Never read the comments.
Never read the comments.
Never read, fuck, I read the cesspool of internet comments and I’m dumber for it. However, I do need to put some thoughts down.
I’m not a Illya Kovalchuk fan by any stretch of the imagination. While he was a dynamic scoring winger who was a thorn in the Capitals side during his time with Thrashers his time in the league was always mired in controversy. Despite being given the Trashers Captaincy in 2008–09 he refused to sign an extension to the team and was leveraged into a trade, ultimately hurting the Trashers. Then, with the New Jersey Devils he attempted to sign a salary cap circumventing contract that had to be nullified by the league but which still resulted in a controversial cap crushing contract with the Devils. Part way through that contract he prematurely retired from the NHL leaving the team with a litany of penalties and lack for forward scoring depth which ended up tanking the teams success going forward. He played several years in the KHL before coming back to the LA Kings on a fairly lucrative deal which is again causing controversy because of the structure of the no trade/no movement clauses and his refusal to entertain offers by other teams. In every case Kovy isn’t the sole problem as there’s culpability to the team management as well, but controversy does seem to follow him.
That being said, the career numbers don’t lie, he was a very good goal scorer and point generator, particularly in his youth where he snagged a Richard Rocket and Kharlamov Trophy as well as being a three-time All Star. As a Russian player he’s generally only behind ultra-elite names like Ovechkin, Bure and Federov for many of his career accomplishments, including:
436 All Situations Goals #70 All Time
0.486 Goals Per Game #486
283 Event strength Goals #84 All time
143 Power Play Goals T59 All Time
61 Game Winning Goals T85 All Time
352.4 All Situations Goals Created #108 All Time
423 All Situations Assists #238 All Time
0.472 Assists Per Game T200 All time
859 All Situations Points #132 All time
0.958 Points Per Game #79 all time
over 897 Games Played
While none of this is necessarily Hall of Fame worth it’s still pretty impressive overall.
His numbers this season aren’t good, but they aren’t necessarily bad either considering his often-cloudy middle-six usage on a generally terrible LA Kings Team
3 Goals, 7th on Kings
6 Assists, 4th on Kings
9 Points, 5th on Kings
35 Shots, 8th on Team
What really stood out though to comments about an article regarding the plight of the Kings and Kovy’s No Trade Clause was the plus/minus number. It’s -10 for the season, leading the team.
But, what relevance does the single season stat even mean on a team with only five guys with positive numbers to begin with? There’s fourteen regulars in the Kings’ lineup that feature a negative plus-minus and a couple of more who are barely even on a team that’s give up 67 goals, second most behind the Wings, while only scoring 46 resulting in being tied for third fewest.
Right now that -10 is in the bottom third of the league, tied with the likes of James Neal, Eric Staal and Kaapo Kakko among some name recognition forwards (and better than former Jersey teammate Zach Parise) but what’s more blue-liners who have the responsibility of limiting shots against have a worse negative plus-minus including some big name Dmen like Brent Burns, Matt Dumba, Justin Braun and John Klingberg.
Plus/Minus is the difference in goals scored for minus goals scored against while a given players is on ice at even strength.
By that definition the four other players also on ice influence both the offense and defensive output and the goalie also plays a role in the defense. Therefore, any given individual’s plus-minus can be affected by the quality of the rest of the unit on the ice.
Furthermore, it doesn’t take into account contributions on Special Teams and other unbalanced play.
Finally, it is based on goals scored which is a low-event metric metric that’s highly random and thus of little statistical value. So while goals are great for deciding the outcome of games, they don’t always translate well to analyzing or modeling individual performance and is part of the reason why much of individual analysis has moved to looking at shot attempts (corsi) as a base metric for both offense and defensive analysis and modeling.
The argument usually put forth is that a negative goal differential in plus-minus represents a player who is not good at defense. It’s a leap of faith, however, based on how the stat is tabulated and can be just as influenced by poor goal tending, poor team defense, poor team offense, poor player usage, coaching schemes, and so on.
I’m not defending Kovy.
