Ryan Wilson: Best starting six: Team Czech Republic Best starting six: Team Czech Republic

Francouz has an excellent track record in the KHL and AHL also. He was the right pick.

Who is next? Switzerland or Slovakia?

The goalie is going to be Dostal... The Ducks stud... He's already better than both those Stiffs.

Francouz has an excellent track record in the KHL and AHL also. He was the right pick.

Was going to say exactly this.

The attitude of "only the NHL matters" annoys me a little bit, especially for goaltenders.

Rittich, Mrazek, and Francouz are all 27-29 years old. They are established pros with long track records.

Francouz hasn't spent as much time in the NHL, but his elite track record in the KHL strongly suggests he'd have already been a pretty competent NHL goalie by about 2013 and a good-to-great one by about 2016 or so. His NHL sample so far is small but basically in line with what we would have expected anyway.

Whereas Rittich and Mrazek have pretty clearly established their NHL mediocrity by now.

Who is next? Switzerland or Slovakia?
- jugkope

Qatar

"The honest truth is I thought this spot was going straight to David Krejci, future Hockey Hall of Famer per the Boston media market."

Does anyone really say this? Hall of Very Good, but...

While Pastrnak is a monster, this is the weakest group thus far by quite large margin.

I also want to suggest that maybe the SKATR system is underrating Filip Hronek.

Here is the “SKATR score” for the seven most used Detroit defenders this year:

Hronek: 9
Nemeth: 5
Green: 10
Bowey: 4
Biega: 1
Cholowski: 1
Daley: 2

Or in other words, the system thinks that Detroit’s best defender this year was only in the 10th percentile of all NHL defensemen. Now, Detroit’s defense is horrible, don’t get me wrong, but they are not THAT horrible.

For some additional context, here are their percentiles for %TOI against elite competition:

Hronek: 95
Nemeth: 100
Green: 69
Bowey: 21
Biega: 34
Cholowski: 29
Daley: 23

And finally, a breakdown of who played with whom on Detroit’s defense this year at 5-on-5:

HRONEK’S TOP PARTNERS:
Nemeth - 31 percent
Daley - 17 percent
Bowey - 14 percent
Cholowski - 10 percent
Green - 8 percent

NEMETH’S TOP PARTNERS
Green - 36 percent
Hronek - 31 percent
Biega - 21 percent

GREEN’S TOP PARTNERS
Nemeth - 45 percent
Cholowski - 17 percent
Hronek - 10 percent

Some armchair analysis:

- The 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings were almost indisputably the worst NHL team in the history of the advanced stats era (2007+) and probably one of the worst non-expansion teams of all time.
- Hronek was their most used defender.
- Hronek was in the 95th percentile league-wide for deployment against elite players on other teams, and (given he played for Detroit) had arguably no elite teammates.
- It can be argued that Hronek, Nemeth, and Green (or even just Hronek and Green) were the only three Detroit defenders who could be considered better than replacement level this season. Consider: Daley is washed, Cholowski was sent back to the minors, and Bowey and Biega (and even Nemeth) were often healthy scratches for their old teams.
- Hronek got to play with one of the other two "non-replacement" defenders only 39 percent of the time, while Green did 55 percent and Nemeth 67 percent. He also had less stable pairings and spent more time dragging some around of the flat-out worst players in the entire NHL, especially Trevor Daley.

I’m not trying to say Hronek is an elite player or anything, but I think it's at least plausible his horrible metrics, even nominally teammate-relative ones, could be influenced to a significant degree by factors outside of his control.

He’s a second-pairing quality defender who ended up the clear-cut No. 1 on arguably the worst NHL team of the last 30 years. He's not a bad NHL defender; I think he's actually a solidly above average one. But maybe no other player in the NHL was forced into a situation so far above his capacity this season.

Here’s a more focused breakdown of why I’m skeptical about teammate-relative stats in Hronek’s case and think they may be substantially underrating him:

- Hronek was in the 95th percentile for ice time against elite competition.

- Hronek played 40 percent of his even strength minutes with one of Daley, Bowey, or Cholowski.

- Daley was in the 23rd percentile for elite competition.

- Bowey was in the 21st percentile for elite competition.

- Cholowski was in the 29th percentile for elite competition.

All three had much more favorable overall zone start deployment than Hronek did, too.

I think it stands to reason that Daley, Cholowski, and Bowey were playing much easier shifts away from Hronek than with him. Which has implications (bad ones) for any team-relative or WOWY adjustments that you might make for Hronek. His teammates may have had better results away from him than with him, but it's not because Hronek was dragging them down -- they were just much easier minutes. It doesn’t surprise me that these kinds of metrics might underrate Hronek substantially.

Also, this might qualify as a hot take but, since this is a stats-friendly blog I’m going to suggest Dmitrij Jaskin deserves consideration for Voracek’s spot on the left wing.

His defensive metrics as an NHLer were extremely good -- one of the best pure defensive forwards in the league. Didn’t score much in North America but also his teams pretty much exclusively used him as a fourth line checking forward and only played him 10-11 minutes per night.

He went to the KHL this year, played on a first line with Shipachyov and finished second in league scoring. Using NHLe, his KHL scoring translates to about 0.87 points per game in the NHL.

Amazing defensive forward. Offensive talent seems to be there also, at least if he has great linemates to play off of. Not sure if he’s a late bloomer offensively or just never really got the right opportunity in the NHL.

I wanted to see Austria make the cut, and Norway. Maybe Denmark...

You have to do Germany... Germany has draisatl.... You can't ignore the Germans

Someone is taking this waaaaayy too seriously.

Also, this might qualify as a hot take but, since this is a stats-friendly blog I’m going to suggest Dmitrij Jaskin deserves consideration for Voracek’s spot on the left wing.

His defensive metrics as an NHLer were extremely good -- one of the best pure defensive forwards in the league. Didn’t score much in North America but also his teams pretty much exclusively used him as a fourth line checking forward and only played him 10-11 minutes per night.

He went to the KHL this year, played on a first line with Shipachyov and finished second in league scoring. Using NHLe, his KHL scoring translates to about 0.87 points per game in the NHL.

Amazing defensive forward. Offensive talent seems to be there also, at least if he has great linemates to play off of. Not sure if he’s a late bloomer offensively or just never really got the right opportunity in the NHL.
- Sven22

God, I wished the Caps re-signed Jaskins.

Someone is taking this waaaaayy too seriously.
- jmatchett383

Meh, just bored.

Meh, just bored.
- Sven22

Yep. Need content... That isn't the programmed garbage from tsn clowns

No jagr?