Scoring Chances - Games 72-82

This is the last ten game segment of the year. If you're reading this, the fact that you may be almost as interested in these results as you are about the playoffs speaks volumes about the nature of the results. Nonetheless, special thanks are in order to Dennis who did all of the leg-work tracking scoring chances for nearly every game this season. For a game by game look or if you want to say thanks, you can find Dennis here. If you're waiting for the full season write-up you can either add up all the segments yourself or wait another couple of hours since they should be up later tonight.

(For those unfamiliar with the metric a player is awarded a chance any time someone on the ice has a chance to score. He is awarded with a “chance for” if someone on his team has a chance and awarded with a “chance against” if someone on the opposing team has a chance to score. The results are broken down into three game states, EV (even strength), PP (Power Play) and SH (Short-Handed). The players are organized according to their jersey numbers.)

Games Seventy-Two Through Eighty-Two, March 22 to April 11
Missing Games 81 vs Calgary and 82 at Calgary
21 = Potulny and 21* = Kotalik


As you might expect for a team that didn't win many games down the stretch there aren't a whole lot of positives here. After the last ten game segment the deadline moves saw O'Sullivan showing promise while Kotalik tanked. This segment shows that the roles were reversed. O'Sullivan spent most of his time with Gagner and the two of them were just awful at EV. Over the long term moving Erik Cole was the right move but when you factor in the job he was doing on the PK and mix it in with the scoring threat the Cole-Gagner tandem had been at EV it's hard not to think that the trades made the team worse in the short term. Seven points worse? No. (And that God for that).

The first line awoke from its doldrums here which makes the lack of a secondary option all the more apalling. I'm glad to see Hemsky and Horcoff finish the year strongly(ish) although MacT did move them away from O'Sullivan rather soon after my last update here.

Pisani's last 20 games were somewhat encouraging. If we recognize that he's been doing his share of the heavy lifting, the -7 doesn't look bad at all. It will be important next year that he can be a real player and the first half of this season sure didn't make it look likely it would happen. I'll choose to have hope in Fernando... mostly because it isn't on offer from a couple of other vets. Moreau (-15) and Staios (-17) were terrible yet again. Sigh...

For all the yammering about Liam Reddox and his undeserved chances, the dude rode the bench hard until we were totally out of the hunt. So did Pouliot. Jacques managed two more games. Among those three, I think Jacques has certainlly worked himself back into the mix, especially considering MacT's comments earlier today about the team needing more size.

There was a debate in the gameday thread about whether Souray or Visnovsky is better. Souray was -10 this segment. It wasn't his worst one (-11). In fact, Souray was in the - column seven out of eight times. At least he got to play those first ten games with... Visnovsky. Any guesses as to Visnovsky's worst segment? +1... I wish I could write "with Souray!" after those dots but it just isn't true. Together they were dominant. Nonetheless, I think Souray has a hill to climb to make this discussion close.

More post-mortem later tonight.