A dive into the underlying numbers from the Red Wings' overtime win in Seattle Monday afternoon
A dive into the underlying numbers from the Red Wings' overtime win in Seattle Monday afternoon
Yesterday afternoon in Seattle, the Detroit Red Wings finished their Western road swing in style with a 4-3 overtime victory over the Kraken. For a clearer sense of where and how the game was won, let's take a dive into the underlying numbers.
The Big Picture
-By all situations expected goals (per MoneyPuck), this was another night in which Detroit came out on the wrong side, trailing the Kraken 2.01-4.11. Unlike Saturday in Calgary, this wasn't the case of an opponent racking up xG with the game out of reach. Instead, Seattle drove more chances from start to finish. After one period, the Kraken led 1.61-0.316 by xG; after two, it was 3.432-1.239; after regulation, it was 4.11-1.831.
The Red Wings did do a better job of driving their offense to the interior of the zone than they did in Calgary, which can help explain some of their positive results. However, by and large, this was not a strong five-on-five showing by any means.
Per Natural Stat Trick, at five-a-side, Detroit earned a 47.11% CorsiFor, a 42.31% share of scoring chances, a 36.36% share of high-danger chances, and a 35.09% share of xGs.
Individual Impacts
-This was the Red Wings second game deploying lines that were re-shuffled after last week's loss in Vancouver. They were as follows:
With this second game together, how did those new look lines fare? Well, it was a mixed bag.
The new top line of Dylan Larkin, Michael Rasmussen, and Patrick Kane led Red Wing forward lines in ice time at 12:27, and it suffered a major disadvantage in chance creation, coming out at 0.169-1.11 by on-ice xG.
It's not hard to understand the logic of pairing Rasmussen with Larkin and Kane. He'd been playing some of the best hockey of his season in recent games (in a third line role with Christian Fischer and Andrew Copp), and his speed, defensive solidity, and aptitude in winning battles all lend themselves to efficacy in a complementary role.
However, in practice, this line is not working very well at the moment. Of course it's possible that they find a better groove with more time together, but the fact that they neither created much offense nor defended all that well does not portend great things. The one positive is that they did not get scored on.
We've seen glimpses of chemistry between Larkin and Kane on the power play, and they were on the ice for a five-on-five goal Saturday alongside Alex DeBrincat. However, they didn't combine to make much of anything happen during their regular shifts in Seattle.
David Perron, Copp, and Joe Veleno were the second busiest Red Wing forward line Saturday. They played 11:22 of scoreless hockey with an 0.462-0.371 edge in on-ice expected goals. It's a bit surprising to see them play relatively high-event hockey, but the results are sound if unspectacular. This unit (an apparent facsimile of the aforementioned Rasmussen-Copp-Fischer trio) did its job by winning shifts and driving play in the right direction.
Lucas Raymond, J.T. Compher, and DeBrincat combined to make the most prolific line for Detroit in terms of chance creation, earning an 0.522-0.451 edge by expected goals in their 10:55 together at five-on-five and outscoring the Kraken 1-0 in those minutes.
This line hasn't put up good underlying numbers during its time together, but it's been productive on the scoreboard. Throughout the season, its played 50:18 together with just a 45.8% share of on-ice xG but with an 80.0% actual goal share. Sure, there's an element of good fortune in that discrepancy (and it is a relatively small sample), but I think it's also fair to say that trio has demonstrated a reasonably consistent scoring touch that may be worth keeping together for a while.
Finally, the fourth line of Robby Fabbri, Fischer, and Daniel Sprong played 8:48 at five-on-five, slightly underwater by xGs (0.396-0.434) but ahead on the scoreboard 1-0 thanks to Sprong. In an ideal world, you'd see that group winning a few more of its shifts and coming ahead by xG and zone time, but it's hard to argue with roughly even chance creation and an actual goal to show for their efforts.
-After his "reset" (in Derek Lalonde's words) via a night off in Calgary, Alex Lyon was fantastic against the Kraken. He faced 41 shots and 4.11 xG, stopping 38 of them for a Goals Saved Above Expected of 1.11. That was the exact performance both he and the Red Wings needed.
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