Two thoughts for Thursday.
(1) It sounds like Clarke MacArthur's going to return to the lineup for the game against Montreal, and Cody Ceci -- who took a Shea Weber shot to the head against Nashville -- is going to draw back in, too.
This year's been a funny one on the injury front. The team has been comically lucky, one year after having their roster totally decimated by injury. What's ironic is that last year's depleted team reached the post-season, and this year's healthy team will likely miss.
Even when they've picked up injuries, they've been of the mostly minor variety. Now, the team is still dealing with a couple of players rebounding from long-term injuries suffered last year, so that sort of quietly factors in, of course.
With MacArthur and Ceci back, the team is again icing basically the best lineup they can. This is how they're expected to head into the fray on Saturday:
MacArthur-Turris-Ryan Michalek-Spezza-Hemsky Greening-Smith-Neil Hoffman-Zibanejad-Condra
Karlsson-Methot Cowen-Gryba Phillips-Ceci
The forward group is playoff caliber. I can't say the same for the defense. It's an issue that the team needs to address in the off-season, and I anticipate they will.
At any rate, that's a fun group of forward lines there. The only question now is how Paul MacLean will deploy them; specifically, how often that Smith line will play. They should be used as the team's fourth-group, but far too often we see them deployed as the team's second-line. There have been games this year where the Smith line has led in ice-time, too. Kind of scary.
The fourth-line's going to be a fun one. Let's hope they stick together and actually get some run. I anticipate they'll crush bottom-six competition, as they have in the past (that is, how Zibanejad/Condra with Pairmate X have in the past; Hoffman is the newest beneficiary, and truthfully he's a great fit there).
(2) One of the things I really like to look at as the playoffs inch closer is Score-Adjusted Fenwick over a more recent sample. There's a few reasons for this, but so long as the sample size is large enough (I try and look for anywhere from 15-25 games), I think the data can sort of illustrate who is playing better, and who is playing worse. Far better than the 82-game drop number, anyway.
So, I went ahead and pulled the Score-Adjusted Fenwick (even-strength shot-attempts, with proper weights applied for attempts in leading, tied, and trailing situations) numbers for each NHL team since January 1, 2014. I think some of it is fascinating.
A lot of this makes sense. For my money, San Jose and Chicago are the two best teams in the league, so seeing them in the top four really isn't surprising. Los Angeles has always been such a territorially dominant team, but they don't necessarily carry the individual shooting talent of teams like the above, so maybe they're just a half-step behind in terms of Cup contenders.
Colorado is sort of eye-bulging here. They've been riding percentages in a big way this year, but the territorial play continues to inch off of a massive cliff. Any team that draws them in round one should be satisfied that they're probably getting an opponent of inferior quality. And that's not really a slight to Colorado, especially considering how strong the playoff teams are in the Western Conference. They just aren't there yet.
I said this about a month ago, but if you had to choose between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins in a seven-game series right now, I think you have to go with the Blueshirts. Injuries are playing a big role in dragging Pittsburgh down, but they're just not the elite team they maybe were in years past. Their numbers in the new year are not impressive. A lot of it, as has been routinely pointed out by a number of quant types, is that their play just totally submarines when Crosby and Malkin are off of the ice.
Meanwhile, New York appeals to me as a real Stanley Cup contender. Not that they're one of the three best teams in the league -- they just happen to be the second-best team, I think, in a weaker Eastern Conference. If New York can get someone to upset Boston, I think they become the 'favorite' to advance. A ton of play drivers and probably the best goaltender in the world is a good combination.
"Why isn't Ottawa winning? What happened to Vancouver? Why doesn't Montreal look as impressive as they did last year?" Well, take a look. Fun fact (not fun if you're a fan of any of these teams): these three teams carried more than 51% of the play last year, finishing in the top-eleven of the league. This year? They're ranked 13th, 17th, and 22nd league-wide. And the team ranked 13th over the full season -- Vancouver -- is in an obvious tailspin, as evidenced by the chart above. They won't finish in the top-half.
Lastly: it's mind-blowing how terrible Edmonton is. A lot of guys masochistically joke about the organization heading towards their 'fourth rebuild' in nearly a decade. But, is it a joke? They're being decisively out-played by Buffalo at this point. Buffalo.
Thanks for reading!