Everyone is constantly looking for progress with a team in different areas. Maybe it's a team point total, a better penalty kill, a better goals against, more success from drafted players etc.
There are plenty of ways a team can "Progress" from year to year.
We also look for this on an individual standpoint with players.
However, progress is often a loose term that can have many meanings when it comes to individual players.
If you score more points but have worse defensive numbers is it really progress? If you are used more frequently and in tougher situations but do not show any tangible for of improvement, is that progress? You could almost consider the latter to be a form of progress, albeit slight.
Some positions by nature show slower progress, slower learning curves, and more challenging hurdles than others. Defense and goaltending is always going to be slow, centers a bit behind them, wings usually bringing up the rear. But how long is too long before you cut bait? How many seasons of no progress or little progress do you endure before becoming concerned with development? It is by no means an easy question to answer, and it varies wildly from player to player and team to team.
The Kings have their own unique scenario, as does every other team in the league.
They have players progressing, but some much slower than others. Some are developing quickly but have stalled out on the next step, that being making the NHL roster.
But overall we have to step back and ask ourselves how do we actually define the word "Progress" when it comes to each player. Why? Because it is not a universal definition. The same progress does not apply across the board to every player in the same way.
We are going to take a couple of tweets from Dennis Bernstein of The Fourth Period as an example to what we are talking about. Mind you, this is no slight to Bernstein, who is one of the more amicable personalities to interact with both on social media and in person. However, we can use it as an example of the subtleties of progress being overlooked.
While there were nights when McNabb was a frustrating player, and his lack of usage was concerning late in the year, to say there is a lack of progress is perhaps overzealous.
The context of the player is always important, and McNabb is no different. McNabb turned 25 years old this season. Upon completion of this season it was just his second full pro season. Prior to last season he had played 37 pro games with Buffalo, a different system, in 2011-12 and 2013-14.
Safe to say there was not much of a sample size of NHL growth for him from 2011-12 to when he came to the Kings.
Last season McNabb played 15:54 a night, primarily from the Kings bottom pair. He had a 56.8 CF%, a 55.7% FF%, he was protected for the most part with a 60-40 Ozone-Dzone split in zone starts. He also had 24 points in the 71 games he played.
Enter 2015-16, after the promising 2014-15 season he had coming into the Kings system we can expect more right?
Oh no! He had only 14 points, and made a lot more mistakes than what people remembered from his rookie year right? Definitely not a year of progress. However, here is where you can bring in factors that point to McNabb actually doing quite a bit to progress in a positive way, despite a notable downturn in obvious areas like point totals and visible eye-test blunders.
The first set of numbers are his 2014-15 totals, the second set his 2015-16 numbers.
TOI
15:54 -> 18:49
Defensive zone starts
40.3% -> 44.1
Fenwick against per 60
35.42 -> 34.33
CF%
56.8 -> 58.8
Opposing Goals For per 60
2.29 -> 2.26
That all looks pretty good right? Not only did McNabb take on more minutes and tougher zone starts, he did so while allowing fewer shot attempts, not getting scored on by a larger amount, and possessing the puck more. Are there negatives? Of course. His team relative stats were down, his point rate was much lower (.17 versus .36) and his team goals for generation while on the ice was less. Overall though, you cannot say there was a lack of progress from Brayden McNabb, he took on more minutes this year and was stable.
Next year becomes a year where McNabb needs to see a bump. But this year, in his second full professional year, this was totally fine and very good progress.
Let's take a look at another somewhat maligned Kings player, Nick Shore.
I won't bore you with all the gory details, but the table on Hockey Reference does a heck of a job summing up his movement forward.
Shore's average time on ice ALSO increased from 11:05 to 12:24.
The biggest and most glaring issue with these two players is the production, which is the most obvious things to hockey fans. Nick Shore did not score as much as he did in 2014-15. Brayden McNabb did not score as much as he did in 2014-15. These two did not progress, they are a lost cause, we should move on from them.
Obviously not. There were very good elements of growth in both player's games, and growth worth praising and keeping an eye on as they both enter a very pivotal third year pro season.
Let's look at ANOTHER player. Someone opposite of these two.
Slava Voynov. Yes, the same Slava Voynov who fans still opine about missing on the backend of the current Kings team.
The reality is, while Voynov's statistical output and his point totals steadily increased from 20 to 25 and to 34 points from 2011-2014, he actually became a WORSE player over that amount of time. People praised Voynov each year, with little to no realization that he was trending in the wrong direction slowly but surely. His minutes went up, but his points per 60 went down. His corsi against went up. His scoring chance relative went down. His scoring chances for went down.
The Kings actually backed off of Voynov's defensive zone starts in 2012-13, after increasing them after his rookie year.
Now, we are not saying that Voynov is not an NHL caliber defenseman, but he certainly rode a hot start in his rookie season into the hearts of many fans. Was there actual progression from the talented Russian though? Not particularly. At this point it is probably safe to say Voynov would have settled into being a No. 3 or 4 defenseman with the Kings.
The trajectory of his obvious stats, for lack of a better word, was opposite of that of his underlying and perhaps more meaningful stats. Of course meaningful is debatable depending on what you prescribe to.
Point being is that progress is sometimes misidentified and misrepresented. In the end we end up lauding players who do not particularly show a lot of progress, and potentially lambaste those who do.
If I came to you and said, "Brayden McNabb scored 14 points this year and 24 points last year, has he progressed?" You would probably say no. However, if I came to you and said, "Brayden McNabb saw tougher assignments, was consistent in defensive numbers, but saw a downturn in offense." Would you say he didn't progress?
You can do this with MANY young players. Tanner Pearson is a candidate also going through this. Nick Shore as well. We are currently in limbo with Derek Forbort waiting to see what his next year will bring. But trend is important, and it is not just about point totals.
If you get bored one day, look through hockey reference or stats.hockey.analysis at the year to year stats of guys like Muzzin, Kopitar, Doughty, etc. the growth and improvement from year to year is almost always positive in underlying numbers. There might be years where they stabilize a bit and then improve. Or they stabilize and then start to trend back up in the other direction, like in the case of Dwight King.
The point here is that you have to take in a very wide scope when coming to the conclusion of progress. It is never going to be defined by one clear ultimate stat. Even point totals. There are stats that are telling, and then there are ones like shooting percentages that can spike and dip wildly year after year (And those relate to goal...hmmm)
While it may burn the armchair GM to watch Nick Shore miss a gaping net or watch McNabb fumble a breakout play, the overall sample thus far is moving upward where it matters. It is also still a really small sample! Players do not stop progressing after their second year. Usually by their third or fourth year is when it becomes clear what they are. We are nowhere near that with some of the young King players. To say that the likes of McNabb, Shore, Pearson, or even Andy Andreoff haven't progressed, even with positive trends, would be shortsighted.
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