Leafs Acquire Jake Muzzin

[Kin]

There's a reason the Leafs deliberately don't bother with the point shot.

Is that reason a stubborn rigidity to preconceived notions of what works vs. a recognition that having options is valuable?

 

[Kin]

Kind of funny but Muzzin is also a guy Dubas would know as a Greyhound.

 

[WAYNEINIONA]

From Woodstock On. Nice to see another Canadian on the team.

 

[Bill_Berg]

No roster players given up for a quality dman. Good deal.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/johnmackinnon24/status/1090050682688700416

lol

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Kind of funny but Muzzin is also a guy Dubas would know as a Greyhound.

Babcock is also vaguely familiar with him as he was on Canada's 2016 World Cup team (only managed to play 1 game though).

 

[herman]

There's a reason the Leafs deliberately don't bother with the point shot.

Is that reason a stubborn rigidity to preconceived notions of what works vs. a recognition that having options is valuable?

It's an analytics bet. I'm sure they appreciate having the option but not at the expense of taking the pucks off the sticks of their very expensive weapons up front.

The Leafs will only take point shots for high tips, or if the lane opens up in the middle high slot and the defenseman gets to walk into one.

These are ball parked numbers because it's all blackboxed in proprietaries, but based on the collected shot data over the past decade: a point shot has like a 1-2% chance of going in. Adding a screen helps jump it to the 9% range. Two people in the screen (i.e. forward + defender) is like 13%. So having a hard shooting D-man is an option sure, but I'd rather have one that can sift a wrister for an accurate tip play, because that's a 30+% chance, with a much lower probability of injuring one of our forwards.

 

[Kin]

There's a reason the Leafs deliberately don't bother with the point shot.

Is that reason a stubborn rigidity to preconceived notions of what works vs. a recognition that having options is valuable?

It's an analytics bet. I'm sure they appreciate having the option but not at the expense of taking the pucks off the sticks of their very expensive weapons up front.

The Leafs will only take point shots for high tips, or if the lane opens up in the middle high slot and the defenseman gets to walk into one.

These are ball parked numbers because it's all blackboxed in proprietaries, but based on the collected shot data over the past decade: a point shot has like a 1-2% chance of going in. Adding a screen helps jump it to the 9% range. Two people in the screen (i.e. forward + defender) is like 13%. So having a hard shooting D-man is an option sure, but I'd rather have one that can sift a wrister for an accurate tip play, because that's a 30+% chance, with a much lower probability of injuring one of our forwards.

"Yes" would have saved you time.

 

[Highlander]

The handedness might not be what we were expecting, but the team acquired a legit top-4 defenceman that fits this system pretty well without giving up Kapanen, Johnsson, Sandin, or Liljegren. I think that Dubas did pretty well here.

Especially if we get a better 1st for Jake than we would have gotten as we will have a great finish.

 

[gunnar36]

I do agree with getting a guy that can play in top pair so that Hainsy can move to 3rd pair.  The puzzling thing for me is that all talk has been about getting that right shot D and we end up with another lefty?  With Oz likely permanently in press box, it leaves Zaitsev as our only right shot and you know how Babcock has always advocated his preference for dmen to play on natural sides.

 

[Frank E]

https://twitter.com/johnmackinnon24/status/1090050682688700416

lol

Larsson had 4 years left on his deal though.  Muzzin has 1.

 

[herman]

"Yes" would have saved you time.

It didn't qualify as a preconceived notion of what works as it was an empirical conclusion.

 

[Kin]

"Yes" would have saved you time.

It didn't qualify as a preconceived notion of what works as it was an empirical conclusion.

Blanketly applying aggregated data to specific situations seems to me to be the definition of a preconception.

 

[herman]

Kind of funny but Muzzin is also a guy Dubas would know as a Greyhound.

Babcock is also vaguely familiar with him as he was on Canada's 2016 World Cup team (only managed to play 1 game though).

Dubas joined the Greyhounds as an executive in 2011, which is the year after Muzzin graduated from the Soo. I'm sure he still had familiarity with the team's players given his family ties to the team and role as a player agent prior to taking on the job.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I do agree with getting a guy that can play in top pair so that Hainsy can move to 3rd pair.  The puzzling thing for me is that all talk has been about getting that right shot D and we end up with another lefty?  With Oz likely permanently in press box, it leaves Zaitsev as our only right shot and you know how Babcock has always advocated his preference for dmen to play on natural sides.

He might prefer it but at the same time he has to use the tools he's given. In most of his seasons with Detroit he only had 1 righty. In his last two seasons there he actually had an all-lefty defence. Handedness became a huge topic with Babcock with the Team Canada teams but it's obviously a little easier to build a defence like that when you have those sort of options. It's much more difficult with a NHL team.

 

[herman]

"Yes" would have saved you time.

It didn't qualify as a preconceived notion of what works as it was an empirical conclusion.

Blanketly applying aggregated data to specific situations seems to me to be the definition of a preconception.

I guess it does qualify as an assumption that the historical statistics of those circumstances would continue to bear out similarly.

 

[Kin]

I guess it does qualify as an assumption that the historical statistics of those circumstances would continue to bear out similarly.

I think it's a bad use of statistics to ignore specificity in favour of aggregated data. "Point shots" will have a collective value but specific teams, ones with defensemen who have particularly good points shots, will have different calculations to make than simply using the collected data and figuring it all sort of breaks even.

But hey, I'm not running the team that added John Tavares and has seen their PP get worse so what do I know?

 

[Phileas Fogg]

So I take it Oz joins Marincin and Holl in the pressbox? Doesn't someone need to be waived?

 

[Kin]

Dubas joined the Greyhounds as an executive in 2011, which is the year after Muzzin graduated from the Soo. I'm sure he still had familiarity with the team's players given his family ties to the team and role as a player agent prior to taking on the job.

Muzzin probably would have been with the team when Dubas was scouting for them during college.

 

[Highlander]

So I take it Oz joins Marincin and Holl in the pressbox? Doesn't someone need to be waived?

Yah Hainsey