Horachek's impact on the team

[CarltonTheBear]

Where do you find stats like the above, i.e. how many empty net goals a player has been on the ice for? I've searched and not been able to locate that kind of info.

http://war-on-ice.com/playertable.html

Underneath all of the filters you'll see "Graphical View" and "Tabular View". For some reason it always defaults to graphical view even though that's kind of a much more advanced way to look at things. So click tabular view before you start and go from there.

 

[L K]

Where do you find stats like the above, i.e. how many empty net goals a player has been on the ice for? I've searched and not been able to locate that kind of info.

And, I don't really use +/- as a measure of a player's defensive ability, but rather as a measure of that players effectiveness at the ultimate goal of hockey...which is, after all, to score more goals than the opponent. I can see discounting empty net goals, but short-handed goals? Really no excuse for those. Phil's (and his linemates) large - values are a result of being ineffective both defensively and offensively.

If the ultimate goal is scoring more goals then shouldn't we be accounting for PP goals scored.  I mean it just seems silly to argue that all goals against count as a negative but only 5on5 or shorthanded goals count as goals for.  It's also a tough thing to really hold against a forward when a SH goal is scored against as it is usually due to a defenseman fumbling a puck at the blueline, getting their point shot blocked, or a hail-mary pass that again beats a defenseman. 

The number of shorthanded goals that are due to a forward turnover in the defensive zone are in the minority.

 

[Kin]

I don't want to diminish just how bad Kessel has been in the second half of the year but he was -4 through the end of December and is now -31 since the start of 2015.  Was he a good defensive player in the fall?  No.  But it really is just more argument for how useless +/- is.

I haven't loved Kessel's shot selection this spring either but he also has a 5.1% shooting percentage against a career 11% shooting percentage.  That affects his +/- too.

If you think about it, there are a bunch of things that impact a player's +/- that have very little to do with a player's defensive ability:

1) The defensive ability of his teammates
2) His offensive production
3) The play of the goaltender
4) Relatively minor things like SH and EN goals

The thing about Kessel over the last 40 games, while acknowledging he's played terribly, is that all of those things are contributing to how bad his +/- is. The goaltending's been bad and he's not scoring and pretty much every single one of the players he's playing with stinks defensively(he's played more 5 on 5 time with Rielly and Gardiner than with Phaneuf).

So, yeah, Kessel's been bad and he's arguably mailing it in but that +/- number is sort of a perfect storm of team-wide ineptitude.

 

[Chris]

Where do you find stats like the above, i.e. how many empty net goals a player has been on the ice for? I've searched and not been able to locate that kind of info.

http://war-on-ice.com/playertable.html

Underneath all of the filters you'll see "Graphical View" and "Tabular View". For some reason it always defaults to graphical view even though that's kind of a much more advanced way to look at things. So click tabular view before you start and go from there.

Excellent, thanks very much. I've seen that site before but couldn't remember what it was called.

Regarding +/-, if a player is -10 in all other situations but is on the ice for 50 pp goals, that should definitely be counted. No argument there.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

If you think about it, there are a bunch of things that impact a player's +/- that have very little to do with a player's defensive ability:

1) The defensive ability of his teammates
2) His offensive production
3) The play of the goaltender
4) Relatively minor things like SH and EN goals

It'd be kinda neat to see the results of a +/- that didn't include SH and EN goals and then noramlized all players on-ice shooting and save percentage to league average. Although without thinking any further about that than just typing the sentence I'm not sure if the results would actually be informative or just be another representation of Corsi or PDO.

 

[Kin]

To bring things back to Horacheck a little one of the things that I think speaks to how unimaginatively this team has been coached is that if the top line is the defensive trainwreck it appears to be...why hasn't there been any effort to balance that out a little? Kessel hasn't really played with any decent defensive forwards for a significant amount of time.

It's a tiny sample size but with Bozak, Kessel's GA/60 is 3.46. With Kadri it's 3.31. With Holland it's 1.95. With Winnik it was .60.

"This line stinks defensively, let's throw a decent defender on there to try things out" seems pretty rudimentary, doesn't it?

 

[Frank E]

To bring things back to Horacheck a little one of the things that I think speaks to how unimaginatively this team has been coached is that if the top line is the defensive trainwreck it appears to be...why hasn't there been any effort to balance that out a little? Kessel hasn't really played with any decent defensive forwards for a significant amount of time.

