Just Saying...
Staios is getting killed around the Oilogosphere these days, but here's an interesting tidbit:
Steve Staios for the season:
EV+/-: +11/-12
Fenwick: -60
Corsi: -73
Steve Staios playing with Oilers who did not attend St. Francis Xavier:
EV+/-: +6/-3
Fenwick: +3
Fenwick: +3
Corsi: -3
Now I give you his best buddy, the pride of 163rd St:
Jason Strudwick overall:
EV+/-: +5/-10
Fenwick: -84
Corsi: -96
Fenwick: -84
Corsi: -96
Strudwick playing strictly with Oilers that lack the Macedonian fighting spirit:
EV+/-: +0/-1
Fenwick: -23
Corsi: -28
Fenwick: -23
Corsi: -28
Now, there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances here. There's no icetime and surely the forwards in front of them are having a lot to say about the results here as well. (Just to save people from bothering to check there doesn't appear to be anything in the faceoffs to explain this - as a pair they're even to start shifts and finish -26, which is pretty terrible. That would make them right around even without each other.)
However, since I've been dying to post an Ambiguously Gay Duo themed topic here, I'll make a lame attempt at a mangled metaphor and say it sure looks like there are well-defined pitching and catching roles in the 24/43 pairing.
(Just in case no one is familiar with the pic, the "A" stands for Doug "Ace" Weight and the "G" is for Guerin.)
posted by RiversQ at 12/01/2008 10:41:00 pm
19 Comments:
Their gaiety is not that ambiguous.
Perhaps Strudwick needs some time with a half-Analyst and half-Therapist. Maybe his shots for and against will improve.
Hey, I found the TOI. It's at stats.hockeyanalysis.com which is an awesome site.
Thanks to slipper for pointing out the link was on our freaking blog.
Anyway, here it is, at even strength as always:
24: 301:17
43: 252.38
24 + 43: 198:55
24 w/o 43: 102:22
43 w/o 24: 53:43
So your mileage may vary. Strudwick's rates are well into the toilet without Staios but it's less than an hour of ES TOI.
Staios looks fine but again we're only talking about 102 min.
They still suck while together.
That's damning evidence. It's a shame though, Strudwick is an easy guy to cheer for.
As Matt says (somewhere on BofA, I'm just catching up) that probably speaks a lot to the fact that the other team's depth is kicking the Oilers around the rink, and inevitably spending most of their time in the Oiler's zone.
I think Staios is looking bad on the PK as well, he's never been a good PKer. I doubt I'll find anyone to agree with me, but I think that Tjarnqvist has been the Oiler's best post-lockout PKing defenseman. Or at least in a tie with Pronger. Pucks just never seemed to get through Shaggy.
Maybe Tambellini can find a guy like that, and hopefully send Grebeshkov the other way in the deal. I'm not hopeful though.
Shaggy has played 5 games for the Avs this season.
16.73 ES TOI/60 & EV+6/-1
I wonder if he's hurt?
If not, I wonder if he's available.
I think he's just their seventh man.
I'd love to see shaggy back. That season he was here they were doing quite alright before he got hurt. A lot of it was smoke and mirrors but when he and Staios went down then the jig was up.
Strudwick may be a great guy but he is poor. Can't skate well and handles the puck like a grenade. Bad combo.
VF:
Not a request. I was jsut wondering if www.timeonice.com has an app in there somwhere that isolated icing calls. I was thinking it might be a nice complement to the face-offs app, in that you could see who's forcing their opp to relieve the pressure, and what share of a guy's defensive zone draws are a coahc's decision, and which are one that perhaps his poor d-zone coverage forced him into.
slipper,
That IS a request, but it's a good one. Plus, most importantly, extremely easy to implement just by changing the teamfaceoffs.php script with three lines of code and altering the output.
so use:
http://www.timeonice.com/icings.php?team=EDM&first=20001&last=21230&henrik=24&daniel=43
This Oilers team is actually causing the other team to ice the puck a lot more than they are icing it themselves. Whether that's partly because they aren't icing it enough themselves, I dunno. I haven't checked any other teams and probably won't have time to do that for a long while.
It's terrible to pile on, but Strudwick is the only Oiler in the negative at this. And Staios sans Strudwick is an impressive +6, -1 by this measure.
The arrows point the same direction as Rivers' original post. To steal wording from Matt: Strudwick doesn't have bad linemates, he IS the bad linemate. And it pains me to say that.
And Gagner is the bomb at this, as is Viscoff. Smid has a great ratio as well, granted in limited playing time.
I think the best thing is to always assume that Shaggy's hurt;)
I don't remember his PK prowess to the extent that Vic does but I will certainly trust Mr. Ferrari's recall all the same.
What I remember about Shaggy was him and Gator taking on the toughs while 5/24 handled the second toughest and poor old 24 running around like a headless chicken trying to cover for the rook.
I remember his inflamed pubic bone:)
His injury report that year read something like: Groin, Groin, Pubic Bone Injury.
Vic: This icings app is just more awesomeness. Thank-you.
Slipper, your comment just played right into the picture on RiversQ's thread.
