Analytics Breakdown: In My Life (@ DET, @ MIN, vs UTA)

As time continues to go on in this season, it is going to become harder and harder for me to provide an analytics breakdown after every game in the same level of detail that I have in the past, so moving forward, this is going to likely be a weekly series breaking down the big picture of what the numbers show from all of the games in a week.

For this week, we are going to be discussing the losses at Detroit and Minnesota, as long as the win at home vs Utah last night.

The good news is the bits are not going anywhere!

Song of the Week

For the song of the week I am going to go with the Beatles song In My Life. This has absolutely nothing to do with the games from this week and has everything to do with honoring my wonderful and beautiful wife, who continues to put up with my hockey obsession that has led to me doing this podcast for 9 seasons, writing articles about the team, and with Felix creating our own Ducks website.

My wife is the biggest Beatles fan I know of and yesterday we celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. She is truly my better half and I do not know what I would do without her. Catbug if/when you read this, I love you and thank you for everything that you do for us.

Now, lets do that hockey

Vs Utah

Let us start with the most recent game and the one most people are going to want to read about, the Ducks’ thrilling victory vs Utah.

This game certainly had the theatrics with the Ducks scoring extremely late with the goalie pulled to tie the game, and then scoring the eventual winner in overtime off a wonderful play by Beckett Sennecke to set up Olen Zellweger, but how did the Ducks get to that point?

Well, this was the lowest event game the Ducks have played all season, which is not something I expected coming into it. They had a 1.68 xGF/60 in this game at 5v5 and a 2.18 xGA/60 at 5v5, for a total of 3.87 xG/60 combined for both teams. For reference, the season average for the Ducks, including that gam, is 2.94 xGF/60, 3.11 xGA/60, and 6.04 xG/60.

So the Ducks really struggled to consistently generate offensive chances for themselves at 5v5 outside of a very good 2-minute stretch in the 3rd period prior to Utah scoring their 2nd goal. They were not able to get out into the rush that often, and for the most part, when they did, they struggled to execute on their passes. The 1st goal of the game is the only memorable instance of that execution on an odd-man rush happening at 5v5.

On the flip side of that, though, this was one of the stronger Ducks’ defensive games from a numbers perspective. They were better than their season average by about 1 xG, but having said that, I am not sure if that was their own doing or Utah being a bit picky with their shot selection, which reduced the overall number of shots. It was very noticeable that Utah was avoiding point shots and looking for cross-ice passes at every opportunity, where it felt like they would only take a shot if it came directly after receiving a pass. This is not a bad strategy in the modern game because it forces goalies to move and open up holes, but if those passes do not connect, then the overall number of shots could be low. Also, Utah scored both its goals on these types of plays.

Having said that, the Ducks deserve credit for breaking up those passes and creating the pressure that made it so Utah could not always execute on those passes. I also think the Ducks defensively had great gap control on zone entries for Utah to kill plays along the boards, resulting in only a few odd-man rushes.

This was a game largely played at 5v5, so not really much to comment about in all situations

On an individual line level, I thought the Vatrano Strome Killorn line looked very good in the game last night, with Strome being extremely noticeable for the Ducks, and Drew Helleson had his best game defensively. He was noticeable with killing rushes from Utah with hits to cause turnovers along the boards. Just a very quiet and effective game for Drew

On the negative side, Mason McTavish was benched in this one, and I can’t say I blame the coaching staff. He was very easily knocked off the puck on zone entries that led to rushes the other way, and was very poor in his execution on odd-man rushes. Mason looked so good to start the season, but that all seems to have gone away in the last 5-8 games.

@ Minnesota

The game against Minnesota had only 40 minutes of 5v5, which is the 2nd lowest amount of ice time at 5v5 in the season for this Ducks team, which highlights a very large issue for this team in this one: discipline.

The Ducks took 5 penalties in this game, two of them being double minors for high sticking, two of them being regular ole minors for high sticking, and one of them being a too many men on the ice penalty. These are all automatic calls for referees, so you cannot point to any ref bias behind any of these calls, and these penalties put the Ducks behind the 8-ball even though they did not allow any goals on these calls (credit to the PK and Mrazek in this one). They spent 14 minutes on the kill, which means 14 minutes of not being able to attack in the way you can at 5v5.

Looking at the actual play at 5v5 in this one, when it happened, the Ducks were, for the most part, stout defensively outside of some glorious chances early for the Wild. The Ducks had a 2.11 xGA/60 in this one, with them really keeping everything to the outside for the majority of the game, the goal for the Wild notwithstanding.

Offensively, the Ducks really looked out of sorts due to the physical pressure from the Wild, with the Ducks only having one good stretch in the 2nd half of the 2nd period. That stretch is where the Ducks got most of their offensive looks and played a bit of the rush-based game that they want to play. Overall, though, the Ducks only put up 1.93 xGF/60, which is well below their season average.

It seems like teams are trying to play more physically with the Ducks and really control the gaps against them to limit the effectiveness of the rushes for the Ducks, and in this one, that strategy paid off for the Wild.

In this game, I did not think anyone was noticeably really bad for the Ducks, which bears itself out in the numbers above, but I did think this was Leo’s least effective game of the season. Felix mentioned on the last podcast that he is a bit one-dimensional right now, with most of his offense coming off zone entries attacking defenders, but that dimension has largely worked. In this game, that was not the case due to the Wild’s tight gap and back pressure on him.

On the good side, I think Ryan Strome is settling in nicely to the third-line center role.

@ Detroit

Like in the Minnesota game, the Red Wings appeared to have a strategy of playing extremely physical with the Ducks, and that largely worked for the majority of the game. The Ducks had a nice stretch late at 5v5 when down 2 goals, but I kinda view that as noise with the game largely being determined by that point in time, and not being completely reflective of the game.

If we remove that stretch, the Ducks only had 1.82 xGF as compared to the 2.63 xGF they ended up with, or to put it in rate terms, before that late game stretch, the Ducks were at 2.52 xGF/60, but including that late game stretch, they finished the game at 3.49 xGF/60. One of these totals is above their season average, and the other is well below.

For evaluating the game, the lower number is more indicative of their play, with the Ducks only having a few really good stretches at 5v5.

Defensively, the Ducks’ bad habits came to the forefront again in this one, with bad turnovers resulting in both rush chances against and extended zone time for the Red Wings.

As for special teams, the PK really struggled in this one, allowing 2 goals against on very good looks for the Red Wings, while the PP looked solid even though they did not score a goal.

On an individual level, this game felt like a precursor to the Wild game for Leo, with the Red Wings playing Leo extremely tight to limit his effectiveness. This is something that more teams are going to do against him, and he has to add another layer to his game.

On the good side, Ian Moore continues to impress.

Hazy Fit Check

We were left without any Hazy fits on the road trip, with Brian Hayward not going on the trip, so my life was made a lot easier because I only had to grade 1 fit instead of 3. Brian Hayward returned to the broadcasting booth with some fire! The tan blazer with a black turtleneck provides a great contrast between the light and dark and is just a damn near perfect fit.

I give this look a 9.67/10 for the one they call Hazy

All stats per Evolving-Hockey and Hockey Viz