team’s buy-in. But at the same time, we also should have expected significant improvements in team defense regardless of which coach was leading the group simply due to the four-to-five player upgrade in defensive metrics for top-nine forwards.
PAID-SUBSCRIBER WEDNESDAY PREVIEW
The Five Hohl’s weekly post on Wednesdays is where we publish and analyze the Jets’ performances in manually tracked microstatistics. We also conduct weekly analytical deep dives on players and engage in discussions on the theory and utility of analytics in hockey.
Leading up to the deadline, each week, I have and will profile potential trade deadline targets, provided either by media or fans:
This week, we will focus on five defensemen. I will likely not adhere to this pattern of rotating through positions when the pool of undiscussed potential targets becomes fewer.
Paid-tier subscribers also have access to archives, can comment on articles, and exert a strong influence on direction and topics covered here. Additionally, there is an extra section at the end of each Monday post that reviews last week’s games using microstatistics.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Thank you for reading this week’s Monday Review.
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MICROSTATS GAME REVIEW
Welcome to our inaugural Microstats Game Performance Review. For this edition, we will only be covering January 16, as January 20th has some missing data that I’ll post on Wednesday. Afternoon games are often an issue with family commitments and my daughters, and so are typically tracked post-hoc.
Consider this a sneak peek into what future Mondays will look like.
Let’s dive in.
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