The Carolina Hurricanes and Pittsburgh Penguins will meet up for the last time this season. It will be the first time they will see Jordan Staal in action this year.
The Hurricanes are a different team with Jordan Staal in the lineup.
Jordan Staal has been a monster for the Hurricanes. He leads all NHL players in dCorsi with a minimum of 30 games played with 17.7. This is outrageously good. He is significantly outperforming his shutdown role. Patrice Bergeron, who would be the first induction into the dCorsi Hall of Fame, is at 16.26 this year.
With Evgeni Malkin still out of the lineup I am hoping for a Sidney Crosby Jordan Staal head to head matchup. It would be fun to watch two friends that are playing high level hockey compete against one another.
As for the obligatory Brandon Sutter comparison to Jordan Staal, his dCorsi is -5.46. Only players with 20 games played for Pittsburgh this year that have been worse are Max Lapierre (-14.0) and Zach Sill (-8.14).
For those curious how each Penguins player has performed in their given role here is the team breakdown (all players who played at least 10 games with Pittsburgh this year)
Remember dCorsi is an evaluation tool that takes what a player’s expected output should be in their specific role and measures it up against what their actual ouput is. Having a negative dCorsi doesn’t necessarily mean that a player is bad, it just means they are underperforming in the specific role they have been placed in. Likewise a player with a high dCorsi doesn’t automatically mean that specific player is good just that they are outperforming their specific role.
dCorsi can be useful in determining if a coach should be changing up a player’s role on the team.
There are limits to this though. For example, Max Lapierre already plays sheltered minutes with the Penguins. He is struggling mightily and has the worst dCorsi on the team. There is nothing Mike Johnston can do to make Lapierre’s life easier other than doing something ridiculous like putting him with Crosby or Malkin . By looking at this information one could come to the conclusion that Max Lapierre should be an obvious healthy scratch when the Penguins are healthy. The average AHL callup isn’t going to do worse than he has to this point.
The Penguins have Brandon Sutter back in a shutdown role this year. He clearly cannot handle this responsibility. They need to shelter him. The Penguins are going to have to play their best against the opppositions best if they expect to break even or better in those matchups. Continuing to allow Sutter to attempt this shutdown role is asking for trouble.
On the flipside the Penguins could increase Daniel Winnik’s workload given that he is outperforming the current one he is in. Winnik is one of the Penguins best bottom six forwards. They are going to have to get the most out of his ability to play in difficult roles to justify the second round pick they gave up for him.
Offensively Chris Kunitz's production has hit a wall but the idea that he is some kind of defensive liability on the ice just isn't true.
You can see just how great Kris Letang has been this year. He is outperforming his shutdown role. He has been a special player this year.
Back to tonight’s matchup.
The Hurricanes are not the team they were at the mid-point of the season either. They are playing their best hockey of the year being led by the Staal brothers.
One weakness for the Hurricanes has been goaltending. Among goaltenders with at least 750 minutes played at even strength this year Cam Ward is ranked 37th out of 50 goaltenders with an EVSV% of only .913 and Anton Khudobin is even worse at .904 which is good for 47th. In comparison Marc-Andre Fleury is ranked 15th at .929 and Thomas Greiss is ranked 30th at .921.
This should be the last game the Penguins have to play without Evgeni Malkin which is great news.
Thanks for reading!
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