LindG1000

Yeah. No arguments there, though I think your smart use example is why I so strongly prefer Vally's CSA data collection to the xGF/Corsi approach. Would you rather be the team that gets 60% xGF and no high-danger chances against Igor Shesterkin or the team that gets 47% xGF and six high dangers against Freddy Andersen? I know my answer on that one.

I think context matters so much with this, though. The Rangers will celebrate the 100th anniversary in 2026-2027 and had a stellar team to begin with, but with the rights and sponsorship situation carving up territory, the Rangers had no access to youth. Montreal and Toronto (and Detroit) had a decent monopoly on Junior team sponsorship, and would repeatedly sign players to so-called "A" forms (an annual "tryout rights renewal") - so a player brought up through a Montreal-sponsored team would sign this form every year as a rights retention mechanism for the Canadiens - or "C" forms (professional rights forms). It froze out Chicago, New York, and Boston for a while as they'd only really get the late bloomers, so from 1940 to the 1967 expansion, the Rangers, Bruins, and Blackhawks made a combined 12 finals APPEARANCES - and that gets worse when you balance out that 4 of those appearances were in the WW2 years, where Canada was involved in the war earlier (as it was British Canada at the time). A lot of the "breakthroughs" were dumb luck - Stan Mikita fleeing Slovakia with his family and just luckily landing in territory in Ontario that had a Blackhawks sponsorship team, or the Wings giving up too early on Bucyk and dealing him (though to be fair, they got Sawchuk in that trade). The Rangers weren't on "even footing" until the late 1960s, when the modern draft was conceptualized. Then, these endless rights renewals and sponsorship deals started falling under intense legal scrutiny, and the monopoly broke. And pretty quickly, they competed. So...yeah, I mean...Kreider's probably not yet a top 5 Ranger; for many, he may never be. But he's a few seasons away from being one of the most prevalent names in the franchise record books if he isn't already, and it's at least somewhat understandable why that is.

If we win the Cup, Kreider is my pick for "will damage the Cup"

So, uh, about that PLD contract.....

The flaw with xGF as a ratio is that it fails to account for shot quality. So, when you have teams that are great at forecheck pressure and great at just...shooting pucks, they're going to hold the xGF% every single time. And truthfully - having the puck, pressuring puck carriers, shooting the puck - these are generally things that help you control a game and win them. Think about how xGF "accrues" throughout a game - look at the way Vally pushes that data, for example. The "Corsi Canes" love, and I mean love, to shoot the puck. We've heard the term "chuckers" a few times here, and that might be accurate. An "everything to the net" approach is great for accruing low-danger xGF - those only really become high-danger chances when there's a rebound, so the Canes get in the zone, shoot low, and crash the net. And they maybe do this 30 times a game, so let's say that's .05 xGF a chance with three spiking into mid-high danger - those moments ALONE accrue ~1.7 xGF. It's a really smart formula, and it works often, but even if you consider the Islanders series - they needed goalie mistakes to get out of the series in 5, because that's how the system works. So, yeah, of course, they're going to hold that "constant" 55%-45% xGF advantage - but when you can keep them off the counter and keep them to the outside, you're not going to have to worry about that advantage because it's volume shooting at low-quality and you've got Igor back there.

For whatever it's worth, in the games where Igor Shesterkin wasn't on a vision quest, we won twice and held shit down.

A pox on the Hurricanes.

Debates around Lafreniere versus Kreider may not be the issue here. Looking around the league, you can see that the 2020 draft class got railroaded by COVID game loss, and they're just figuring it out now. Stutzle and Lundell were the exceptions - and the reason is clear - they played overseas during the pandemic and didn't "lose the season" the way others did. The 2020 class went off this year. Lafreniere, obviously, but Byfield, Raymond, Jarvis, Peterka, and maybe one or two others really made big impact steps forward. Then there are guys like Schneider, Guhle, Sanderson on D, and a few goalies to come, but it feels like this class was a year behind the curve.

oh please nobody else wants to run this forum of yahoos and crazies. I mean, uh, you're all wonderful upstanding people.

Given our special teams, I'll play to a modest advantage at 5v5 and take my chances on our PP and PK being the better special teams unit. We'll win that game more often than not, and hey, you only need to be marginally better than .500 to win a cup anyway.

While this thread is far from over, please take a moment and give our fearless, sleeveless leader his kudos.

I think that's the problem right now. If Chytil's ready, who sits? Our "competition" was Rempe and Roslovic, but Rempe sitting for Chytil probably bumps Cuylle down and breaks that line up. Not sure you want to do that. Roslovic had a point-a-game series against the Caps - you don't sit him after that. Yay, good problems?

I can't wait to hear about how Mika Zibanejad was invisibly scoring nearly 2 points a game.

This dude is Biff Tannen

Yep. Bang on. I also really love the combination of the Canes "fire early and often" approach with our transition defense. Lots of those shot attempts aren't on net, and that can feed our rush offense.