There are a lot of little tiny things that you could nitpick over the course of an NHL season.
Why did the coach pick player A in the shootout over player B? Why is this player on the powerplay over this one? Why did he play the backup goalie in game xyz of a back to back?
These are a lot of really inconsequential sort of things.
While this question seems to be small on the grander scale, it probably still needs to be asked at some point.
What exactly is the Kings' fourth line bringing to the table right now?
In general, whether it is offense or defense, we as fans have this notion that a fourth line is not really accountable for much in the modern NHL other than fill in time and do not screw up. They do not get matched up against top units, they do not really score, and as long as they do something like hit or grind out a shift every once and a while for seven to eight minutes a night that's okay.
There have been some really good moments in this season for the Kings fourth line of Nolan-Andreoff-Clifford. They will put together shifts where they are buzzing around, grinding down defenses, and outplaying other team's bottom lines. Take late in last night's game with the Kings down by two goals. The fourth line put together an excellent shift in the final four minutes of the game where they sustained pressure on Columbus and pretty much hemmed them into their own zone while the big boys took a breather. It was great to see. How often these things are too few and far between though from a fourth line.
At the end of the day, it is still a fourth line, but why are we contented on having replacement level players occupy roster spots instead of young players or potentially productive players. Why, in short, is Jordan Weal sitting night in and night out in favor of Nolan or Clifford? Why is Mersch in the minors (leading the Reign in goalscoring), when this is the case? Again, these are not overly serious considerations, but still, it is curious.
You have to try and bring something to the table to point to to say, "Yes, these guys need the playing time! They deserve it!"
But it can be a nearly fruitless endeavour on most teams.
When you pull aside Andreoff, Clifford, and Nolan, they have registered one even strength goal so far this season. The possession stats are also....murky. The trio have the worst corsi differential on the team at -25, 6, and -6. Andreoff's 55.04 Corsi against per 60 is the worst amongst LA Forwards. His 39.04 Corsi for per 60 is also worst on the team. Clifford and Nolan ranked next in the worst corsi for generation on the team. The worst corsi for % relative to the team? Andreoff, Clifford, Nolan. We should mention Weal is in their also, but his two games on the fourth line are hardly indicative of anything other than a player playing his first two NHL games on a fourth line.
Maybe it's the minutes and the matchups.
Meh. ZSO relative puts the trio at -6.76 (Andreoff), -1.32 (Nolan), and -1.23 (Clifford). Being close to even means that the starts are not skewed heavily one way or another. They also play relatively easy minutes against other team's fourth lines.
Other notable? Andreoff has taken the fourth most faceoffs on the team with 68, and won just 35.3% of those.
Let's do some more.
Andreoff and Nolan have two of the worst scoring chance relative percentages on the team at -12.30 and -6.86.
The trio also have the three highest High-Danger Scoring chance against per 60 minute rate amongst regular forwards on the team.
Finally, the shots for relative % (On versus off) stands at -15.45 for Andreoff, -13.99 for Jordan Nolan, and -7.33 for Kyle Clifford.
It is difficult, again, to be extremely upset about things like this. There are bigger fish to fry and bigger things to worry about like, why is Brown scoring? What is going on with Gaborik? Is Jonathan Quick ever going to get in a fight?
But it still needs to be asked, what are these players truly bringing to the table? It is not as if we are talking about 7-8 minutes a night of truly productive...heck...even break even hockey. The Kings fourth line, in almost every way imaginable gets beat on a regular basis.
You look at the numbers of a fourth line on a team like Pittsburgh, who sport Fehr, Plotnikov, and Cullen, and it is not bad at all. Actually, you look at a lot of fourth line players on different teams...and you get a lot of pretty good players. You also get a lot of pretty bad players. Safe to say, in today's NHL it is not uncommon to have suspect players filling out your roster.
Here is a distribution of all the fourth liners in hockey for this year, and how they have been doing in terms of on ice scoring chance and corsi differential. Somewhere in this graph is my sanity.
It's ugly I know, but I have annotated the Kings players. Even by fourth line standards, Andreoff is pretty rough. Nolan is just below the break even threshold, and Kyle Clifford is above.
Here is another one that is even worse, but it still exemplifies where Andreoff is falling in on this whole fourth line spectrum.
Yikes. So it's really a great thing that the Kings are using that roster spot on Andreoff instead of say Jordan Weal or Michael Mersch right? Right?
Here is the thing though. There is no guarantee that either of those players are going to be very good NHL players. However, being afforded the chance is half the battle.
If you wait until your young players prove they are good you will have wasted ~half of their best years.
β Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) October 24, 2015The rate at which players decline post 25-26 year's old is pretty rough for non star players. The younger you get them into the lineup, the better it seems. Right now, Andreoff is not playing well by an analytical standpoint by any stretch. He is even standing out in a sea of players who are not playing very well. Nolan is falling slightly below break even. So what would the harm be in playing youth?
Darryl Sutter likes his "sandpaper" and he likes his "experience". It is just tough to really eat that when you have players in the system and on the bench who could potentially be more worthwhile players. Especially when the fourth line players you have in are not burning down the barn anyways so to speak.
It is a bit of an old boy's club phenomenon that is not going away easily in the new NHL. The gritty, sandpaper-esque fourth line still gets play, and sometimes for the worse. Again, in the greater scheme of things this is a very minor talking point over the course of a single regular season, but worth mentioning. At this point, why not try something new? It does not seem like it would hurt right? Who are we to question a Stanley Cup winning coach though? That may be all that needs to be said.
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