Follow @james_tanner123 Like anyone who is paying attention knew it would be, last night's game between the Coyotes and the Oilers was an excellent and exciting game to watch.
A comeback, a Domi hat-trick and OEL scoring the winning goal in overtime make for an excellent game. Not to mention the chance to watch Nurse, Hall et. al.
But, like most games, the Coyotes were damn lucky to win this one.
It's not just that the Oilers had the puck way more, but the way in which they did it: the Oilers dressed seven defensemen, six of whom were +50% Corsi. The Oilers top line of Draisaitle, Eberle and Pouliott was absolutely dominant, maintaining possession of the puck for close to 65% of the time they played, which is just absurdly dominant.
The same could be said of the line of Purcell, Nugent-Hopkins and Hall.
Lucky for the Coyotes then that the bottom six players the Oilers dress are an absolute abomination.
(And also shame on the Oilers for wasting time when they could easily acquire a useful bottom six with one quick trade with the Leafs - like it would not cost that much to acquire Boyes, Komarov and Arcobello, play it as your third line and not get caved in every night when your best players need to get some oxygen).
For the Coyotes, the game was fine when Hanzal, Domi and Duclair/Reider were on the ice. Whenever they weren't, the Coyotes were terrible. Luckily that one line was fantastic.
Max Domi had a great game, playing well even in his seven minutes vs the Oilers top line.
To start his career, Domi has played 42 games and has 13 goals and 31 points.
Overall, this is excellent. However, before the "see they were right to keep him in junior for the extra year" people get out of control, there are some concerning underlying numbers.
This doesn't mean Domi isn't a potentially amazing player. Just that we shouldn't be blinded by favorable results that hide some bad things about his game - things that might not be there if he was in the NHL for a year already.
To start, it is excellent that ten of his 13 goals are at even-strength.
However, concerning is that he has a personal shooting percentage of 17.24, which is going to eventually crash and take the gaudy goal totals with it. As has been discussed many times and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, a player has zero control over what his shooting percentage is.
The exception might be a pass-first player who rarely shoots at anything except an open net, but we can easily rule Domi out of being that kind of player.
Because of his high shooting percentage, we see that Domi has a PDO of almost 104, which is MASSIVE. And again, it is an indication that he has been extremely lucky so far, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's actually watched the Coyotes play this year.
But a concerning thing are his possession numbers. Just a 44.38% Corsi, which is brutal for a top line player. Yes, the Coyotes are among the worst possession teams in hockey, but Domi is a -4% relative Corsi, meaning that even by the standard of the Coyotes, he is very bad.
The upshot of this is that when Domi plays, the other team has the puck more often than not. If you take away the gaudy luck based point totals, you have a player who cheats often and gets burned, who doesn't recover the puck once its gone and can't play defense.
He is exciting to watch and I am a huge fan and really happy the Coyotes have him. But a realistic assessment of his play is not flattering.
When Domi is on the ice, the other team gets more high-danger scoring chances, more scoring chances, more shots and more shot attempts. Thus, because his goal scoring isn't repeatable and sustainable, he is actually of negative value when on the ice.
It is impossible (and I mean that literally) that Domi (or any player) could score often enough to counteract being out-shot, out-chanced and out-possessed by so much.
Therefore, despite a hattrick and - goals aside - the best game of his career, Domi has a ton of work to do before he's not hurting his team every game.
But there is also a bright side here: A drop in shooting percentage to a normal rate would only cost Domi a few goals - not a ton. Secondly, he is a scoring winger, so who centres him will have almost as much to do with his ability to help the team as his own work will. Like many high-flying wingers before him (Phil Kessel comes to mind) Domi won't be effective on a team that expects him to do much of the heavy lifting.
The Coyotes should identify what they can do to help him - and lucky for them I am here to tell them. Clearly he would still need to be better without the puck and to transition to more of a well-rounded game (which, he's a rookie, so of course he does) but the following will really help.
1. Never let him on the ice with Antoine Vermette, who is screwing him. We are talking about a 10% improvement whenever Domi gets away from Vermette, who, unfortunately has been his most common centre.
2. Stop playing him with Boedker. Its counter-intuitive, but having two snipers on the same line rarely works. Two goal scorers, yes, but not two finesse guys.
Instead of confusing defenses, Boedker and Domi just make it easy, since there's no defensive or hard-to-play against player on their line. Plus, they both always want the puck. When Domi and Boedker play together (and they are each other's most common linemates) Domi posts a 42.6% CF. When they are separate, it jumps to over 50%, which is a jump of almost 20%
4. Play him with Duclair. Unlike Boedker and Domi, Duclair and Domi have complimentary skill-sets which make both of them more dangerous. Unfortunately, Dave Tippett has only had them play together for less than 20% of Domi's total ice time.
5. Give him Hanzal as a centre. Duh. (Which they did last night to great results).
People ask me all the time why I don't like Tippett as a coach for this team. The reason is this: I just gave him five ways to make his team way better and to make the team's future face of the franchise actually effective. And while I'm just some dude in my Mom's basement, he's running an NHL team.
So I'm jealous, basically.
If the Coyotes take my advice Max Domi could, in the next 40 games, actually be the rookie of the year, and, more importantly, play a kind of hockey that actually helps his team.
Thanks for reading.
As always, stats from waronice.com and stat.hockeyanalysis.com
4.