The Pittsburgh Penguins were slackers on Wednesday evening. They were only able to score four times in their victory over the Boston Bruins. It was the lowest goal total for the team in the month of December.
All kidding aside it goes to show you how well the Penguins have been playing when scoring four times is considered a step down in a league that only averages about five goals total per game. The Bruins were a formidable opponent and had the slight advantage in possession.
Pittsburgh’s Matt Murray allowed three goals but still had an all situations save percentage of .932 in the game. The Penguins allowed 44 shots to the Bruins. It was high event hockey last night because the Penguins were able to muster up 37 of their own. Matt Murray even registered an assist in the game and with that assist he pulls into a tie for the scoring lead with Olli Maatta.
Sidney Crosby didn’t score in last night’s game, but he did manage a primary assist on the Penguins first goal. That goal was scored by Justin Schultz who is enjoying one of the best stretches of his career. He has five goals and 12 points in his last eight games. He is playing with confidence and when he is out with the Penguins skilled players he is actively seeking how he can be involved as opposed to being a passenger. His upside coming into the league were his offensive instincts and he is in a situation with the team he is on and his usage to make the most of it. His outlet pass during the 3 on 3 overtime was confident and assertive. His decision to make the pass when he did was what led to the game winning goal sequence.
Malkin’s assist was sublime. Those kinds of passes look simple because he makes them look simple. His ability to have that kind of touch is what sets him apart from a lot of other players the same size as him. Malkin now has 33 points in 30 games which over the course of an 82 game season would give him exactly 90 points. He is playing tremendous hockey this year in the shadow of Crosby’s amazing start.
Bryan Rust scored the game winning goal and prior to that he was given a promotion at the expense of Patric Hornqvist. The Penguins rugged winger was taken off the Crosby line for what was performance related reasons.
Quick question, how many even-strength goals does Patric Hornqvist have on the year?
The answer is one. That isn’t going to cut it while riding shotgun with the league’s best player. Hornqvist has certainly proven with his larger sample that he is a lot better than his production right now, but for whatever reason the goals aren’t coming this year at 5v5. Bryan Rust has eight goals at even-strength this year and has five in his last five games. The Hornqvist benching will be temporary, but deserved. He needs to make the most of riding shotgun with Sid.
A counterpoint to what I have said above is that there are metrics out there that speak to Hornqvist playing great hockey right now. I am specifically referring to Dawson Sprigings (@DTMaboutheart) individual expected goals metric. I have not had as much time as I'd like to dig into this metric and as a result I haven’t been using it in the blog. I respect Dawson's work and creating these kinds of metrics is something I currently don't have the time nor expertise to execute. That said, here are the league leaders in ixG among forwards this year.
First, Hornqvist is the one who is most underperforming on this list based on his individual expected goals and actual performance. You have to think that improves with a larger sample. Two, this doesn’t pass my initial smell test. How is Patric Hornqvist the top rated Penguin? Sidney Crosby is the league leader in goals and is sniffing the scoring lead despite missing six games. It is his best goal scoring stretch since his famed 2010-11 season. Sprigings metric is 5v5 only, but again Patric Hornqvist has one even-strength goal on the year. I’m not sure how Hornqvist, let alone 14 other players would rank above Crosby in this specific season . What about Patric Hornqvist's game speaks to him being a better driver of expected goals than Sidney Crosby? I believe it has to do with Hornqvist leading the team in individual shots for per 60. It's the only thing I can think of that would elevate him above players like Crosby, Malkin, and Kessel who are all playing at a high level this year.
I think to make the best use of ixG it would be ideal to pair it with something else to give it context. How are the players earning so many of those shots on goal which seem to drive ixG? It seems ixG as a standalone can be a tad misleading. Right now we don't have a huge database of data to draw from, but my best idea would be to pair ixG with Ryan Stimson's passing project data, specifically shot assists. This could help provide context and explain why Hornqvist is a top 15 player in the league for ixG despite only one even-strength goal on the year. Unfortunately, shot assists are manually tracked and the database is not large for the Penguins just yet. I would hypothesize that Sidney Crosby is awesome at shot assists which is why you see Hornqvist leading the team (and NHL) with Conor Sheary coming in second overall on the Penguins. I would wager that my hypothesis has a high probability of being correct, but without a large sample of data I can't be 100% sure.
A non-Penguins example of this would be Viktor Arvidsson making the top 15 in ixG. He is second overall in the NHL in iSF60 and plays with Ryan Johansen a majority of the time. I am now very intrigued with Ryan Johansen's shot assist ability.
Hockey is a very nuanced sport that can be defined as controlled chaos. Like any stat, Corsi included, you need to combine metrics for context and ixG is no exception. Unfortunately, we don't have as many options available to contextualize ixG at the moment and it is why I have been hesitant to use it so far.
Thanks for reading!
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