In Defense of Our Overpaid Bottom Six

[Toyotasfan]

I’ve seen 2 games this year where the Canucks played great defensively . I’m convinced the biggest shortfall is in either coaching or players not sticking to their system. I like Pearson but I’d like to see him upgraded to someone bigger and quicker, Pearson is a proven playoff performer and I hope we get a second round pick for him. Horvat has had to do too much with too little talent on his line for the most part of his career .

[ilduce39]

Meanwhile, we have Podkolzin hopefully here (and healthy) by the end of the season plus a bunch of guys having great starts down in Utica... including Jasek, Lind and Gadjovich.. plus Rathbone has been shot out of a cannon. 
 

I don’t expect all those guys to pan out... but Pods + one of the Utica guys seems a safe bet.  With some continued luck from the pipeline the bottom 6 might get a boost pretty quick and just in time as Petey and Hughes get their deals.

[Junkyard Dog]

They aren't terrible players. Just overpaid and we need to find more better fits(like Ferland-types) to balance out the bottom 6 a bit better.

[Coconuts]

7 hours ago, oldnews said:

Motte

22.9% ozone starts,,

48.1% corsi

5 goals, 6 pts, 15 games.

 

Sutter

38.1% ozone starts

49.6% corsi

6 goals, 24 games.

 

Motte and Sutter are 2nd and 3rd on the team in even strength goal scoring (Sutter with a shortie as well).

 

Beagle.

25% ozone starts

45.5% corsi

5 pts.

 

The lowest on ice goals against this season.....

All 'bottom 6' with one exception.

Virtanen, Roussel, MacEwen, Hoglander, Beagle, Motte, Sutter....

 

People here want the bottom six to eat shutdown minutes at a high proportion - and they want disproportionate secondary scoring at the same time.

 

What you are getting is already disproportionately low goals against in those shutdown minutes - with respectable production, in context.

And where 'possession' is concerned, it'e better than the production. 

Even the 'eye test' should have given most people here the awareness of how much relative time te Beagle or Sutter lines spend outside their zone, on the forecheck, or cycle in the ozone - and even if not producing scoring in the end - producing ozone starts, for example....EP does not enjoy 76.1% ozone starts if the bottom six is not doing their job.  

 

 

Excellent post. For all flack Sutter gets here I honestly wonder if this team is equipped to lose a center like him, though I'm not sure what other options for defensive centers are going to be available in ufa. I'm of the opinion that Sutter's been fine, there have been games over this last stretch where he's been one of our better forwards. Unfortunately we haven't gotten much from Jake and Gaudette after career seasons, and the lack of depth scoring really hurt us. 

6 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

this thread is doing a good job of showing how valuable Sutter would be for Edmonton e.g. and the impact he'd have on their actually mediocre bottom 6. I think his value could be pegged at a 2nd round pick, in part due to him not having to wait 2 weeks to play this year. 

He'd be valuable to Edmonton, but I wonder if we wouldn't be better off extending him. I'm not confident that we have a player in the system aside from Beagle who can play those kind of minutes effectively, and we'll need a center who can play tough defensive minutes next season if we're to be successful. It'd have to be a shorter term deal, and obviously not 4.3m, but I think it's worth considering. Sutter would be more valuable for this team next season than a second round pick. 

[canuktravella]

8 hours ago, Slegr said:

I was noticing Horvat's +/- the other day. He's never been a plus player. I know it only tells one story, but for a guy who supposedly plays a 200 foot game, that's a bit of a concern.

Then you look at a guy like Chris Tanev, who played on some pretty horrible Canucks teams through the years, and even on a bad Calgary team this year, in his 11 NHL seasons, he's had one minus year. 

horvats not as good as everyone makes out 

[Elias Pettersson]

I wouldn't have a problem giving Suter a new short term deal, the problem is we need to give him wingers that can play a shutdown role on a 3rd line.  Roussel, Virtanen and Gaudette are not those wingers.  If we can bring up Kole Lind to play on right wing and add Tyler Motte on left wing I'd be good with that as our 3rd line for next year.  Gadjovich and Jasek should be given every opportunity for a 4th line spot and I think MacEwen needs to be a mainstay on the 4th line as well.  

 

Gadjovich   Jasek   MacEwen

 

Would love to see that energy and grit on our 4th line.

[Solinar]

The problem with our team is that it is built around this premise.  The top 2 lines score, and hold your power play units.  The bottom 2 lines make up your pk and shut down.  In today's NHL, you have to be able to roll 4 lines that can chip in, play defense, and not get their teeth kicked in when the top line from the opposing team jumps over the boards.  If you have a good, solid, and offensively productive for bottom 6 players, bottom 6, that provides rest, and support for your top 6.  What we have is a throw back to an ideology that just isn't applicable to the game anymore in a successful and positive way.  The bottom 6, is overpaid, unproductive, and isn't a #1 pk unit.  Change any of those, and we probably aren't sitting here in the comments section.  Change it up, give people different roles, coach the &^@# out of them and make them do things like, I don't know, Virtanen and Gaudette kill penalties.  One of the bottom six plays on the top pp unit.  Anything.  Because this is getting a little out of hand.  Intangibles, leadership, and big skates and a heavy game only get you so far when you can't win hockey games with players that can't score goals.

