Cam Charron

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Perfect Patrice

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, Boston Bruins on May 17, 2013

Toronto Maple Leafs v Boston Bruins - Game Seven

It takes a lot more than goal scoring to win a hockey game. Well, that’s not entirely correct, but it takes a lot more than finishing ability to win a hockey game, and the only stats that appear in a boxscore that are to be trusted are goals and assists.

Patrice Bergeron is good at those things, but he’s also good at all the other things that aren’t recorded in the traditional boxscore, the things you could, until about six years ago, only really see with your eyes. Patience in the neutral zone and impatience in the defensive zone, Bergeron doesn’t like to play too many seconds on the ice without the puck on his stick, and that’s a damn good thing, because there aren’t many players better in the game with the puck on their stick.

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Slumping Seguin getting chances, but running out of time to score

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis on May 13, 2013

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By one measure, Tyler Seguin has been the most dangerous player all series for either team.

It comes as little consolation to the young star however. The Toronto Maple Leafs have converted on a much higher number of chances than the Boston Bruins, and the Leafs’ most dangerous player—Phil Kessel—has found the back of the net three times already in the series.

I’ve long thought that a playoff series, or even a playoff run, should not change your opinion of a player. If you thought that Seguin was a player coming into the series, you should probably still think that Seguin is a player, regardless of his results from the first six games.

For those catching up (and if you’re reading hockey blogs, I presume you’re past that stage) the Maple Leafs, heavy underdogs against the Bruins in the first round, have come back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the series 3-3 after 2-1 wins in Games 5 and 6. Game 7 on a quick turnaround runs tonight, and it seems as if there are lots of people prepared to bury the Bruins.

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Dion Phaneuf’s good, and even the Toronto Maple Leafs realize it

Posted by Cam Charron under Uncategorized on May 10, 2013

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The major story that’s dominated popular thought in Toronto through the shortened season is the coaching of Randy Carlyle. Carlyle’s tight defensive systems, so to speak, are the cause of the success of James Reimer’s season, and Carlyle’s hard-ass style of not letting anybody off the hook for poor play turned the Leafs into a workhorse, junkyard dog type of team that made the playoffs for the first time in blah blah blah you know the story.

But the other thing that’s been talked about on nearly every Maple Leafs broadcast is the matchup game. I’ve noticed this watching Leafs games this year, that Carlyle is a coach for which the matchups are noticeable visually. In most situations, I’ll have to check after the game to see who is playing on who. Nearly every time a top offensive player is on the ice against the Leafs, Dion Phaneuf is on the ice, and for the second half of the year he was with Carl Gunnarsson in those situations.

The best indication of this is Phaneuf’s time against John Tavares and Matt Moulson. Hockey Analysis lists Phaneuf as playing 41:24 and 41:04 against those players respectively this season. Why is that important? Because the Leafs only played three games against the New York Islanders this season. That’s about 14 minutes at 5-on-5 per contest against one of the league’s top lines.

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The Islanders are underdogs, but better than given credit for

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, New York Islanders on May 06, 2013

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The Canadian Press called it a “surprising split“. The New York Times called the win “surprising“. Scott Burnside suggested that it was because “hard work sometimes trumps talent“.

Perhaps it is the hard work, but there is still a lot of talent on the Islanders roster. Their top six has four first-round picks. They have another first rounder on their third line centred by a player who has been an AHL scoring machine since 2006. There is a lot of skill, even if they aren’t all house-hold names. A couple more performances like they had in Game 2 or 3 of their series though, and maybe a few analysts will begin to credit the Islanders for being a real good hockey team. It’s not just a playoff thing—they’ve been good for a while.

Other than an ill-timed penalty against a deadly Penguins powerplay, the Islanders have out-played the Pens in this series. They out-shot Pittsburgh 31-20 at even strength in the third game and appeared to beat them in scoring chances. In three games, they have out-shot the Penguins 86-61 at even strength.

This shouldn’t have been surprising going in. The Islanders this season were 11th in Hockey Analysis’ Corsi Tied in the NHL and 11th in Behind the Net’s Fenwick Close. Pittsburgh in the same measures were 17th and 15th. The Islanders do have a significant five-on-five advantage that could have been easily picked up on coming in. Read the rest of this entry »

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You won’t regress to the mean during a 30-minute stretch in Game 2

Posted by Cam Charron under One Man's Opinion on May 03, 2013

Nashville Predators v Anaheim Ducks

Context is always crucial.

I feel like I’ve already read three different post-mortems on the Toronto Maple Leafs already this postseason, each piece a different account of a central theme: the Toronto Maple Leafs got crushed in Game 1 because they were due for a loss or two. No way could the wins keep coming they way they were in the regular season. The real Leafs are the ones we saw get crushed 4-1 by the Bruins.

That part is true, I guess. The most confident series’ predictions I made were Chicago and Boston advancing, but I don’t think that a poor performance in Game 1 is indicative of how the rest of the series will flesh out. Yes, the shots were 40-20 for the Bruins. Yes, overall shot attempts were 71-33, which is absolutely insane. Yes, I had the scoring chances at 24-9 for Boston.

So by no measure were the Maple Leafs fit to compete in Game 1. They were simply out-matched, and they will likely be out-matched for the remainder of the series. But that doesn’t ever mean it’s over. The playoffs are the equalizer. No matter how many wins you got in the regular season, you need to win 16 of your next 28 games, and in the proper order, otherwise you’re going home.

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Shot charts and playoff teams

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, Charts on Apr 29, 2013

yea, he's good

yea, he’s good

There was a pretty interesting graphic that circulated online after the conclusion of the Boston and Ottawa game. It was a chart simply looking at shot differential standings, highlighting the teams that made the playoffs.

I didn’t have access to the raw numbers used by Frank Dumais, who put the chart together. However I was able to copy and sort of duplicate every season since 2008 from stats.hockeyanalysis.com and do a similar thing. These are only even strength statistics, but I’ve highlighted all the playoff teams:

shots diff 1 Read the rest of this entry »

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Presidents’ Trophies and Hart Trophies – Thoughts on the Blackhawks and the MVP race

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis on Apr 26, 2013

"Party at Kaner's house!" "Cool, we celebrating the Presidents' Trophy?" "Nah, we're celebrating... Wednesday."

“Party at Kaner’s house!” “Cool, we celebrating the Presidents’ Trophy?” “Nah, we’re celebrating… Wednesday.”

The Presidents’ Trophy is so a good award

Something bugged me when the Chicago Blackhawks clinched the best overall record in the National Hockey League. They didn’t seem proud of their accomplishment in the slightest.

Jonathan Toews:

“It’s not that important. Of course, we want to be the best. We’ve put ourselves at the top throughout the entire season. We want to stay there. But that fact it’s called the Presidents’ Trophy, it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We’re preparing ourselves for the postseason, and that’s the most important thing right now.”

North American sports analysis weights too much on the success of teams in the post-season “when it counts” or what-have-you. Playoffs though, are like at the end of a long game where one team has decisively won 4-2, tacking on an overtime period to the end of said game and giving the win to whichever team scores first, even if it was the team losing heading into the OT period.

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