BrooksBurner

Chytil should be a great fit for that line. He has an excellent shot, and he also has no issues carrying the puck or dumping and going in deep after it, cycling. Underrated playmaker too.

If Rempe is in the opening lineup and can do enough to get Wilson suckered into fighting, that would be a great exchange. For one, Wilson is one of the guys who can establish the tone of a game and be disruptive for the Caps. For two, any 4 on 4 situation is extremely favorable for the Rangers.

He's gotta be ready to play. There's no reason for him to be taking those kinds of reps from others who are going to be playing...unless he's going to be playing.

Despite the subjectivity, the track record of correlation between expected goals and playoff participants and Cup winners is very strong (as far as expected goals from transparent data sources). There’s other factors, but nothing as strongly as that of which I am aware. Special teams dominance on both ends of the ice for example might show favoritism towards winning teams, but it hasn’t correlated with being a necessity. 5v5 play pretty much has until it shows out otherwise. If there’s one source that deviates heavily from the others, I’d be leery of that source and how they are getting what they are getting. Might be bias or questionable methodology. It could also be they are innovative and ahead of the curve, but there’s nothing that suggests the other sources have been errant.

No, and yes. The Rangers landed the one team in the playoffs who suck more at 5v5 than they do. Combined with a major special teams edge, I'll be disappointed if they lose even 1 game.

No. It's a subjective calculation though and there's going to be different models. What is odd is CSA is the outlier when it comes to the Rangers, when compared to many other sources, including other professional analytics companies. Not just NST.

That's all fair. I agree. I generally use expected goals and high danger chances as a pretty reliable method to generally separate good from mediocre from bad. There's going to be buckets of teams and players in those groupings, and from there, you have to dig deeper.

Yeah well the only thing positive about you is your HIV test

Yeah well I’d argue that it was just production normalizing up to meet expectation. In either case, it’s silly to use OTL as an indicator of…really anything.

It's not a reliable indicator of anything, other than it means said team is either bad in regular season OT hockey or the shootout, both of which are meaningless for how good a team is especially come playoff time. It should be noted that LAK were 6th in xGF%/HDCF% that year, which is a more reliable indicator for the strength of a team - and they were strong.

If anyone who pumped the Rangers' tires all year and then voted 6 or 7 games against this shitty Caps team, I have a bone to pick with you for a lack of follow through in the art of conviction

Shut up Ray, you cunt

Rangers are overrated by the fans et large and even I think this should be no contest.