Breaking Down: Point Shots

The Avs have been on quite a roll since the All-Star Break, losing the rust game at Philly then winning 5 in a row before succumbing to the Capitals on Thursday. The pessimistic take is that they won 3 games vs #bad teams and went 2-2 vs the others but they don’t choose the opponents. Ten points in seven games is hot no matter who or where you play.

Topics of interest this week are the lineup shuffle with Nazem Kadri injured, the continued special teams struggles and my personal favorite, shots from the point.

Projectile Lineup

Kadri was injured in the final game of the road trip at Minnesota so we’ve only seen a couple games worth of shuffle. Mark Barberio returned from his conditioning stint with the Eagles this week with Calle Rosen sent back down. TJ Tynan was called up on Friday. Here’s how the staff lined them out vs Ottawa and Washington:

Attack
Burky – Mack – Mikko
Landy – Compher – Donskoi
Calvert – Bellemare – Nichushkin
Nieto – Jost – Kamenev

D
Sam – EJ
Graves – Makar
Big Z – Cole

Gardiens
Grubi (WAS)
Frankie (OTT)

Scratch: Barbs, Kadri (LBI)
Injured: Willie (All Body Injury)

The defense had no changes and the goalies got one start each this week. Vlad Kamenev moved onto the 4th line with Kadri out. The big changes were in the top 6.

Landy and Burky swapped places on the 1st/2nd lines. Safe to say the 1st line was fine with the only two goals for the Avs at 5v5 and 8 points between the three guys overall.

The 2nd line was interesting. They were buried a bit on the shot board against the Caps at +5/-12 but most of the deficit was from one tough shift. The rest of it can be explained by their play in the offensive zone. They were playing a heavy cycle game, which is good and no doubt suppressed some shots against, but the problem was turning that into offensive chances. It was a lot of grinding then no shot attempt. There’s value in that and with some time to develop chemistry it could pay off. Compher is the weak link and a bit over his head. Something fun to try might be Gabe as a true center between Nichushkin and Donskoi. A more realistic setup would be giving Kamenev at shot at center instead of JTC. With Kadri out for at least a month they have plenty of time to experiment.

Special Teams

Since the ASG, the Avs have been in a weird spot with having to kill more penalties than power plays. Over the season they’ve had 195 PPs and 173 PKs but in the last 7 games they’ve had 18 PPs and 25 PKs. Take out the Ottawa game at home and it’s even worse at +13/-22 or 1½ more PKs per game. The net effect is a -1 on special teams, which isn’t terrible considering the penalty differential, and further highlights how dominant they are at 5v5 where they have outscored opponents 15 to 6 in the same time.

The power play has been slightly better since the break going 5-18 (28%) and giving up a shortie in the rust game vs Philly. Mikko had two goals, very encouraging, and Mack, Makar and Nuke the others. It does tend to make one wonder if having fewer opportunities increases urgency. The downside was the minute-long 5v3 against Washington where they couldn’t even get a decent shot off. Baby steps.

The penalty kill on the other hand has been tragic at times. Overall they’ve been 19-25 (76%) with a shortie for vs Minnesota, which sounds bad because it is but isn’t far off the season average of 78.6%. They shut out Buffalo and Ottawa (twice) but against the better teams they were 6-19 and that’s not getting it done. The staff are obviously trying things because they aren’t in their collapsed little triangle anymore but more or less they look undisciplined and ineffective now. There’s a lot of puck-chasing and uncovered opponents moving around as they please. It’s a big mess. Right around this time last year is when they made some big changes and got on track so with any luck that happens soon.

Point Shots

Columbus has one helluva defensive strategy, they can shut you right down in the slot. It’s very frustrating, not to mention tough to watch. The Avs had one shot from below the circles in their game with the Jackets last week and it was by Cale Makar. The Avs fall in love with point shots from time to time and it’s never a good sign. Part of this is because teams make it a point to clog up the middle and stifle shots from the slot. It’s a solid strategy. Part of this is the Avs staff actively wanting players to shoot from the point for some reason. Whatever reason it is, it’s a bad one. The main one I’ve heard from Coach Bednar is to create rebound chances, which is idiotic if you think about it. In effect he’s saying he wants chances from the inner slot and instead of creating them by working the puck low and under control he would rather have a shot come in from far away and hope it ends up somewhere dangerous. Not to mention that it’s just as easy to create rebound chances from in close as it is from another zip code.

Over the entire season the Avs defensmen have attempted 36.3% of the team’s total shots at net. I would characterize that as high but not obscenely so. Over the last 4 games they have attempted 44.1% of the team’s shots and that is too high. This has happened several times over the past couple of seasons, almost always during or preceding a slump.

The worst part is this seems to be rubbing off on Nathan MacKinnon. He has now fallen in love with point shots. Over the past 4 games he’s had 16 unblocked shot attempts and 12 of them have been from above the faceoff circles. Let’s take one of the most gifted scorers in the NHL and make it much harder for him to put the puck in the net. Sounds good right? A metric some folks are following these days for quality chance generation is expected goals per unblocked shot attempt, which is a mouthful so we just say xGF/FF. It’s pretty subtle and leaguewide it stays pretty close to 5.5%. This season Nate’s at 5.15% overall but over the last 4 it’s at 2.87%. That’s a big drop. Not only that but the rate his shots get blocked has doubled. There’s no math in the universe that can turn this into a smart strategy. Go back below the circles where you belong.

Now, all that said the Avs are not in a slide and there’s no way to know if this is a harbinger of another. It does make their job harder and their opponents’ easier but no ill effects as yet. With some tough games coming up next week we’ll get a better read on how it plays out.

Next up

The big Stadium Series game tonight in Colorado Springs against LA then Tampa and the Islanders at the Pepsi Center this week.

Thanks as always to the NHL and Natural Stat Trick for numbers and visuals