But, he has never been known for his 2-way play or defensive acumen. Then again, he’s always been utilized as a top-six scoring winger throughout his career. Atlanta constructed its entire attack around Kovy’s ability. The Devils who previously were known for playing the Trap defensive scheme almost exclusively designed their top-line around a more offensive approach upon acquiring Kovy. So it isn’t as if he is being expected to play defensive like a blue-liner would, or like a Center would, or even like a winger who is being employed in a 1-3-1 or 1-2-2 trap-or-lock scheme. Kovy was being asked to be high risk-high reward as a forward because of his ability to score goals. Think about it, for every shot Kovy as to drop back and block in the defensive zone it’s a shot he is not taking in the offensive zone, and if you’re not shooting you’re not scoring.
There are four other guys plus a goalie who should be able to handle the bulk of the defensive responsibility in order to leverage the talent of a scoring forward, be that Kovy or, for example Dino Ciccarelli scored 600 goals as a winger and had a -4 career, or Patrick Marleau is still considered a pretty good 2-way winger, scored 550 goals so far and is holding a negative career differential. Even Ron Francis, also 500 goal scorer, possessed a negative career but was considered a pretty good defensive forward. Dale Hawerchuk, Johnny Bucyk and Pat Verbeek all broke 500 goals as forward but ended their careers negative players while Mark Recchi barely managed to come out even.
Part of this is likely Xenophobic. European players are treated different that North Americans, particularly compared to Canadians, and of that Russians are held to a different standard still.
The same disparagement was levied against Alexander Ovechkin during the season his plus-minus dropped into the -30s. In 2013-2014 didn’t help that the the Caps had four players in double digit negatives including three in their top-six forwards and one of their top pair defensemen, or that of the thirty-six skaters they employed throughout the season sixteen of the regulars in total were negative, or that they had a four goalie carousel, and so on. Yet, Ovechkin for his part that season led the team with 51 goals en route to a Richard Rocket as the leading goal scorer in the league and was tied for team lead with 79 points. He faced a similar critique very early on in his career during the 2006-2007 season when he posted a -19 despite leading the team in goals with 46, in assists with 46 and in total points with 92 on a team with ten regulars posting double digit negatives and a few more who barely missed the double digit mark complicated by a goalie tandem that struggled to maintain a .900 combined average.
Pavel Bure was similarly critiqued for his 1996-1997 season posting a -14 while putting up 23 goals, 35 assists for 55 points in Vancouver for a team that featured several other double-digit negative players. He faced it again in 2001-2002 with the Florida Panthers where he posted a -14 against 22 goal, 27 assist, team leading 49 point campaign alongside ten other players who reached double digit negatives.
Sergei Fedorov took heat for his defense as well and this was despite having a pretty solid plus-minus during his entire tenure with Detroit.
So, it’s no surprise that Kovalchuk, also a Russian who defected to the Russian KHL, continues to get dinged for his defense by detractors. His career -152 though is part of the reason why he takes so much flack. Then again, the Thrashers only qualified for the playoffs once during his tenure and even that Southeast Division title saw the team post a modest +1 differential with eleven players posting personal negatives while a handful of others barely broke even. And, those previously stalwart Devils Teams? They qualified only during two of the four seasons he played and for the 2011-2012 Stanely Cup appearance, that team featured sixteen regulars with personal negatives and squeaked into the playoffs on the strength of Kovy’s Shootout Prowess where he set single season records for Shootout Goals Scored and Game Deciding Shoot Out Goals. Although he was chastised for his negative plus-minus, his 8 Shoot Out Wins was the difference for the Devils even making the Playoffs to begin with.
In this context players such as Kovy are obviously doing much more than what their plus-minus is accounting for. That doesn’t mean the Kings should not be benching Kovy at this point. His production is below what his contract would normally dictate should be expected and his No Trade Clause essentially means they are stuck with him unless they can leverage him into accepting a trade. But, his plus-minus in isolation is by no means a reflection of his contributions as a player. There’s a lot of historical circumstance to his numbers and he’s playing on a terrible team, once again, in LA.
Capital Chaos: Win, Lose or Draw
I keep saying don’t read the comments and yet, I keep reading them.
This time, a cranky Caps fan complained, “At this point is Kuzy ever going to improve at the dot? He’s been steadily terrible since he arrived in DC and shows no sign of improvement.”
To which I felt obligated to reply:
Faceoff w/l record have been shown time and again to have very little correlation to game w/l records. This is true when looking at both individual FO performance and team performance and when looking at it in the course of a single game as well as over an 82 game season.
