We have some pre-turkey day competition to take in this evening. The Rangers and Penguins will re-acquaint themselves in the Big Apple this evening in a Metropolitan Division matchup.
The Rangers victory on Monday was a familiar look for the team this year. They scored a bunch of goals. The Rangers have been the NHL's offensive darlings so far this season. They have scored 81 goals and the next best team is Philadelphia with 65 goals. The Rangers have a plan of action and they have been executing on it. In the last matchup the Rangers did not stray from their forward lines while the Penguins were a little more jumbled
Love the simplicity here of @IneffectiveMath's data viz in showing Sullivan's mix-&-match chaos vs NYR's lineup steadiness last night. pic.twitter.com/S8S3qGUy6w
— Bill West (@BWest_Trib) November 22, 2016
Patric Hornqvist did not make the trip to New York so the Penguins will be without his services again.
Pittsburgh will be going without a morning skate so we will have to see what the lines and lineup will be. Yesterday it was Olli Maatta and not Brian Dumoulin skating on the top pairing with Kris Letang. Something has to give as the defense corp. is not playing at the same level it did last year.
My guess is that Matt Murray will get the nod tonight. Henrik Lundqvist is in the net for New York.
Speaking of goalies Jesse Marshall of The Pens Blog did some statistical analysis on the Penguins goaltenders and busted one of the common myths that has been thrown around this year. The idea that the Penguins play significantly better or worse in front of Fleury/Murray is false.
NEW PENSBLOG: No, the Penguins do not play worse in front of your favorite goaltender. https://t.co/UyaAVSUjUK
— Jesse Marshall (@jmarshfof) November 22, 2016
I wrote about something similar in 2014
The narrative was that the Penguins played worse in front of Fleury because he was in for the tougher games and it turned out they played better in front of him than his backups, yet the backups had a similar save percentage per Jonathan Willis' work on the subject.
In fairness, Fleury has played much better since both mine and Jonathan's articles came out, but the point was there was no significant disadvantage Fleury had to play through in comparison to his backups.
To take things a step further there's the study I wrote for Hockey Prospectus where I found there was a less than 1% correlation between shot volume and the goaltender's performance.
So even if it was true that the team was playing significantly better in front of one or the other you could still judge a goalie's performance on their save percentage because there isn't a correlation between volume and success.
If you want to get into the shot quality versus quantity argument then I'll guide you here
Shot volume and shot quality have a 75% correlation which is very strong. Teams that give up a lot of attempts also give up more scoring chances. Teams that are good at suppressing attempts are also good at suppressing scoring chances.
In the Hockey Prospectus piece I wrote I separated the top five shot suppression teams and the bottom five shot suppression teams and found there was less than 1% correlation for each group in how the team played versus how the goalie played. So even at the extremes there is no correlation.
Basically the conclusion to draw here is that you can judge the Penguins goaltenders (or any other goalie) on their save percentage metrics alone. Goaltender play is independent from team play. Any other narratives are just noise which can be ignored.
Here is some Derrick Pouliot news
The Penguins have assigned defenseman Derrick Pouliot to the @WBSPenguins on a conditioning assignment: https://t.co/05vDeBgeil pic.twitter.com/EdpeRnkw0n
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) November 22, 2016
He is eligible to play in as many as three games while he is down there. It seems as though whatever injury he had has healed up to the point where he can play hockey again. I don't know where he fits into the NHL lineup right now, but I know that the defense corp. hasn't been lights out this year so if he plays well there may be an opportunity for him to get some NHL action.
Thanks for reading!