Daniel

Seems like he has a new gig...

 

http://www.theonion....-screami,32726/

Don't know if this came up for discussion when the new CBA was inked, but I was reading an article about the possiblity of the Rags amnestying Richards, and came across the idea of "cap recapture", which basically imposes a huge cap penalty on teams if one a player with one of those long-term front loaded deals retires before the end of the deal.  Looking for calculations about what Kovy's cap recapture would cost in cap space, I saw one calculation that concluded if he retired with one year left on his deal, the cap hit would be $27 million for a single year, $ 13.5 for two years if he retired two years before the end of the deal, and so forth. 

 

Are these numbers correct, and if so, what are the Devils options.  I mean, I guess the Devils can keep Kovalchuk on the roster sort of like the Bruins/Islanders did with Thomas and take the $6.6 million cap hit.  The cap could reach as high as $90 million by 2019-2020 when you might expect Kovalchuk to be at "retirement" age.

 

Is there also the concept of a prepackaged buy out and resign, where, let's say in Kovalchuk case, he's "bought out" and immediately re-signed to a seven year $65 million deal?  Higher cap hit now, but the Devils can absorb it much more easily than in 2010-2011.  Kind of doubt it though.

 

ADDENDUM:  Went back and searched past posts and noticed Tri mentioned the issue briefly, but didn't address the possibility of the enormous cap hit.

http://www.hockeysfu...ady-defensemen/

 

For those that are interested.  Not really anything that people didn't know, but worth noting that the number grade for Boucer and Severson ticked up to 7.5.  Also a few nuggets about Merrill's play in Albany beyond the basic stats.

It's not a secret to anyone.  I dislike shots on goal as a statistic, especially when it comes to individual performance.  Note, I don't think it's totally irrelevant, just overstated.  My hypothesis is that shots on goal will pretty closely reflect time on ice across all players, from the good to the not so good (goons like Barch do not get included).  So I decided to do an off the cuff analysis of shots on goal per minute of ice time for certain Devils for this season.  I picked Clarkson, Gionta, Carter, Kovalchuk, Zajac, Elias and Henrique.  I think it's a decent distribution of different types of players for purposes of a message board post.

Here are the numbers, rounded to the nearest hundredth of a shot per minute on ice. 

Clarkson: .21

Gionta:  .09

Carter: .11

Kovalchuk:.13

Zajac: .09

Elias:  .13

Henrique:  .1

You will notice that the difference between Gionta, Carter, Kovalchuk, Zajac, Elias, Henrique are noticeable, but there isn't a huge divergence.  Clarkson is the outlier, but of course, there's an explanation.  He plays on the powerplay, but not on the penalty kill.  Kovalchuk, Elias and Zajac get significant powerplay and penalty kill time.  Gionta and Carter, honestly, I don't know for sure.  I looked around quickly for even strength/pk/pp icetime per player, but could not find anything, although I believe Gionta gets significant PK time, but neither a lot of PP time. 

What this tells me is that shots on goal are similar to points per game in basketball.  Any basketball team, whether it's the Heat or the Bobcats,
are going to have at least one or two players that will put up respectable points per game.  Basically, someone has to score the points, same as someone has to get the shots in hockey.  In hockey, how many shots you’re getting relative to everyone else is more a product of icetime and type of icetime than anything else.

Now, we hear a lot about the shot differential for the Devils as a team this year, a lot more shots for as opposed to shots against.  Just a guess on my part, and I don't know if it can be measured, but the Devils style of play is designed to put as many shots on goal as possible with less regard for seeking out high percentage shots.  This is especially the case on the powerplay this year, as opposed to the Oates powerplay.  Ultimately, the way I see it, is that not all shots by all teams and players are created equal when it comes to the "purpose" of a shot (just taking a shot for its own sake with less regard for scoring opportunity) or situation in which a shot is taken.  This is why I think shooting percentage is overrated as well.  Ultimately, you have to watch the games.

Conclusion,I still think the best measure of a forward is how many goals a forward creates, either goals scored or "meaningful" assists.  I know some people try to calculate quality scoring chances, but it's too imprecise to mean anything so far as I'm concerned.

Does anyone here read this guy? Even if you're all about esoteric statistical analysis, he seems like a waste of air. It's behind the espn (yeah I know) pay wall, but his latest thing is calculating the team with the most "lucky" wins, this year, the Penguins, and noticing a trend that these teams generally don't go far in the playoffs. He then comes up with a percentage chance of an upset in each particular playoff series. It isn't even wrong. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD