Reimer Struggles, Veleno Steps Up Absent Larkin and Compher, Dallas Controls Play Through Shot Volume: Red Wings-Stars Statistical Review
A dive into the underlying numbers from the Red Wings 6-3 loss in Dallas
Last night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, the Detroit Red Wings fell 6-3 to the Stars.
With Dylan Larkin, J.T. Compher, David Perron, and Klim Kostin all unavailable, it was never going to be an easy game for Detroit, but the Red Wings remained competitive for most of the evening. Ultimately, Detroit's goaltending and defense weren't sound enough to take any points in Dallas. For a better sense of where things went wrong, let's take a look at the underlying numbers from the game.
The Big Picture
-By all situations xG, the Red Wings were bested by the Stars 4.42-3.56.
Detroit was the better team in the first period by xG (1.213-0.871), but a late goal for Esa Lindell gave Dallas a 2-1 lead as the horn sounded. The second finished at 4-2 Stars, but by xG, the margins remained thin, with Detroit leading the xG battle 1.847-1.73. The Red Wings led on xG as late as 1:20 to play in the game (3.562-3.548) in what remained a tight game, but the Stars distinguished themselves for good with Miro Heiskanen's empty netter.
-The Stars created more offense than Detroit, including plenty of offense around the net, though generally Dallas' success was more about controlling shot volume than shot quality.
Per Natural Stat Trick, the Red Wings earned just a 37.63% CorsiFor and a 35.56% share of scoring chances, but Detroit did muster 50% of high-danger chances and 51.05% share of xG (all stats for five-on-five).
-The below heat map (also from NST) shows Dallas' power play shot creation. The Stars nabbed a pair of power play goals last night—one a point shot through heavy traffic and the other a re-direct from the slot. This chart shows the way Dallas caused the Red Wing PK problems by controlling the "offensive funnel" leading from the center of the point to the goal mouth; this has been a problem area for Detroit's penalty kill in recent games, and the Stars certainly exploited it last night.
Individual Impacts
-In the absence of Larkin and Compher, Joe Veleno stepped up with an excellent performance for Detroit.
Veleno led the Red Wings in ice time (22:11) and individual xG (1.03, also a game high). He scored a goal and earned an outstanding 62.3% on-ice xG share at five-on-five. If there is a silver lining for Detroit to the loss and the reality of moving forward (at least for the time being) without its top two centers, it's that Veleno delivered one of his best performances of the season in their absence.
-With all those key parts missing up front, only one Red Wing line took a regular shift throughout last night's game: Alex DeBrincat, Andrew Copp, and Patrick Kane.
Those three played 11:44 together of what was generally low event hockey (0.27-0.098 by xG, 0-0 by actual goals) but controlling play to the tune of a 73.4% share of on-ice xG. Kane and DeBrincat didn't look quite as dangerous as they had on Saturday night against the Senators, but, at the very least, they drove the game to the offensive zone when they were on the ice.
Detroit had two other lines that generally played together, but there was lots of mixing and matching as well.
Lucas Raymond, Veleno, and Rasmussen played 5:18 together of what was, like the top line experienced, low-event hockey (0-0.119 by xG). Meanwhile, Robby Fabbri, Christian Fischer, and Daniel Sprong combined to score a goal in their 5:07 together at five-on-five, during which they posted a 51.6% share of on-ice xG.
Behind those three combinations, five different lines played between 1:30 and 3:30 together at five-on-five. Those lines were (listed from greatest usage to least) Zach Aston-Reese-Austin Czarnik-Jonatan Berggren, Kane-Veleno-DeBrincat, Fabbri-Rasmussen-Sprong, Raymond-Copp-Rasmussen, and Raymond-Veleno-Berggren.
None of Detroit's three call-ups had an especially busy workload. Czarnik led the way with 9:11 played, Berggren was second at 8:30 and scored a goal, and Aston-Reese—making his Red Wing debut—played just 6:21.
-On the back end, Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry was the Red Wings' busiest defense pair, playing 15:15 together at five-on-five, during which they were outscored 1-0 and out-chanced 0.364-0.113 by xG.
Olli Maatta and Shayne Gostisbehere delivered one of their best performances as a pairing, playing 13:04 at five-on-five, outscoring Dallas 2-1 in those minutes, and putting forth a commanding 77.6% share of on-ice xG. Finally, Jake Walman and Moritz Seider played 12:14 and were outscored 1-0 while putting up a 50.6% share of on-ice xG.
-Finally, we close with the biggest sore spot from last night's game: James Reimer's performance in goal.
Reimer made 29 saves on 34 shots, giving up five goals on 2.859 xG for a Goals Saved Above Expected of -2.14 (per MoneyPuck). Simply put, this was a poor performance from Reimer, and, empirically, it was the biggest differentiating factor in what was generally speaking a closely contested game. The most obvious example of Reimer's lack of sharpness was Lindell's goal at the end of the first period.
Per MoneyPuck, the shot had just a 3.4% chance of finding the back of the net, and to give that goal up at the end of what had been a solid road period from Detroit proved deflating.
Some amount of rust had to be an expectation for Reimer after going nearly a month between starts, but, in the end, his performance let the Red Wings down last night on an evening in which they might otherwise have been able to grab at least some points from their trip to Dallas.
Fortunately, Detroit will have a chance at redemption tonight in St. Louis.
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