[DefCon1]

12 hours ago, Nuxfanabroad said:

Sometimes wonder what kind of return Bo would bring?

 

If there was one move of greatest benefit in this team's history, it may well have been executed by crazy b*stard Keenan. The return for Linden was an epic haul; although it must also be noted who the other lame-a$$ GM happened to be.

 

We already mopped up in the Bo/Schneids larceny. Imagine if you could turn that profit into two more worthy ELC assets?

i doubt it, plus we would need another Bo. He is a playoff beast and is untouchable.

[IBatch]

14 hours ago, Provost said:

Honestly, oZone and dZone % are a terrible stat that is WAY overused here.

The way people talk about it makes it clear they don’t know what the stat is measuring.  I have explained it before but people keep misusing it.

 

It is measuring the ratio of those starts just 5 on 5 that are ALSO just in either offensive or defensive zone... and excludes all the on the fly and neutral zone shift starts, which is the bulk of them.  For most players it ranges around 80-90% of their total shifts that are entirely excluded from this stat.  It also doesn’t account for how many minutes they are on the ice and how many shifts they take.  A guy who plays 4 shifts a game, 3 of them in the neutral zone, and one in the dZone gets a 100% dZone start %.  A guy who plays 30 shifts a game and gets 5 shifts in the dZone, 5 in the oZone, and 20 on the fly or in the neutral zone gets a 50% dZone start %... if you use the % to explain the first guy is taking  the hardest defensive minutes... you are just wrong... it is really meaningless and tells you nothing.

 

The difference between a 45% dZone start and 55/% is about a shift every 2 games depending on the player.  If you are using that to measure a player’s performance, you are making a massive mistake.... because it doesn’t tell you much of anything at all.

 

Horvat had 259 dZone starts in 69 games last year (3.75 a game) and 49.4% dZone start ratio.

 

Beagle had 171 dZone starts in 55 games last year (3.1 shifts a game) and a 77% dZone start ratio.

 

Which guy was leaned on more heavily defensively?  The % ratio indicates almost nothing.  Horvat had vastly more dZone starts overall and showed over 27% lower dZone start ratio?

 

Horvat has the most dZone starts again this season of all our forwards  but he is a sheltered top 6? He has 72 vs. Roussel’s 45... who is getting the tough defensive minutes?

 

The stat is really just bad and shouldn’t be used how folks are using it.

 

 

 

 

 

It's a decent stat if quality of competition is brought in, and Corsi/possession used with it too... possession alone isn't all the rage it used it be ... most teams differ by 5% - how is 5% more of any one thing going to win cups?  Because CHI and LA did ... lol... then PIT came in and made a mockery of that idea.   It doesn't mean nothing though - hard to score if your always starting shifts in the D zone, and i'd bet you don't see the Sutter or Beagle line jump off the boards as often when the pucks in play from a different line and all the rest change but the carrier .... 

[FlyLow_]

Our worst plus/minus players are obviously going to be the guys that play the most for the most part. Bo's line plays too many minutes, but what option do we have? Our bottom six cannot score, is too slow and doesn't really intimidate anyone physically. The third line gives us absolutely nothing, I haven't disliked a line as much as I dislike the Sutter-Gaudette-Rous(or anyone else for that matter) in a decade. Never seen two guys with less chemistry than Sutter and Gaudette, so what do we do? Just keep forcing them out together every game.

 

We just don't the parts we need throughout the line-up and that includes the bottom six.

 

 

[JM_]

15 hours ago, IBatch said:

It is also why i've brought up the idea of keeping him - and paying him to stay as a medium term Beagle replacement.  

I'd be fine with Sutter at ~1/2 his current deal for another year for sure. Ideally we can move him at the TDL and swing back around in free agency. 

[JM_]

12 hours ago, Coconuts said:

Excellent post. For all flack Sutter gets here I honestly wonder if this team is equipped to lose a center like him, though I'm not sure what other options for defensive centers are going to be available in ufa. I'm of the opinion that Sutter's been fine, there have been games over this last stretch where he's been one of our better forwards. Unfortunately we haven't gotten much from Jake and Gaudette after career seasons, and the lack of depth scoring really hurt us. 