It's a tiny sample size but with Bozak, Kessel's GA/60 is 3.46. With Kadri it's 3.31. With Holland it's 1.95. With Winnik it was .60.

"This line stinks defensively, let's throw a decent defender on there to try things out" seems pretty rudimentary, doesn't it?

Absolutely agree.  A lot of talk, but not much experimentation at all.

 

[Bullfrog]

To me it seems like one of the more difficult things to quantify and things that are hard to quantify tend to get diminished.  I'm sure most of us have worked at a job where the manager/owner was not the brightest bulb on the chandelier.  Morale gets killed and a working environment ends up toxic.  I don't know why really good financial renumeration makes that a non-issue in professional sports.

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

 

[Chris]

To bring things back to Horacheck a little one of the things that I think speaks to how unimaginatively this team has been coached is that if the top line is the defensive trainwreck it appears to be...why hasn't there been any effort to balance that out a little? Kessel hasn't really played with any decent defensive forwards for a significant amount of time.

It's a tiny sample size but with Bozak, Kessel's GA/60 is 3.46. With Kadri it's 3.31. With Holland it's 1.95. With Winnik it was .60.

"This line stinks defensively, let's throw a decent defender on there to try things out" seems pretty rudimentary, doesn't it?

Absolutely agree.  A lot of talk, but not much experimentation at all.

I'd like to see Booth-Holland (if he comes back, or Kadri when he's back)-Kessel. Booth seems pretty good at working the puck down low and I think you need at least one player like that with Kessel.

 

[Frank E]

To me it seems like one of the more difficult things to quantify and things that are hard to quantify tend to get diminished.  I'm sure most of us have worked at a job where the manager/owner was not the brightest bulb on the chandelier.  Morale gets killed and a working environment ends up toxic.  I don't know why really good financial renumeration makes that a non-issue in professional sports.

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

I think the difficult thing is dealing with that particular toxic employee if he's a high producer.  Since this, and most businesses, is a results-based business, you need those high producers.  I'm willing to allow a little more leeway for a big-time producer, to a point.  I find that most of the complainers are those of much lesser production.  As Bill Parcells said (at least a read that he said, paraphrased) "I treat everyone fairly, but I don't treat everyone the same."

 

[Kin]

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

One of the ways that it's tricky to draw a line though between pro sports and any other job is that I don't know that what went on at the deadline and in the weeks leading up to the deadline have an outside equivalent.

Despite it being in the best interests of the organization long term, there's no getting around the reality of what blowing up a team is. When the Leafs traded players, good players, for draft picks they did so knowing that every game from then on would be be a lesser product. They didn't offer fans discounts on their seats, they didn't announce a slash in ticket prices to correspond with their decision to not be good for a few years.

So I don't know that we have a good handle on things like this. How often do teams decide to blow it all up and tear it down midseason? How much credibility does management have to go to players and say "Hey, you still have to care about this season" when they've decided not to?

I don't know, to draw a parallel to any other business seems tricky because you'd almost have to have a situation where a business makes a bunch of decisions that lets it be known that they don't want to make any money for a few years but, also, they won't have any tolerance for individuals not working their hardest.

 

[L K]

To me it seems like one of the more difficult things to quantify and things that are hard to quantify tend to get diminished.  I'm sure most of us have worked at a job where the manager/owner was not the brightest bulb on the chandelier.  Morale gets killed and a working environment ends up toxic.  I don't know why really good financial renumeration makes that a non-issue in professional sports.

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

I think the difficult thing is dealing with that particular toxic employee if he's a high producer.  Since this, and most businesses, is a results-based business, you need those high producers.  I'm willing to allow a little more leeway for a big-time producer, to a point.  I find that most of the complainers are those of much lesser production.  As Bill Parcells said (at least a read that he said, paraphrased) "I treat everyone fairly, but I don't treat everyone the same."

And I think that is the fair and mostly right distinction to make.  The player who can't score goals shouldn't have the same leash for defensive miscues as the guy who puts up 30+ goals for your team.  Similarly the agitator to who takes too many penalties but doesn't draw a decent amount of offsetting ones eventually needs to atone for that play.

I think it's hard to argue that there is a single player left on this roster who hasn't been guilty of either piss-poor performance or a lack of effort for decent chunks of the season at this point.  There really shouldn't be a single player who doesn't need a finger pointed in their general direction.

