Analytics Breakdown: Step Into Christmas (Vs Dallas, Vs Columbus, Vs Seattle)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when everyone is cheery and gearing up for Christmas and enjoying the wonderful holiday time with their families. The Ducks during this period had a nice little homestand to lead into Christmas, and per usual, we are going to dive in to see how they played, removing the scoreline and what it all means.

But before we do that, it is time for the song of the week!

Song of the Week

You all knew that this week would be a Christmas jam, and I had to go with this bop from Sir Elton John. This song will be stuck in your head for a bit, and you will be jumping around to it!

Vs Dallas

So let’s get this one out of the way. This game was ugly from the scoreline perspective, with the Ducks losing 8-3. The score was 4-1 going into the second period, and the stars made it 7-1 by the time the third period started.

If you were to look only at the numbers, this would be classified as a good game for the Ducks. I want to take a closer look at that and how this game compares to others before taking a step back to analyze things a bit more. In this game, the Ducks generated 3.76 xGF/60 and allowed 2.17 xGA/60, both of which are improvements on their season average of 3.02 xGF/60 and 3.05 xGA/60. The Ducks also did a good job of generating shots from in tight against the Stars offensively, with the end result being the Ducks getting 3 5v5 goals off of 3.04 xG. The Ducks offensively hit their expectation.

The issue is the defensive side of the puck. All in all, this was not a horrible game for the Ducks defensively, as shown by the expected goal against total being solid, but the issue is the quality of chances they allowed in the first period. All three goals were scored on very dangerous chances for the Stars, and while you would expect Dostal to make a save or two on those chances, there are going to be those nights where those defensive mistakes come back to haunt you more than expected.

Those mistakes put the Ducks behind the 8-ball heavily in this game, and that, along with less-than-stellar goaltending, resulted in a mountain that even the Ducks’ highly powered offense could not conquer. There also could be some score effects in the defensive numbers, being so glowing for the Ducks, with the Stars being in a bit of cruise control with a large lead.

To kinda close this game out, this game was not as bad as the scoreline shows, but I also think that the underlying numbers do need a bit of context put around them with the score effects and game script.

VS Columbus

The Ducks had their chance for revenge against the Blue Jackets in this one, and they found a late winner to secure the two points without needing overtime after allowing the Jackets to tie the game.

This was a game that was extremely wide open, with neither team seemingly interested in playing defense for stretches of the game, which resulted in both teams having stretches of getting glorious chances throughout the game. From the game flow perspective of things, it really opened up after Mason McTavish gave the Ducks a lead a little past the halfway point of the game. The Blue Jackets would follow up on that goal and really take the game to the Ducks, getting glorious chance after glorious chance, but Dostal stood tall and bounced back nicely from the Stars game.

The best stretch of the game for the Ducks, though, came a few minutes into the third period, where they took control of the game and generated some really nice looks, but they were not able to capitalize on any of those to widen the lead. Sometimes that is how it goes, and then the other team can find a goal right after, which is what happened here.

The response from the Ducks, though, was great. They were the team on the front foot when the game was tied and deservedly got the win.

After the brutal scoreline in Dallas, this was a very nice response from the Ducks offensively, but defensively, it was extremely wide open, with the typical mistakes happening. The main difference between this one and the Stars game was that Dostal held a positive GSAx in this one.

All in all, this was a good performance with the Ducks generating 3.81 xGF/60 and allowing 3.51 xGA/60. That defensive number is high, but you will take that with how much offense the Ducks were able to generate. If they could find a way to keep that offensive level while cleaning up the defensive game, this team could become really dangerous!

vs Seattle

So this game against Seattle is exactly what I was talking about with what you want to see from this team. The defensive performance in this one was extremely stout, besides one really nice stretch for the Kraken in the first period, and that was combined with a stellar offensive performance from a chance perspective. This was nearly a perfect overall game for this Ducks team, with the only caveat being they got goalie’d.

Philipp Grubauer put up a 4.32 GSAx in this game in all situations, which means if he were replaced with a league-average goalie in this one, the Ducks would have scored nearly 4 more goals, which obviously results in a win for the Ducks.

Sometimes these types of games will happen, but everyone should feel extremely positive about this performance because this is what you want to see, regardless of the scoreline.

Looking at the game flow, the most impressive part to me was that after tying the game, the Ducks really took off. They were the team trying to find the 2nd goal to end the 2nd period, and also at the beginning of the 3rd period, and as part of that, they limited Seattle to only a few chances against. It just happened to be that one of those had a perfect finish and resulted in the game-winning goal.

The numbers from this one ended up at 4.65 xGF/60 and 1.90 xGA/60, both of which are significantly better than the 3.02 xGF/60 and 3.05 xGA/60 season averages for the team.

It is a bummer that they lost this game, but this is the exact type of performance you want to see from the Ducks moving forward.

Trends

Over this three-game stretch for the Ducks, the offense from a chance generation perspective really rebounded. They put up 4.07 xGF/60 on average over these games, which is a significant improvement on their season average, and defensively, they put up a 2.52 xGA/60, which is also an improvement on their season average, resulting in a 61.7 xGF%. As mentioned in the Stars recap, part of this is score effects, with the Stars game largely being over halfway through, but this was a very good week overall.

It is a bit ironic that this improvement in play resulted in a 1-2 record for the week, but that is why we dive into the numbers. Sometimes the results immediately reflect the play, and sometimes it takes a bit of time.

I do want to dive a bit into the lines for the Ducks to see what has worked and what has not worked from a combo perspective each week.

This week, I want to dive into the 2nd line. The Sennecke McTavish Gauthier line has been largely intact for most of the season, with that line having the largest amount of ice time together this season. So far, they have one of the best xGF%’s on the team at 59%, generating 4.42 xGF/60 and 3.07 xGA/60. Those defensive numbers are not great, but you can live with them if they are continuing to generate offensive looks at that clip. My only concern is that their actual GA/60 is significantly lower than expected at 1.87 GA/60 due to them being on the ice for a .939 sv%. They also have a 103.05 PDO. So this line has been very good for the Ducks, but they are getting a bit fortunate defensively, and unless things clean up, they are likely going to see some goals go in against them.

Victory+ $10M Streak

For this week, Mikael Granlund scored the last goal for the Ducks in two of the games, and Pavel Mintyukov scored the last goal in the other one.

With the two last goal performances, Granlund has now tied Kreider for the 2nd most goals since I started tracking them. I may need to go with the chalk for this week and throw in Grnalund in a pick.

Brian Hayward Fit Check

I think we got a brand new look from Hazy, and this is going to score well. We have definitely seen this jacket before on him, but not the tan sweater and matching shir,t and pocket square. He really went all out with the color contrast here!

I am going to give this look an 8.9/10

I have officially become out on this jacket. I have commented on it enough in the past but it just does not do it for me anymore.

I give this look a 3.1/10

So, to be clear, I like this fit. I think the orange shirt with the vest and gray blazer works extremely well for someone who is covering a team that wears orange. Under normal circumstances, this would score in the 7s for me, but this was the final game before Christmas. How does Hayward not throw on some Holiday cheer with an ugly sweater vest under the jacket????

I am giving this look a 1.2/10 for not having fun holiday vibes.
All stats per Evolving-Hockey and Hockey Viz