Too Many Chances Surrendered: A Red Wings-Penguins Statistical Review
The Red Wings gave up far too much on defense to be able to beat Pittsburgh in Sundays game. Here's a statistical review of the outcome.
Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports - Too Many Chances Surrendered: A Red Wings-Penguins Statistical ReviewJust when the Detroit Red Wings seemed to break out of their losing slump, they fell right back into them against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
A 6-3 loss that wasn’t very close after a defensive collapse to end the first period, this game stung for Detroit. Most of all, it’s a game that suggests it has a long way to make the tight-checking, deep-scoring style it wants to play a consistent product.
Let’s take a look at how this game went wrong.
The Big Picture
This game looked a lot like some of the Red Wings earlier losses in their slump, and so does the expected goals chart. In all situations, Pittsburgh outchanced Detroit 6.41-3.02 in xG, staying well ahead of the Red Wings from about 10 minutes into the game and onward. Many of these shots came when the Penguins were on the power play — the Red Wings only trailed 3.11-2.14 in 5-on-5 expected goals.
This game was a little weird in the sense that neither team earned a shot on goal for the early going, then Pittsburgh opened up the floodgates to take 17 shots that period. That’s a situation that really boosts the xG differential, especially since a lot of those shots were decent enough chances. Detroit gave up five high-danger shots, 11 medium-danger and 37 low-danger shots. No one line chipped in all of these for Pittsburgh — rather, it was a pretty complete effort up and down their four forward lines.
The heat map of shooting locations shows that a lot of these came at the net front, an area the Red Wings had protected fairly well in Saturday’s win over Buffalo. Surrendering many chances in that region doesn’t lend itself to winning hockey games, and Sunday’s loss to Pittsburgh showed the difference it can make. Detroit has to check, block shots and track rebounds better overall, but especially in that high-percentage region.
Individual Impacts
Lucas Raymond’s play was among the better outings for Detroit on the offensive end, but he also got burnt up defensively in terms of shot attempts. Pittsburgh generated 3.06 expected goals when he was on the ice compared to 1.36 in the Red Wings’ favor. He did score the Red Wings’ first goal that tied the game 1-1 early, but he was also complicit in the overall defensive miscues that Detroit made. Natural Stat Trick calculated Raymond’s line with David Perron and Joe Veleno at a 62.5 Corsi%, creating 20 shots but surrendering 12 in 11:53 of play. Most of their shifts started in the neutral zone and on the fly (combined 18 out of 22 even strength shift starts for Raymond), and Pittsburgh beat them in transition to create many of the chances this line gave up. If it was an imperfect night for Raymond and his linemates, it was an eventful one at that.
In terms of control of scoring chances, it’s not surprising to see that Michael Rasmussen, Andrew Copp and Christian Fischer held a 75.7% xG margin against their matchups. However, they played the least of Detroit’s lines at even strength at 7:21. They were the go-to line for defensive zone time, starting four shifts there at even strength). Part of the issue was the four power plays the Red Wings gave up, which meant that all three went over the boards as penalty killers. Detroit playing a more disciplined game might have gotten them on the ice more to play their heavy style that caused so much success against Buffalo.
On defense, the Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry pairing played the most of any unit at 15:32, and for the most part they handed in a solid performance. They were plus-two and saw 23 shot attempts for Detroit while on the ice. This included a 3-on-1 that Petry jumped up into, though he didn’t score the opportunity. They were the only D pairing for Detroit to leave PPG Paints Arena with a positive xG percentage (66.3%) and Corsi percentage (59.0%).
Such an outing from the second pairing was needed. The top pairing of Jake Walman and Moritz Seider had a tough day at the office. They faced 14 unblocked shot attempts while on the ice, including 10 that hit the net. They controlled just 9.8% of the expected goals generation this game, meaning they not only gave up shots, but they also gave up high quality shots to the Penguins.
The third pairing of Shayne Gostisbehere and Olli Maatta also turned in a lackluster performance. They were on the ice for two goals against, as well as 12 unblocked shot attempts. Such struggles aren’t owned solely by any one defense pairing since poor checking from forwards also gave Pittsburgh lots of playmaking space. However, the statistics show how much Detroit got diced defensively.
In net, Alex Lyon didn’t have a whole lot of support, but he played about an average game. He let in two low-danger goals on 37 tries, one medium-danger goal on 11, and two high-danger goals on five. The issue here was less on Lyon than the team in front of him giving up so many chances. More commitment to checking from Lyon’s teammates could have helped him out in a pretty frantic game defensively.
Also from THN Detroit