Breakaway Takeaways – December 18th

[custom_headline type=”left” level=”h4″ looks_like=”h4″ accent=”true” id=”” class=”” style=””]You Have To Feel For Ottawa[/custom_headline][text_output]What’s happening in Ottawa is truly heartbreaking.

Whatever you may feel towards the team itself, it’s hard not to feel for the fans of the team, who only want management to do what they can to field a competitive squad.

Earlier this year, Senators GM Pierre Dorion gave the fans something to dream about when he swapped out Kyle Turris (plus Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond and two draft picks) for Matt Duchene. For a team and ownership group notoriously stingy, fans at least felt somewhat relieved that Turris wasn’t going to be lost for nothing when he hit free agency after this season and that Matt Duchene was, arguably, of equal talent.

Not long after the trade, everything went belly-up for the Senators, and talk of a rebuild began to bubble.

Veteran pieces like former Ranger great Derick Brassard and (maybe reluctantly) Mark Stone were always going to be discussed as guys who can move because of their impending free agency.

What irked Senators fans was when players like Mike Hoffman (signed thru 2020) and superstar defenseman Erik Karlsson (signed thru 2019) are asked to give management their no-trade lists.

What takes it even a step further from a complete and total deconstruction – owner Eugene Melnyk threatening to move the team out of Ottawa if local officials don’t move off their stance against public funding for a new arena.[/text_output][image type=”circle” float=”none” src=”1217″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”” style=””][text_output]Senators ownership has always been viewed as cheap. It played a large part in the Rangers ability to acquire Mika Zibanejad (who the Senators didn’t want to have to pay after the 2016-17 season) for Brassard (who was actually owed less money than his cap hit).

But many have thought (notably Colin Cudmore when we had him on the podcast) the Senators would find a way to get money together to keep Erik Karlsson, arguably the best two-way defender in the league. Now, it doesn’t seem likely.

Making matters worse, during the lead-up to the Senators hosting an outdoor game, Melnyk all but blamed the fans and the city for the team not being able to get a publicly-funded arena. Taking it a step further, Melnyk turned into Rachel Phelps and threatened to move the team if his demands weren’t met.

It’s embarrassing. Not for Melnyk, who simply has too much money to ever be embarrassed about anything. But it’s embarrassing for the ownership group as a whole, and it’s embarrassing for the NHL to let an owner talk like this in front of his own fans.

Ottawa deserves better. Erik Karlsson deserves better. It’s so disappointing.

And to answer the elephant in the room (we’ve talked about this on the most recent podcast) – no, I don’t think the Rangers would ever line up for a trade with the Senators for Karlsson.

Even if we wanted to dream of a world where Ryan McDonagh isn’t included in the deal, you’d still eventually have to choose between Mac and Karlsson come summer of 2019 when both are free agents. And a non-McDonagh package for Karlsson is probably Brady Skjei, J.T. Miller, Jimmy Vesey and a pair of first round picks. And even then, that might not be enough.

My heart hurts for Senators fans. And that’s coming from a long-suffering Mets fans.

-Greg Kaplan[/text_output][custom_headline type=”left” level=”h4″ looks_like=”h4″ accent=”true” id=”” class=”” style=””]All Hail the King[/custom_headline][text_output]The Rangers played a heavy schedule since our last Breakaway Takeaways piece on Monday morning, December 11. The team played four games, where they looked putrid in early-week losses to the Stars and lowly Senators, but gutted out two victories in a ridiculously scheduled back-to-back where they played Friday night in MSG against the Kings and then a 5pm star in Boston on Saturday against the Bruins. How the NHL gets away with scheduling quirks such as that in the midst of a season that is already far too long given the physicality of the sport to begin with is beyond me, but that is an argument for another day.

The point I would like to focus on today is a simple one: Henrik Lundqvist is still awesome. Lundqvist played in three of the four games last week—Senators, Kings and Bruins games—and was by far the biggest reason why the team came away with 4 points in that ridiculous back-to-back slate. I’m going to set aside the arguments about whether Hank should’ve started in both games, and instead simply focus on just how impressive he was. In both the games against the Kings and Bruins, the Rangers got thoroughly outplayed by the opponent in 5v5 play. However, despite thoroughly losing both the shot attempt and expected goal differentials against the opponent by considerable margins at even strength, the Rangers came away with the victory, and they largely have Henrik Lundvist to thank for that.