He'd be valuable to Edmonton, but I wonder if we wouldn't be better off extending him. I'm not confident that we have a player in the system aside from Beagle who can play those kind of minutes effectively, and we'll need a center who can play tough defensive minutes next season if we're to be successful. It'd have to be a shorter term deal, and obviously not 4.3m, but I think it's worth considering. Sutter would be more valuable for this team next season than a second round pick. 

could be, it just depends on what kind of $ he's looking for, I like him at 1/2 his current deal for us.  

 

Lowry is available as a UFA this offseason and I'd sure like to see if we can make that happen. WPG has a crap ton of cap space tho and probably keeps him. 

[Provost]

2 hours ago, IBatch said:

It's a decent stat if quality of competition is brought in, and Corsi/possession used with it too... possession alone isn't all the rage it used it be ... most teams differ by 5% - how is 5% more of any one thing going to win cups?  Because CHI and LA did ... lol... then PIT came in and made a mockery of that idea.   It doesn't mean nothing though - hard to score if your always starting shifts in the D zone, and i'd bet you don't see the Sutter or Beagle line jump off the boards as often when the pucks in play from a different line and all the rest change but the carrier .... 

Ya, you have to use a package of stats to tell you anything about a player.  You can’t use this one with really Corsi though to tell you much as that doesn’t fly just with how stats are supposed to be properly used.

 

Corsi (presumably 5v5 which is what everyone quotes) measures all 5v5 shifts.

dZone/oZone% measures a small subset of those shifts.

 

To use two different stats for comparison or relativity, they need to measure the same “population” (have the same denominator), or be shown to be representative of each other.... otherwise it just isn’t proper to relate them to each other because they are just apples and oranges.  By literal definition, dZone starts is NOT a representative sample of all 5v5 shifts...

 

Trying to figure out a clear example to explain it...

Eg.

10% of B.C.’s population is Chinese

40% of Kelowna’s population has dark hair.

Does that mean 10% of Kelowna’s population is Chinese?  That 1/4 of all dark haired people in Kelowna are a Chinese?  You would be wrong if you said either of those things.

There is nothing you can infer from comparing the two numbers because they aren’t measuring the same population. 
 

Sure people in Kelowna are a small subset of people in BC (about 6%)  just like oZone starts are a small subset of all shifts (about 2-8% depending on the player)... that doesn’t mean you can use one number to compare to the other because one isn’t representative of the other.

 

If you WERE measuring the same population, you can actually infer things. (Assuming close to 100% of Chinese people in BC have dark hair)

if 10% of people in BC are Chinese, and 40% of people in BC have dark hair.... then about 1/4 of dark haired people in BC are Chinese.  That math works, you can relate the two things to each other bedside they are measuring the same population.

 

Did that make it more confusing?  Not sure if I am explaining it well.

 

You could be terribly defensively and get scored on every time you have a defensive zone shift start.... but also be amazing offensively and score every time you have an offensive, neutral zone start, or shift starting on the fly which would  give you a great Corsi... but also have a dZone start % well above 50%.  Because the 2nd number is is only counting a tiny subset of your shifts... it doesn’t tell you much of anything.

 

There is also the plain fact the oZone/dZone% measures only a tiny number of shifts and doesn’t really vary much from player to player.  Which means in pure numbers it is only the difference of less than a shift a game between guys with a high dZone start% and a low dZone start%.  
 

Best to forget that stat entirely and just use amount of PK time and PP time to infer which players are deployed more in a defensive or offensive way.

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Provost

[kanucks25]

It's not necessarily that any individual player in the bottom-6 is terrible, it's the overall composition of the group both when it comes to style/chemistry and of course aggregate cap-hit.

 

The lines have no identity other than seemingly "go out there and just don't get scored on". That would be fine if the average AAV of the group was like 1.25M but it's obviously not especially if you include the guys that are even lower than the bottom-6.

 

- No point in having both Beagle and Sutter unless Sutter is going to be playing wing primarily.

- Roussel clearly has lost a step and it's not like he was that ahead to begin with; he never really accomplishes much on the ice

- Virtanen and Gaudette are both very inconsistent in their effort, effectiveness, style, etc. which has made it impossible to decipher where to play them

- Maybe MacEwan has what it takes to become a consistent 4th line grinder but nothing I've seen thus far gives me a whole lot of confidence

 

Revamping this group should be near the top of the priority list this upcoming off-season.

[smithers joe]

just spit balling here, but what about working a roster this way.

hoglander...petey

                   miller...boeser

                   horvat...podkolzin

motte...beagle...

filling in with guys like lind,focht,hawryluk,lockwood,bailey,macewen and gaudette?

[Provost]

1 minute ago, smithers joe said:

just spit balling here, but what about working a roster this way.

hoglander...petey

                   miller...boeser

                   horvat...podkolzin

motte...beagle...

filling in with guys like lind,focht,hawryluk,lockwood,bailey,macewen and gaudette?

Things aren’t working now, so anything different is worth a try.  Rolling 3 lines that could score with relatively even minutes is worth a try... 