Inflamed pubic bone does sound like a passage from a poorly written romance (are there well written romance novels?).
A passion ignited him as he grabbed her firmly by the buttocks and thrust forward with his inflamed pubic bone. Heya!
Steve Staios playing with Oilers who did not attend St. Francis Xavier:
I assume you're talking about Strudwick here? He never went to St FX, he's an Archbishop MacDonald grad.
I feel that based on salary and pre-season expectations, 24 has been the more disappointing of the two. 43 had an eye-opening first 10 games and was +3 over that time. That's probably where MacT garnered his "man-love," and even though 34 was a -7 over his next 10, qualitatively speaking, his play wasn't too bad for a 6/7 d-man making well under a million bucks. That being said, in the limited time 5 has had on the back end, he's shown us more than he ever has and deserves a significant stint.
24 was expected to be, check that, had to be our go-to, shut-down guy. He hasn't been that no matter who he's played with and that's a bigger concern to me than a guy who's known to be slow and not a great puck handler looking slow and not handling the puck well. Fortunately 44's been earning his money in both ends of the ice.
That's probably where MacT garnered his "man-love," and even though 34 was a -7 over his next 10, qualitatively speaking, his play wasn't too bad for a 6/7 d-man making well under a million bucks.
Stan: "Not too bad"? What qualifies as bad? Here's Strudwick's stats for the month of November, all courtesy Vic's Timeonice.com:
GF/GA
------
Strudwick ON : +3/-8 = -5
Strudwick OFF: +24/-17 = +7
SF/SA
------
Strudwick ON : +45/-115 = -70
Strudwick OFF: +239/-217 = +22
Without checking all the terrible teams in detail, I'd be surprised if there was another player in the league who was -70 by the shots metric during the month, and positively shocked if there was another regular who had a SF:SA ratio less than 40%. Those numbers are just monumentally bad.
Staios, who of course has been saddled with Strudwick as his partner throughout the month, has numbers which are marginally better, which is to say "only terrible":
GF/GA
------
Staios ON : +6/-10= -4
Staios OFF: +21/-15 = +6
SF/SA
------
Staios ON : +61/-124 = -63
Staios OFF: +223/-208 = +15
So Staios too was outshot by > 2:1 over those 14 games, and outscored by very nearly that margin.
I don't know what extenuating circumstances could explain the ice tilting to this extent when those two guys were out there together. Our third pairing has been killing us.
Last night Huddy didn't seem to mind sending Smid/Staios out there against anybody. A fairly level quality of opposition for all the D by the numbers, I don't tend to notice the D vs opp matchups when the game is on. Smid and Staios looked decent by my eye, no better or worse than the other pairings.
Any news on whether Smid is in th lineup tonight?
And what the hell was Murray thinking running Doughty in a hard match against Horpensky? Well over 90% of the EV icetime was head to head I think. And Kopitar's line against Horpensky in a hard match as well. Damn. MacTavish looked happy to take that, and it worked out well for the Oil most shifts.
These Kings are hard to figure.
On the icing thing. I wrote a wee script to pick those off for all the teams, as shown here.
___ __ team _ opponent
ANA ___ 57 ___ 77
ATL ___ 89 ___ 77
BOS ___ 64 ___ 61
BUF ___ 70 ___ 66
CAR ___ 81 ___ 75
CBJ ___ 71 ___ 79
CGY ___ 54 ___ 82
CHI ___ 71 ___ 53
COL ___ 83 ___ 74
DAL ___ 46 ___ 59
DET ___ 63 ___ 62
EDM ___ 41 ___ 59
FLA ___ 80 ___ 64
L.A ___ 58 ___ 67
MIN ___ 65 ___ 53
MTL ___ 77 ___ 76
N.J ___ 59 ___ 58
NSH ___ 71 ___ 54
NYI ___ 74 ___ 50
NYR ___ 48 ___ 87
OTT ___ 65 ___ 57
PHI ___ 67 ___ 73
PHX ___ 67 ___ 52
PIT ___ 57 ___ 75
S.J ___ 45 ___ 70
STL ___ 60 ___ 49
T.B ___ 67 ___ 67
TOR ___ 66 ___ 64
VAN ___ 86 ___ 66
WSH ___ 78 ___ 74
For some reason the Oilers just don't ice the puck very much, a league low 41 times. The average is 66.
I mean you can understand S.J and NYR not having many icings, they've been territorially dominant teams. But the Oilers and Stars just seem loathe to ice the puck this year.
I wonder how many icings occur after a penalty expires. And then how many occur after the very next face-off.
Otherwise, all I can think is that the Oilers do seem fairly skate happy at defense. Don't they? Way less d-zone rim shots to the wingers than in past seasons I think.
Hmmm.
I wonder if the lack of icings come as a result of the general horrible performance on faceoffs. Perhaps the coaching staff has really been hammering on the players not to ice the puck knowing that the resulting faceoff would probably be lost.
slipper/Dean
Both theories make sense to me. Frankly, I haven't noticed either happening on the ice, though.
I don't watch other teams play enough to say, I hadn't noticed that the Oilers weren't icing the puck much. But obviously that's the case, compared to other teams.
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