Mikko Lehtonen signs with Leafs

[Bender]

I just watched the Athletic tape review of Lehtonen, he is not flashy at all, the word I would use is "Steady", very collected with the puck and makes the short pass very well, although he can stretch it when he needs to.  Excellent puck carrier. I think he will settle things down out there.  Hope he can play the RHS, like to see him paired with Rielly.

I saw the clips too.  A bunch of point shots, skating the puck up through relatively open ice to the opposing blue line and dumping it in.  Is he as good as Zaitsev? Better? Worse? I have no idea. I don?t think his offense is going to be any better than Dermott?s though.  He won?t get PP time (or if he does, it?s unlikely to make the pp any better than the next guy) and he won?t score often on those point shots.

How good is his gap control? Can he make a pass when pressured by NHL forwards. Can he prevent passes to the slot? I wish I knew!  But he?s another chance at a decent 4-7 d which is a good thing to have at $950K.

Hard to be worse than Zaitsev.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

I just watched the Athletic tape review of Lehtonen, he is not flashy at all, the word I would use is "Steady", very collected with the puck and makes the short pass very well, although he can stretch it when he needs to.  Excellent puck carrier. I think he will settle things down out there.  Hope he can play the RHS, like to see him paired with Rielly.

I saw the clips too.  A bunch of point shots, skating the puck up through relatively open ice to the opposing blue line and dumping it in.  Is he as good as Zaitsev? Better? Worse? I have no idea. I don?t think his offense is going to be any better than Dermott?s though.  He won?t get PP time (or if he does, it?s unlikely to make the pp any better than the next guy) and he won?t score often on those point shots.

How good is his gap control? Can he make a pass when pressured by NHL forwards. Can he prevent passes to the slot? I wish I knew!  But he?s another chance at a decent 4-7 d which is a good thing to have at $950K.

I don't know that the Leafs should be looking for another defencemen to play the PP.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/31-thoughts-will-nhl-broadcasts-look-season-resumes/

18) Boy, were some teams sour at the Maple Leafs landing Finnish defender Mikko Lehtonen. There was a lot of interest. I?d be lying if I said I?ve seen much of him, but his talent is widely respected. Jokerit indicated he had another year left on his contract, so several potential NHL destinations peeled off. Toronto was persistent.

Another team indicated they were told Lehtonen would be let out of his contract if he found a situation he wanted. That fits with a second organization indicating that when Jokerit announced Lehtonen?s release, he already knew where he was going.

"Some teams" lol try a little harder next time Bergevin.

 

[princedpw]

I just watched the Athletic tape review of Lehtonen, he is not flashy at all, the word I would use is "Steady", very collected with the puck and makes the short pass very well, although he can stretch it when he needs to.  Excellent puck carrier. I think he will settle things down out there.  Hope he can play the RHS, like to see him paired with Rielly.

I saw the clips too.  A bunch of point shots, skating the puck up through relatively open ice to the opposing blue line and dumping it in.  Is he as good as Zaitsev? Better? Worse? I have no idea. I don?t think his offense is going to be any better than Dermott?s though.  He won?t get PP time (or if he does, it?s unlikely to make the pp any better than the next guy) and he won?t score often on those point shots.

How good is his gap control? Can he make a pass when pressured by NHL forwards. Can he prevent passes to the slot? I wish I knew!  But he?s another chance at a decent 4-7 d which is a good thing to have at $950K.

I don't know that the Leafs should be looking for another defencemen to play the PP.

I agree ? his high KHL point totals aren?t really relevant.

 

[Zee]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/31-thoughts-will-nhl-broadcasts-look-season-resumes/

18) Boy, were some teams sour at the Maple Leafs landing Finnish defender Mikko Lehtonen. There was a lot of interest. I?d be lying if I said I?ve seen much of him, but his talent is widely respected. Jokerit indicated he had another year left on his contract, so several potential NHL destinations peeled off. Toronto was persistent.

Another team indicated they were told Lehtonen would be let out of his contract if he found a situation he wanted. That fits with a second organization indicating that when Jokerit announced Lehtonen?s release, he already knew where he was going.

"Some teams" lol try a little harder next time Bergevin.

I don't get the "being sour" at the Leafs.  Every team had the same opportunity to court this guy, the Leafs can't help it if your scouts/GM are crappy at wooing guys.

 

[Guilt Trip]

Don't care what other teams think. Bitches going to whine. He's ours, hope it works out!

 

[lamajama]

EVERY other team bitches about the Leafs. It?s almost required.

 

[Kin]

I don't get the "being sour" at the Leafs.

I think it's pretty clear from the way that sentence is written that they're disappointed at the way events played out, not upset with the Leafs.