That’s because the outcome of the draw is in isolation. The stat only tells you which player pushed the puck which direction. Did the draw winner’s team gain or lose possession with the draw? Did the team that gained possession post-draw produce a shot attempt from the ensuing play. Did the shot attempt become a shot on goal? Did the shot on goal produce a goal? You don’t know, the raw stat doesn’t tell you.
And, the stat treats all FO attempts equally. There’s no contextual breakdown. Is it at 5s, on the PK, on the PP, at 3s in OT? Is it in the neutral zone, the defensive zone, the offensive zone? Is the score tied, close? Is it early or late in the game? You don’t know, again, because the raw stat doesn’t tell you.
There’s so many unknowns about the circumstances of the draw and what actually happens with the puck that it is very difficult to predict using Face Offs what a win of a FO might produce. So, conventional wisdom is that the stat, by itself, might not hold a lot of meaning in terms of it’s predictive value.
However, the act of taking a faceoff in the reality of playing the actual game, certain FO attempts are more valuable to win than others. A defensive zone draw into a set clearing play during a penalty kill is more valuable than a neutral zone draw at evens. A draw trailing by one, late in a game, in the offensive zone, into a set scoring play is more valuable than the opening faceoff. A draw at 3s in OT is more important than a mid-game score during a blowout. And, so on.
In those singular moments, maybe a player’s propensity to win more often than not might make a difference. It’s why Jay Beagle was so valuable to the Caps because he was very, very good at situational draws. Would you rather someone who win’s 53+% of the time or someone who loses 53+% of the time? Of course you’d want the 53-plus winner in there whenever possible. Kuzy isn’t that go-to guy for those moments. And, that’s kind of the knock on him. He will be on the ice in big situations but cannot be relied on to take the draw with any efficiency. For better, or worse, that’s the reality of who he is right now – a sub-50% win rate. The problem with judging him solely on that is that we still don’t know much about the draws themselves to best judge if he’s really terrible when it counts or just bad at taking meaningless ones.
Overall, Kuzy’s first full season at center he posted 44.6%, which is essentially his career average to date for FO. This season, while it’s a far cry from being competitive he is at 47.2% on about 300 draws, which is up from last season’s abysmal 38.7%. Again, not saying by any stretch of the imagination he is good on the dot but this is an improvement, albeit slight, from where he was and good enough to fall within the top-100 in the league for FOs with over 300 attempts.
For context, Joe Thornton and Connor McDavid both have 47% win rates with similar draw numbers and Jack Eichel is taking almost 200 more draws is putting up a 47% win rate. Nathan MacKinnon and Jack Hughes have similar draw numbers and but worse win rates, both in the low 40s. And, the list goes on for sub-50% performance on top six forwards putting up at least 300 draws.
Even on the Caps, Backstrom is just a tick higher than Kuzy but still sub-50% this season coming in just barely over 49%. For the rest of the top-six the numbers are even worse for Vrana, Wilson and Oshie when they take draws while Ovi’s 100% rate is predicated on the fact he’s only taken a single one thus far. It’s a team-wide problem with only Eller over 50% while taking more than 300 while Steph and Dowd are both around 100 attempts at the 50% mark. Everyone else in the bottom six is just as inept as the top-six.
However, maybe you don’t always need him to be good at FO either. He has great vision on the ice, and a decent shot. So, maybe what you really want is someone else to win the draw and put it TO him so he can distribute the puck to a shooter or take the shot himself.
Unfortunately, the rest of the players he’s routinely on ice with are actually worse than he is taking the draw as noted above. And, even as we saw with having a speciality like Beagle, not every circumstance allows getting a FO expert onto the ice to take advantage of Kuzy’s post-FO capability to drive play.
So, what you’re left with is hoping that most of the draws Kuzy is forced to take are in low leverage situations and, maybe, although it’s not a comforting thought, that taking low leverage FOs is not exciting and therefor the losses aren’t about skill as much as about focus, it’s not meaningful so maybe he’s phoning them in more often. he wouldn’t be the first player to be thought to not be giving 100% in all aspects of the game throughout the entire game and season, but this isn’t actually what I’m accusing him of either.
I guess what I’m really getting at is generally FO% is about as useful as +/- in terms of being a stat. It’s just something to talk about at the water cooler because it’s a stat that’s almost as old as the game itself, particularly when he butchers that one really important FO and the result is a lost game.