The Pittsburgh Penguins will look to rebound after an opening night 3-0 loss to the talented Dallas Stars. Pittsburgh has an optimal situation as they will take on the consensus pick for the worst team in the NHL, the Arizona Coyotes. Making things even better for Pittsburgh is that Arizona took on the Los Angeles Kings last night.
Here are the lines from the morning skate
Forwards: Kunitz-Crosby-Kessel Plotnikov-Malkin-Hornqvist Bennett-Bonino-Perron Porter-Cullen-Sprong
— Jason Mackey (@Mackey_Trib) October 10, 2015
Most notable is that Bobby Farnham looks like he will be replaced by Kevin Porter. Kevin Porter is a solid producer of points at the AHL level but has never been able to have that translate at the NHL level. Seeing as though Porter plays more of an offensive game than Farnham this will probably be a better fit for Daniel Sprong. With that said the difference between Porter and Farnham is really just style. Neither player is ideal to have in the lineup, but those are the current options with Pascal Dupuis out.
Sergei Plotnikov will again start with the Evgeni Malkin line. He will need to start showing more if he wants to remain in that role. David Perron would certainly love to get that opportunity. I would like to see Mike Johnston sneak a few shifts with Daniel Sprong on that second line.
HCMJ on Plotnikov: "I thought he looked tense and nervous like a player would in his first NHL game. Let’s see how (61-72-72) are tonight."
— Jason Mackey (@Mackey_Trib) October 10, 2015
Defense: Cole-Letang Maatta-Lovejoy Dumoulin-Scuderi Clendening-Erixon
— Jason Mackey (@Mackey_Trib) October 10, 2015
No changes to the defense corp. The obvious one I would make and I believe most people would make would be to substitute Adam Clendening in for Rob Scuderi.
There really isn’t much more to say about the game. Pittsburgh needs to comfortably win this matchup. They are the better team and are more rested. A loss tonight would be incredibly disappointing.
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I have spent the entire day at the RIT Hockey Analytics Conference here in Rochester, NY. The amount of great work being done by great people in this field is ridiculous. There is so much to digest and I will definitely have some new and interesting ways to analyze NHL hockey.
Some spoilers:
Jen Lute Costella's tracking project in which she tracked over 7,000 goals the past three years. She analyzed how long the player had the puck before the goal and how much zone time led up to the goal. This was really cool. For example, Henrik Sedin gets most of his goals off of the cycle and longer zone times. This isn’t groundbreaking but now we have objective data to confirm this information.
Players like Gustav Nyqvist and Evgeni Malkin love skating with the puck for lengths of time. This isn’t surprising either but as a result of Jen’s hard work (among other volunteer trackers) we have now married the eye test with statistical data that can now be easily referenced.
Nick Mercadante had a wonderful presentation about goaltending. The big takeaway came at the end of the presentation when he revealed his version of a goaltender HERO chart. He has named it the voodoo chart because goaltenders are indeed voodoo. This will be a nice way to visualize a goaltenders track record using the most modern and up to date goaltender analytics. Very exciting.
There are plenty of others including Steven Burtch, Micah Blake McCurdy, and David Johnson.
Ryan Stimson did a wonderful job setting up this event so a big thank you goes out to him. Job well done, sir.
That's all for now
Thanks for reading!