Dose: Nucks and Wings

Good morning, everyone. Hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend (or standard weekend, if you’re in Canada). If you missed the weekend Doses, click here for the Saturday edition and here for Sunday’s DD.

Sunday’s Dose author Jimmy Hascup brought something to my attention: I goofed up a key bit about the Nashville Predators and Edmonton Oilers on Friday. It turns out I overlooked a sorting issue (shakes fist at columns) and misdiagnosed the Score-Adjusted Fenwick stats there. The Predators are actually a pretty strong possession team, as it turns out, which isn’t too shocking as they’ve generally been competitive or flat-out superior on the many nights I’ve watched them.

I regret the error, but in all honesty, the point doesn’t really change.

For one thing, their PDO has been very high, which generally equates to having good puck luck (as it simply adds a team’s shooting percentage with its save percentage). While Pekka Rinne is as likely to maintain a high save percentage as any goalie in the NHL, one suspects that number might come down a bit through about 60 more games.

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Anyway, mistakes happen … and then leave me grumbling for hours, if not days. They’re more annoying than a prying, judgmental relative trying to tell you how to live your life while you merely try to avoid their gravy breath.

/ends Thanksgiving thematic fun for everyone’s sake

With another light night of action in mind, this might be a brisker DD, but perhaps we can make it worth your while with more in-depth looks at both teams (and more controlled clicking).

As an interesting and topical side note, there’s some very intriguing talk about how to approach the “Score-Adjusted” portion of these stats, anyway. It turns out that restricting data to “Close” situations - for all of its pluses as far as eliminating some of the impact of teams “sitting on leads” or playing more aggressively while trailing - might not be worthwhile enough as it can limit sample sizes to a troublesome degree.

I’m trying not to bog things down here since I imagine many of you don’t care a whole lot about “fancy stats,” so apologies for those who might be charging me with some oversimplification here. The main point is that some of these stats - or at least the way we interpret them or tweak them to try to best understand outcomes and predict future ones - are still a work in progress.

RED WINGS 5, CANUCKS 3

-- The Red Wings and Canucks are an interesting case study here, as broadly speaking, they're good possession teams whose rankings seem to change a bit when you check off different boxes.

Sometimes it feels OK to just go traditional and simple, and in this case, that approach depicts the Canucks and Red Wings as strong teams, too. Vancouver is generating almost three more shots per game than they're allowing (31.3 for, 28.5 against) while Detroit produces almost four more than they allow (30.5 vs. 26.8).

All of these numbers make me think that we're looking at two playoff teams - possibly dangerous ones - as long as they enjoy reasonable puck luck, and particularly in the case of the Red Wings, decent health.

-- Henrik Zetterberg is nearing a point-per-game after a strong four-contest stretch (one goal, five assists). I'm glad that I was premature in worrying that his back issues from the 2014 Winter Olympics may doom him. If anything, he could be in for even better play, as he's only scored on 6.7 percent of his shots (5 goals on 75 SOG).

-- Could it be as simple as the Red Wings are near-elite when Pavel Datsyuk is in the lineup and just good when he isn't? He now has nine goals in just 13 games, and while that shooting percentage will decline (even a magician such as himself won't maintain a 27.3 rate all season long), it's refreshing to see his brilliance translate to fantasy more than it has in the past.

-- Justin Abdelkader has been able to make the most of his opportunities with Detroit's best players, but it appears that he's day-to-day with a shoulder injury. He's especially nice in hits leagues, so here's hoping it's just a minor issue.

-- Alexandre Burrows had a scare when his face was cut by Johan Franzen's skate. As far as I can tell, he's OK after getting some stitches.

-- Not particularly interested in Linden Vey, although the headline: "Linden Vey, yay or nay?" is dopey enough to be tempting.

(Sorry.)

-- Ryan Miller update: 15-4-0 with a .911 save percentage. The latter's not that impressive, but it's better than I last checked. He's pretty much Mr. League Average, which is actually more impressive than it sounds. Few goalies can be solid-to-good for nearly a decade in a league that chews up netminders.

-- Jimmy Howard's been even better, though fantasy owners will prefer Miller's record to his 11-4-4 mark. His .919 save percentage is quite nice, and he's won four of his last five games.

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