Including guys like Booth (absolutely no production and pretty iffy defense at times in the first half of the year) and Richard Panik (has some goals but is also not really showing signs of being the complementary player on a wing who can help get offense for others).

 

[L K]

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

One of the ways that it's tricky to draw a line though between pro sports and any other job is that I don't know that what went on at the deadline and in the weeks leading up to the deadline have an outside equivalent.

Despite it being in the best interests of the organization long term, there's no getting around the reality of what blowing up a team is. When the Leafs traded players, good players, for draft picks they did so knowing that every game from then on would be be a lesser product. They didn't offer fans discounts on their seats, they didn't announce a slash in ticket prices to correspond with their decision to not be good for a few years.

So I don't know that we have a good handle on things like this. How often do teams decide to blow it all up and tear it down midseason? How much credibility does management have to go to players and say "Hey, you still have to care about this season" when they've decided not to?

I don't know, to draw a parallel to any other business seems tricky because you'd almost have to have a situation where a business makes a bunch of decisions that lets it be known that they don't want to make any money for a few years but, also, they won't have any tolerance for individuals not working their hardest.

I think if I was to come up with an equivalent from the "real world" it might be something along the lines of a long-rumoured downsizing  that finally comes down the pipe.  But the news comes from head operations in a vague enough way that every single employee is fearful for their job.  It's also stated that the layoffs are going to come in waves so even after escaping the first round, you know there is a good chance you are going to lose your job soon.

Obviously the financial crunch of getting traded isn't quite the same as losing your paycheck but a lot of the social/morale issues are certainly there.  Couple that with the crappy feeling that failure gives you and I can see why something like this would happen.  It doesn't mean I approve of it.  It certainly has affected my feelings on a lot of the players on this roster and I'm not sure if I will be all that keen to move forward in the same kind of fandom for the guys who are still around next year but I think it is something real.

 

[Kin]

It doesn't mean I approve of it.  It certainly has affected my feelings on a lot of the players on this roster and I'm not sure if I will be all that keen to move forward in the same kind of fandom for the guys who are still around next year but I think it is something real.

Yeah, I mean I guess the thing with me in that respects is that I've more or less made my peace with the idea that with maybe an exception or two nobody on the current team will be around when the team is good again so I'm not all that devastated by whatever people want to attribute to a lack of professionalism or whatever.

To me it's not fundamentally different from a team deciding to tank or a league providing teams with incentive to tank. I don't need the players to pretend the next 10 games matter.

 

[KW Sluggo]

Horachek's record speaks for itself and it makes Randy carlyle look like the scone coming of Scotty Bowman.

He'll never get a single vote but the comparison clearly shows that Carlyle must be the coach of the year.

As for Horachek, I don't blame him for this, at least not all of it and probably not most of it.

The evidence is clear that the players are running things, from the decision to snub the fans with the end of game salute to Kessel's roost recent comment that anyone who thinks they aren't trying is "lost" which came in response to Horachek's observation that greater effort is needed. They have tuned him out and know he won't be here next year anyway.

The only question then is how many of this roster will be back (and how many of the fans).

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

When Carlyle was fired, I thought he was likely done as a head coach in the NHL. I wonder if the Leafs collapse since his departure frames his results in a more positive light and someone else gives him a shot as head coach.

 

[mr grieves]

When Carlyle was fired, I thought he was likely done as a head coach in the NHL. I wonder if the Leafs collapse since his departure frames his results in a more positive light and someone else gives him a shot as head coach.

Let's hope the lucky team is in our division.

 

[Chris]

I don't know how much of a positive light it might put on Carlyle, after all the collapse was well underway when he was fired...plus we had that collapse last year as well. But I think it does reveal a lot about the players he had to work with. When the going got really tough and they didn't get immediate results with the system change (despite the apparently improved possession stats), many of them simply quit and started reverting back to the old style of play.

But...I think the firing was a necessary step in determining how much of the team needed to go. Leaving Carlyle as coach would have most likely resulted in a few more wins, but almost certainly not enough to make the playoffs. Would another coach (other than Horachek) have made a bigger impact? With this group, I kind of doubt it.

As painful as it's been to watch, this is probably the best outcome for those hoping for a true rebuild.

