Jump to content

How success kills good teams (and why S. Gionta needs benching)


Triumph

Recommended Posts

Good to see this thread get bumped.  Gionta was awful in the game last night and got manhandled on the faceoff that led to the first goal.  This was after he literally got tossed around like a rag doll in the Flyers game and routinely and foolishly went running after checks that took him out of position and left the middle of the ice open several times.

 

People can harp on heart and hustle all they want, but Stephen Gionta is not a good hockey player.  He had his Cinderella moments in the playoffs, but is now pretty much a pumpkin. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Huh? I'm just saying he's 31% this year on faceoffs, which is hilariously awful. One of his regular linemates is much better on faceoffs than that. It doesn't factor into whether he should be playing or not... just why on god's green earth is he taking any faceoffs? He's 83 for 263!

Yeah it wasn't a personel problem, for some reason Deboer didn't bump henrique to that 2nd line with Elias and clarkson till there was like 230 left in the game. With Loki out I would have just done:

Poni-Zajac-kovy

Elias-henrique-clarkson

Cbgb

Much better than having pesonen on the 2nd for half the game and the. Replacing pesonen with gio for the second half.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stephen Gionta was 3/13 on faceoffs. The whole team was 34/80 or 42.5%. If you just subtract the faceoffs taken by Gionta from the total you wind up with us going 31/67 which raises us to a much more respectable 46.27%.

We are 28th in the league at around 46%, not that respectable. Its been a problem for a long time with this group.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well when one guy is bringing down your percentage by 4 points on his own then he probably shouldn't be taking faceoffs.

 

One guy on his own is bringing UP the percentage by like fifteen points.  The entire team outside of Zajac stinks at faceoffs.  Gionta's just the worst offender, but other than Zajac and Henrique (who's slightly under 50%) the Devils don't even have a semi-reliable option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

nitpicking much?

 

 

Whats great about faceoff % and these stats guys are that this is one of those stats where they cannot seem to decide whether it is important or not.  When it backs up their theories and other stats, it's important but when it contradicts them or adds nothing to it, then it's a useless stat.

 

Save % also seems to be another one of these.

Edited by DevsMan84
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whats great about faceoff % and these stats guys are that this is one of those stats where they cannot seem to decide whether it is important or not.  When it backs up their theories and other stats, it's important but when it contradicts them or adds nothing to it, then it's a useless stat.

 

Save % also seems to be another one of these.

 

Faceoffs are not very important.  Gionta being the worst faceoff man in recent NHL memory is bad and is costing the Devils goals, but not many.  In general if a guy is above 40% I'm not going to talk about that as a reason to move him off the center position.

 

Save percentage is nearly impossible to predict year to year.  It's the most important thing there is, but it doesn't follow many rules.  Who had Ottawa having the best save percentage this year by a wide margin?  Oh right - nobody.  Who had St. Louis last year?  etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think u all are crazy. He plays hard every night and that's more than I can say for majority of the team. His energy alone is enough to keep him on this line. This thread is hilarious. 200 plus post on something that is so far from an "important, relevant" issue on what the real problems are. Scoring goals and goal keeping. I don't have the stats but I would assume this line has a decent amount of points. Lets focus on the real issues

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.