[smithers joe]

i like having 3 lines that in any game could be your top line. i haven't thought through the pk yet, but motte and beagle on one. this is where we'll miss sutter. maybe miller and hawryluk. we might pick up one in a trade. the following year we would need to find another 4th line center. beagle might be hard to replace because he is a primary pk, plus he is the best face off man we got.

the defense is another matter.

[JM_]

20 minutes ago, Provost said:

Things aren’t working now, so anything different is worth a try.  Rolling 3 lines that could score with relatively even minutes is worth a try... 

I've never been a big fan of spreading out the offence, it doesn't seem to do anything but lower a teams GF. Can you think of an example where there was a high scoring team that didn't have one loaded up top line? 

[EdgarM]

10 hours ago, Solinar said:

The problem with our team is that it is built around this premise.  The top 2 lines score, and hold your power play units.  The bottom 2 lines make up your pk and shut down.  In today's NHL, you have to be able to roll 4 lines that can chip in, play defense, and not get their teeth kicked in when the top line from the opposing team jumps over the boards.  If you have a good, solid, and offensively productive for bottom 6 players, bottom 6, that provides rest, and support for your top 6.  What we have is a throw back to an ideology that just isn't applicable to the game anymore in a successful and positive way.  The bottom 6, is overpaid, unproductive, and isn't a #1 pk unit.  Change any of those, and we probably aren't sitting here in the comments section.  Change it up, give people different roles, coach the &^@# out of them and make them do things like, I don't know, Virtanen and Gaudette kill penalties.  One of the bottom six plays on the top pp unit.  Anything.  Because this is getting a little out of hand.  Intangibles, leadership, and big skates and a heavy game only get you so far when you can't win hockey games with players that can't score goals.

Good post and I must say this is a nice change to see a discussion with good arguments both ways, minus the "rose colored glasses" crowd and the "doom and gloom" crowd.

The glaring concerns I have is that we have not separated ourselves from the "Sedin Era" as our Captain and Coaching strategies have remained basically the same since they left.

We heavily rely on the top forwards yet they lack defensive responsibilities hence the terrible +- numbers. The Sedin's numbers looked awful in their latter years as well. Players such as Petey, Hughes and Boes are getting overplayed and their minutes resemble players who are already established in the NHL and not players who are still developing. I think this is counterproductive and is not helping their development.

This while our veteran presence sits on the bench and can only watch. AND others wonder why this team lacks, a full 60 minute game, aggressive checking and forechecking and the inability to be able to keep a lead in their game. 

We have played better rolling 4 lines but Green rarely plays this way, back when we were playing those games when we had 2-3 goal leads, Green still overplayed our young core when we should have been keeping up the energy and at least rolling the 4 lines. Maybe even relying more on the veteran defensive players to keep the lead. 

The argument with our Captain is valid as well. He is basically Hank 2.0 and has not taken on his own style of leading this team. His checking and aggressive play is similar to Hanks when I think he can contribute way more then he has to date.

I seen him also, go "Beast Mode"(last years playoffs) , but that is few and far between and he needs to carry this team on his back more often. 

I know that our bottom 6 is overpaid but this was a necessity as we basically had no veteran presence playing defensive responsibilities the past few years. We need them to shelter the young, provide veteran presence and provide defensive stability. Are they being deployed effectively by the coach? 

I don't believe we have found a good balance and effective line combinations yet Green refuses to experiment in this regard. I don't count when he does his "Mish Mash" for a few periods either because this is just a waste of time. No time to develop chemistry or let the players get used to their linemates. I think it just brings about confusion, especially when he just returns to the lines that were not working in the first place.  

Jake has been a victim of this and people wonder why he is so inconsistent. Gauds is in the same boat and his numbers are not any better. In all of this mess, Jake has had chemistry with Sutter and Miller in short stints in the past but he rarely gets the chance to play with them. 

The other thing that is painfully obvious is that we need a Veteran presence in the top 6. I like the skills of Boes, Petey and Hogs too but they are all Developing Stars who need guidance from veteran players. They shouldn't be thrown to the wolves without any help. They are not ready for that yet. Miller does not seem to be that "Veteran presence".

Could the #1 PP need assistance from veteran presence? It sure looks like something is needed. 

I believe all of our woes this year boils down to the leadership and coaching and nothing is going to change unless these change. Coach Green and Bo are very likeable guys but so were the Sedins and sometimes the "Nice Guys" finish last. Something none of us want to see happen to our team.

[Provost]

Just now, Jimmy McGill said:

I've never been a big fan of spreading out the offence, it doesn't seem to do anything but lower a teams GF. Can you think of an example where there was a high scoring team that didn't have one loaded up top line? 

I don’t know that it would work... but trying anything isn’t a bad idea at all in my opinion.

 

Normally when it works, it is because there is enough talent to spread around... not the case with us