As you may have heard, the Winnipeg Jets recently fired head
coach Claude Noel, the first bench boss of the revamped franchise. In 177 games
with the club, Noel lead the team to an 80-79-18 record which adds up to a .503
points percentage and no playoff appearances. I’m sure you can imagine that
this wouldn’t make the grade for many organisations and, with little turnover
as far as the roster goes since the move from Atlanta, a change was bound to be
made.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do believe that
the Winnipeg roster has the pieces to be competitive in this league. Mind you I
wouldn’t place them in the elite class of Chicagos, Bostons, or Pittsburghs,
but they are built well enough to contend for a low seed with the guys they
have now.
Their top-four on defence is balanced and serviceable, Mark
Scheifele is growing into the centreman that they desperately needed to improve
down the middle, and they don’t ice any elite wingers but who they do have are
more than capable of spotting enough goals to put up a W.
Ondrej Pavelec is the Achilles heel-arguably the worst
starting goaltender in the league-and is signed through 2016-17 for reasons
someone will need to explain in great detail to me. Pavelec entered the action
on Monday 11-19-4 on the year with a .898 SV% and a 3.14 GAA. Al Montoya has
been faring significantly better but hasn’t seemed to have proven his worth as
more than a career backup. To put things plainly, the goaltending is more of a
liability than an asset.
Back to the matter at hand, the Jets wasted no time in
naming the next man in charge: veteran bench boss Paul Maurice. While Maurice
has never coached a team to a Cup win, he has had experience in the Cup Final
as well as another trip to a Conference Final, both in his two stints with the
Carolina organisation.
Well, the early returns look promising. Maurice coached his
first game for Winnipeg on Monday night against the Phoenix Coyotes and boy did
the atmosphere turn electric.
Maurice shuffled his deck on right wing, continuing Michael
Frolik’s movement up to the first line, shifting Blake Wheeler alongside Scheifele
on the second, and bumping the forward-turned-defenceman-turned-forward Dustin
Byfuglien down with Olli Jokinen and Devin Setoguchi on the third. (That is the
most expensive third line I think I have ever seen: $12.7 million in cap space,
NBD. Top line is $11.4 million, just so you know.) Eric O’Dell flip-flopped
with Chris Thorburn from the second line to the fourth and Anthony Peluso
rejoined the team while Eric Tangradi sat out.
The Coyotes jumped up to the early lead, scoring on the
Power Play at 12:16 of the first. The Jets responded just 36 seconds later and
didn’t take the foot off the gas until all was said and done. Winnipeg outshot
Phoenix by a factor of two, seeing the totals rest at 39-18 through 60 minutes
of play and that doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.
Phoenix started letting their frustrations come to a head in
the third, accumulating multiple penalties and allowing Winnipeg free-reign in the
zone. During a tripping call on Lauri Korpikoski, seconds after Setoguchi
netted the 5th and final Winnipeg tally, the Jets went on a tear,
amassing 5 shots and 11 Corsi events in two long offencive-zone presences.
While this didn’t result in a score, the 15,004 fans at the MTS Centre signaled
their approval with a long standing ovation.
Winnipeg was also controlling the play for the majority of
the game. Their 5v5 Fewick-For% totaled out to 63.2% while their Corsi-For%
reached 55.3%. Their 4 even-strength goals boosted their 5v5 shooting% for the game
to 17.4% and they managed to stop all 14 of the 5v5 shots against. Phoenix has
never been heralded as having much offencive prowess but Winnipeg did well to
stifle any opportunities and drive play to their advantage.
If you’ll allow me to take a tangent, I did a little
data-mining experiment. I tallied Winnipeg’s records when their Corsi-For%,
Fenwick-For%, as well as when both were greater than 50%, in all 5v5
situations, for all games this season prior to Monday’s matchup with Phoenix. I
also subtracted those records from their overall record (19-23-5) to see how
they did when equal to or less than 50% in all those parameters. My intent was
to determine what their success rate was when they drive possession at even
strength.
Their Corsi-For record is 3-12-1 plus a 3-3 split when
reaching the shootout. When only considering Fenwick they posted a 9-10-1
record with a 3-4 shootout record. When they have favourable numbers for Corsi
and Fenwick, their record is 3-10-1, as well as going 2-3 when reaching the
shootout. (I made sure to note the shootouts separately because advanced
metrics are no longer relevant to the outcome of the game once the contest reaches
the skills competition.)*
To present the inverse of these findings: An unfavourable
Corsi-For sees them at 12-11-0 and 2-1 in the shootout. An unfavourable Fenwick
produces 6-13-0 and 2-0 in the shootout. Unfavourable numbers in both
categories results in 12-13-0 and 3-1 in the shootout.
There are quite a few things that I think this says about
the Winnipeg Jets. First of all, it appears that they are a relatively strong
possession team but they tend to take low-percentage shots. I would even go so
far as to suggest (without looking at a shot-chart) they depend a little too
much on shots from the point with traffic in front to generate offence. I
mentioned earlier that they don’t have any elite scorers on their roster so,
looking at the discrepancy between their over-50% Corsi-For and Fenwick-For
records, they manage success when they allow plays to develop instead of throwing pucks on net for the sake of throwing pucks on net.
Looking at their inverse records, a large part of any
success they do have relies on keeping pucks away from Pavelec i.e. blocking
shots. The Jets can actually perform in a defencive shell but it is no secret
that Pavelec is not a goaltender that, when the team needs him to, can steal
games. Winnipeg ranks 9th in the league in blocked shot with 722, tied for 10th in goals scored with 128, but are a dismal 26th in 5v5 Save% with 91.2%. I think this signals that
the skaters are working hard to pull their weight and Pavelec isn’t up to the
task of reciprocating.
There is a lot of work to be done for the Jets to turn
things around and odds are it is too late in the season for them to take
significant strides this campaign. During the Coyotes game, the Jets players
spoke about the “fresh start” that Maurice’s hire brings to the organisation and
they certainly played with newfound energy and life. The jury is still out as
to whether this is them turning over a new leaf and they struck a new sense of
chemistry or if they are setting themselves up for a massive fall. The
franchise has done very little to alter the roster since coming over from
Atlanta and the firing of Noel suggests that we haven’t seen the last of
changes to come in Manitoba’s capital city.
*As somewhat of a
control, I also tallied these numbers for the Vancouver Canucks. I felt they
were a suitable team for comparison because their Corsi-For and Fenwick-For
percentages were highly similar, Vancouver is close in blocked shots (700), and
they have played Winnipeg only once which means the records have a low
incidence of crossover.
Positive Corsi-For%:
12-5-2 + 0-4 in the shootout
Positive Fenwick-For%:
13-7-2 + 0-5 in the shootout
Positive Corsi-For%
and Fenwick-For%: 12-5-2 + 0-4 in the shootout
No comments:
Post a Comment