 

[cw]

Absolutely agreed. As much as I do feel it's the player's own responsibility to get motivated, there's no doubt that team chemistry including management has a direct impact on performance. It could be from poor management (or coaching as it is) or from a toxic employee (teammate.) Even worse, as I've experienced, is management not acknowledging or dealing with the toxic employee. It leads to huge frustration for those that show up on time, work hard, and show ambition when there's no consequences for the poor actions and no rewards for the good.

One of the ways that it's tricky to draw a line though between pro sports and any other job is that I don't know that what went on at the deadline and in the weeks leading up to the deadline have an outside equivalent.

Despite it being in the best interests of the organization long term, there's no getting around the reality of what blowing up a team is. When the Leafs traded players, good players, for draft picks they did so knowing that every game from then on would be be a lesser product. They didn't offer fans discounts on their seats, they didn't announce a slash in ticket prices to correspond with their decision to not be good for a few years.

So I don't know that we have a good handle on things like this. How often do teams decide to blow it all up and tear it down midseason? How much credibility does management have to go to players and say "Hey, you still have to care about this season" when they've decided not to?

I don't know, to draw a parallel to any other business seems tricky because you'd almost have to have a situation where a business makes a bunch of decisions that lets it be known that they don't want to make any money for a few years but, also, they won't have any tolerance for individuals not working their hardest.

I think if I was to come up with an equivalent from the "real world" it might be something along the lines of a long-rumoured downsizing  that finally comes down the pipe.  But the news comes from head operations in a vague enough way that every single employee is fearful for their job.  It's also stated that the layoffs are going to come in waves so even after escaping the first round, you know there is a good chance you are going to lose your job soon.

Obviously the financial crunch of getting traded isn't quite the same as losing your paycheck but a lot of the social/morale issues are certainly there.  Couple that with the crappy feeling that failure gives you and I can see why something like this would happen.  It doesn't mean I approve of it.  It certainly has affected my feelings on a lot of the players on this roster and I'm not sure if I will be all that keen to move forward in the same kind of fandom for the guys who are still around next year but I think it is something real.

I'm from a different era I guess. I just can't imagine someone like Jean B?liveau or Gordie Howe allowing something like this to enter their minds. They were a little before my time - or towards the end of their careers but I looked up to them. I cannot rationalize this. It just won't compute. It's values, ethics, honour - things like that.

What he's doing is just repugnant to me. It hurts his fellow players, his team, his fans, the sport - I just don't see much good from doing it - beyond it's the easy way out for him personally.

If a player did this in the original six era, he might get banished to the minors for life or get the crap beat out of him. Players on different teams couldn't socialize with each other. The regular season games were serious rivalries - and that was a part of why people watched - something was genuinely on the line. Players didn't like to lose. You couldn't wimp out - you had to show up.

Yesterday, I was feeling grateful my kids grew up Sundin fans and not Kessel fans. Kessel's example is not one I'd ever want my kids to follow.

Someone's paying you to do a job. It doesn't really matter how much. Don't be a dishonest weasel: do the job with an honest effort. What else the team does is beyond a players control. The players duty and responsibility is to compete to the best of their ability. When they don't, they're messing with the integrity of the sport. Have a little class. Try to be a sports figure kids can look up to - that is a part of it.

I don't care to come off as a prude on this (though I realize i'm probably failing at that). I understand it's an 82 game season and no one can give 110% for all 82 games. Some games, they're going to be banged up, road weary, not at their best, etc. A number of times Quinn's teams (Quinn being a coach who was pretty good at inspiring his club) didn't "show up" - one can't ride an emotional high all 82 games either. But over the season, they made a pretty fair effort - never one as blatantly bad as Kessel's this season.

I've seen this sort of thing: a breakdown of values,  creeping into all the other major sports. And so maybe I'm not exactly shocked. Maybe it's inevitable. It was a significant factor in turning me off them. If someone thinks I'm going to watch another 7 years of Phil Kessel doggin' it in a Leafs jersey, they're nuts. I won't ever be a fan of a player like that. I hope they run him out of town.

 

[moon111]

My kids don't watch hockey, want to play it, and say the Montreal Canadian are their favourite because their friends like them and Montreal wins and Toronto always loses.  And this doesn't bother me.  My son asked me, "Why do you like the Toronto Maple Leafs?"  And the only answer I could give him was because I use to watch the games with my mother.