Against the Kings on Friday night, Lundqvist allowed just two goals on 35 shots on goal, good for a 94.3% save percentage on the evening. However, given the quality of shot attempts the Kings generated throughout the night, Lundqvist’s expected goals against was 2.29 (all data via Corsica), giving him an expected save percentage of 93.5 and an adjusted save percentage (dSv%) of 0.8%. As a reminder, adjusted save percentage helps us somewhat mitigate the impact of poor (or good) defensive play on a goaltender’s performance, and a positive percentage indicated the goaltender performed better than the average NHL goaltender would have, given the quality of scoring chances faced. For context, Jonathan Quick that evening posted an 88.9% save percentage against an 89.1% expected save percentage, good for a dSv% of -0.2%. This gif below, courtesy of the fantastic Shayna Goldman, shows a fantastic series of saves by the King against the Kings.[/text_output]

[text_output]Despite playing less than 24 hours later and having to make the trek up to Boston in between, Lundqvist posted an even more impressive outing on Saturday evening against the Bruins. Hank allowed 2 goals on 35 shot attempts, good for a save percentage of 94.3%. However, the Bruins generated a higher average quality of shot in this game, resulting in Lundqvist’s expected save percentage being just 91.5%, resulting in an impressive dSv% of 2.8%. By comparison, Rask posted an 89.3% save percentage against a 91.5% expected save percentage, resulting in a dSv% of -2.2%.

More impressive than Lundqvist’s impressive contributions to the Rangers back-to-back victories last week, is his overall performance of late. At the time I published my Beginner’s Guide to Goaltender Advanced Stats (November 16, 2017), Henrik was ranked 18^th in the NHL among starting goalies in adjusted save percentage with a remarkably unimpressive -0.22%, a typical slow start that us Ranger fans are all too familiar. However, in the month or so since writing that article, Lundqvist has raised his dSv% on the season all the way up to +0.52%, which is now good for 13^th in the NHL. If Lundqvist continues to perform the way he has recently, that number will continue to rise and he should crack the top-10 shortly. While he may not be the sure-thing top-3 goalie in the NHL that he was for an absurd number of season, Henrik Lundqvist is most certainly still a very good goalie in today’s NHL, and very well may be able to once again carry this squad to a playoff berth.

-Drew Way

PS

I’ll leave you all with this, a fantastic gif and caption from the always awesome Brandon Fitzpatrick.[/text_output]

[custom_headline type=”left” level=”h4″ looks_like=”h4″ accent=”true” id=”” class=”” style=””]That’s My Goalie You’re Abusing[/custom_headline][image type=”circle” info=”popover” info_place=”bottom” info_trigger=”hover” src=”1222″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”Photo Credit: Anthony J. Causi” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”” style=””][text_output]As another week goes by, we get another slew of starts for Henrik Lundqvist on a back to back. In something that well, if you really ask me. He didn’t need to do.

Sure, we finally got to see Pavelec in net on Monday against Dallas, something that I was real excited for, because that meant Lundqvist, would get that all important day off he so desired but there was a chance that this was the first of TWO starts for our backup.

Yeah, so missing from that was how I felt and how Alain Vigneault felt because yet again, Lundqvist started Friday against Los Angeles (which he should’ve) and then again Saturday against Boston (which he didn’t really need to).

The issue is that the team thinks these games in December are important. Also, based on what we heard from Steve Valiquette on Friday during the post game, he wanted to see Lundqvist start Saturday, because the more you start him, the better his game is.

That’s all fine and good. Lundqvist is 35 though, and when we saw Vigneault run our goalie to the ground during the 2015-2016 season, we got torched by Pittsburgh. Yet, instead of blaming our coach who ran his goalie to the ground, fans and media wondered if “this was the beginning of the end” for Lundqvist.

We all see the eerily similarities starting to rear their ugly head for Vigneault that drove him out of Vancouver, show its way in New York. Right now, upper management is thinking the new roster is taking some time to adjust, some time to gel.

Me, on the other hand, has been playing the game of “will they fire AV” since the Tampa series in 2015.

I get that the schedule has been favorable in the beginning months of the season for the team, where it’s okay for Lundqvist to start games that he shouldn’t. Yet, that didn’t stop AV from using Cam Talbot and Antti Raanta, when the schedule was similar.

There’s something not being said about why Vigneault doesn’t trust Pavelec, yet we do deserve to see more of him, for the sake of Lundqvist.

-Shawn Taggart[/text_output]