 

[Redleaf]

Just looking over some of his highlights and what stands out to me is his point shot. Seems to find the way to the back of the net a lot.

Let?s hope we see more of that with the Leafs!

 

[Redleaf]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/maple-leafs-mikko-lehtonen-named-khls-defenceman-year/?template=basic&template=basic

 

[princedpw]

Just looking over some of his highlights and what stands out to me is his point shot. Seems to find the way to the back of the net a lot.

Let?s hope we see more of that with the Leafs!

Yeah, certainly not a bad skill to have, but I just don't think too many goals are scored that way any more in the NHL.  I'm waiting to see if he can pass the puck out of the dzone and play a tight gap.

 

[herman]

Best not to draw too many conclusions from a highlight pack, especially for defensemen, as they're normally centered on (relatively rare) scoring plays and it's hard to gauge the frequency these plays happen (we do have a raw count of his points...) as it just leads to survivor bias; unless it's like a Mitch Marner OHL highlight reel where it's over 40 minutes long for a whole season.

The highlight video is good at showcasing Lehtonen's skating ability and puck movement and vision, but it won't show all the times he took pot-shots from the blueline corner at the expense of better options (Barrie-ing it) if that's a thing he does (Scott Wheeler thinks so). It also doesn't show what princedpw was looking for in gap control because no one makes a highlight reel where nothing happens for public consumption.

All I have been able to surmise is Lehtonen skates really well (2nd most distance traveled in the KHL last season), is relied on by his rather good team for offense (as well as defensive minutes), and has a good wrist and slap shot that can beat some goalies if he takes them in prime locations. His profile to me reads like a more defensively responsible Calle Rosen (who started out as an overshooter). Some promising data from the KHL player tracking information shows he completes a lot of passes, especially to his forwards, which is exactly the type of defenseman the Leafs could use.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/Sportsnet/status/1262375920326844421

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Best not to draw too many conclusions from a highlight pack, especially for defensemen, as they're normally centered on (relatively rare) scoring plays and it's hard to gauge the frequency these plays happen (we do have a raw count of his points...) as it just leads to survivor bias;

I'll never forget this tweet, which used Ben Harpur's one (1) NHL goal in 103 games to make it seem like he's a player who likes to jump into the rush:

https://twitter.com/TheLeafsIMO/status/1145864993113550848

 

[herman]

Best not to draw too many conclusions from a highlight pack, especially for defensemen, as they're normally centered on (relatively rare) scoring plays and it's hard to gauge the frequency these plays happen (we do have a raw count of his points...) as it just leads to survivor bias;

I'll never forget this tweet, which used Ben Harpur's one (1) NHL goal in 103 games to make it seem like he's a player who likes to jump into the rush

I did a quick YouTube search of Ben Harpur. Highlights came up as a suggestion about 8 down (after ben harpur music). His longest highlights related video is 3:50 from before he was called up to the NHL and it is only that long because it was an interview. It was worth the watch though because my favourite son-in-law makes a brief appearance (0:39-0:51).

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/jokerit_en/status/1302255056922738689
Lehtonen is on loan to Jokerit, who played their first actual game of the season after boycotting their Belarus/Minsk season opener. Lehtonen gets their first goal of the season off a delayed drag release.

Reference to the game opening goal by former Leaf prospect Martins Dzierkals as well

https://twitter.com/kyle_cush/status/1302282774972436483

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Completed passes is something that the NHL probably should have been tracking for years, even before this analytics boom. Would it really be significantly more difficult to track than shots/hits/blocks/giveaways/takeaways?

 

[Guilt Trip]

Completed passes is something that the NHL probably should have been tracking for years, even before this analytics boom. Would it really be significantly more difficult to track than shots/hits/blocks/giveaways/takeaways?

That could be useful and they could take it even further. D zone, O zone, high/low skill.

 

[Kin]

Completed passes is something that the NHL probably should have been tracking for years, even before this analytics boom. Would it really be significantly more difficult to track than shots/hits/blocks/giveaways/takeaways?

No, but I think it'd really be about as useful as those stats. As Guilt Trip says to have real value you'd need to break down where those passes were and you're left with something similar to the giveaway problem where a pass might not be completed but due to the fault of the player receiving the pass.

 

[herman]

Single game individual metrics are nothing too interesting.

With the full data set, you could make some inferences to start quantifying defensive skill, system efficacy:
DZ on-ice pass completion percentage for opponents
OZ on-ice pass completion and avg team o-zone time per shift
DZ and OZ on-ice time between shot events (rebound clearing, generating) after unblocked shots from above the circles

The art is in figuring out which micro-events in the aggregate lead to season-long success