PDOing to the Top: Sens Need to Combat Regression in SH% and SV%

At some point in your life, assuming it hasn’t happened already, you’re inevitably going to know someone who’s dating someone outside their league.

You talk about it with your friends. You admire it and joke about it saying things like, “It has to end at some point, right? Right?!”

Looking at the NHL standings, the Ottawa Senators are dating outside of their league.

With a record of 12-5-5, the Senators are defying the odds. They are second in the Atlantic Division and have the NHL’s sixth-highest point total entering Friday’s games despite the fact that they’ve accrued the worst possession rate proxy (45.6 CF%) in their modern recorded history.

Although the possession rates have bombed, it’s easy to distinguish how the Senators are getting it done.

In their last nine games, the Senators’ power play has operated at a 34.6-percent clip (nine for the last 26 opportunities). It’s not just with the man advantage that the Senators are being opportunistic. Looking at War On Ice’s data, the Senators are currently sporting a five-on-five shooting percentage of 9.4 (third-highest in the NHL) and a five-on-five save percentage of .939 (fourth-highest in the NHL). Add those two metrics together and it’s clear that the franchise is PDOing their way to the top of the standings.

Words like ‘regression’ and ‘sustainability’ are en vogue and understandably so. With their horrendous possession rates, the analytics community will inevitably dismiss the Senators’ chances drawing comparisons to the 2011-12 Minnesota Wild and the 2013-14 Toronto Maple Leafs – two terrible possession teams whose strong first-half records were undone as both teams missed the playoffs their goaltending and shooting percentages normalized.

To put Ottawa’s situation in perspective, if they were to sustain that PDO, it would give them the third-highest recorded PDO in the modern analytics era. Only the 2006-07 Nashville Predators (103.4) and Buffalo Sabres (104.0) have been able to post higher totals over the course of a full season. In other words, the Senators have been incredibly lucky.

The Senators will be a target for analytic discussion and many will portend doom with an accompanying sense of gloom, but from a glass-half full perspective, instead of dwelling on how the shooting and save percentages will drop, what the Senators should be doing is identifying areas of weakness or areas where there is room for improvement. Whether that improvement comes from within or by looking externally for other solutions, this organization should be overturning every stone and looking at all the evidence to come up with an action plan for how to offset any regression to its PDO by doing whatever it can to improve the team’s puck possession proxies.

Here are a few things to consider:

1. Hope for Internal Improvement

The easiest thing that the Senators can do to counteract any regression, is invest faith and trust in some of the current players to normalize their own possession proxies. Players like Erik Karlsson, Marc Methot and Patrick Wiercioch have decent possession proxy numbers, but relative to their most recent seasons, there should be room for growth. Wiercioch, in particular, has noticeably struggled and if he can get healthy and return to the level that he displayed down the stretch last season, he will give the Senators another excellent puck-moving option who can help keep the puck out of Ottawa’s end.

Internal improvement can also come through better player usage. Chris Wideman’s opportunity to entrench himself in the lineup should have come a little earlier because of the ineffectual play of guys like Jared Cowen and Mark Borowiecki (who was playing his off-side), but injuries to guys like Cowen and Wiercioch have opened the door to him to get regular playing time. Wideman’s game has warts, but he offers a unique puck-moving skill to the third pairing. When the alternative is the Cowen-Borowiecki pairing, Wideman represents an easy upgrade.

2. Third Line Problems

In the offseason, the Senators unintentionally turned one of their strengths down the stretch into a weakness.

Together with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Curtis Lazar, Erik Condra helped form a dynamic third line that combined some offence and skating with a blue-collar approach. The result was a possession driving line that provided excellent depth and create matchup problems for the opposition.

Thanks to the return of injured players like Zack Smith and Chris Neil, in addition to Shane Prince not being waiver exempt, their presence congested the bottom six. Knowing that it had to create room for some of their younger prospects like Prince, the organization made the conscious decision to cut bait with Condra.

The rationale was pretty straightforward. With Clarke MacArthur manning the left wing spot on the first line and Mike Hoffman deserving an opportunity to build upon last season’s success, the Senators needed a spot to plug in Milan Michalek because it would have players like Shane Prince, Chris Neil, Zack Smith, Curtis Lazar and Alex Chiasson competing for the rest of the spots in the bottom six.

Rather than exhaust the market to gauge trade interest in this depth, the Senators did the easiest thing they could do: let Condra walk away as an unrestricted free agent. Even though Condra reportedly came back to Ottawa with Tampa Bay’s offer (two-years at an AAV of $1.2 million) and gave them the last right of refusal, the Senators passed on the opportunity to bring him back.

The results have left much to be desired.

Possession rates have dropped. Lazar has been bumped around the lineup struggling to find a niche where he can thrive. Alex Chiasson does not have an even strength goal this season through the team’s first 22 games and Milan Michalek, who has never been one to impact possession rates, has struggled to replace Condra.

Put in contrast with last season, here’s how Ottawa’s most regular third line (Michalek-Pageau-Chiasson) has fared relative to last year’s successful Condra-Pageau-Lazar trio:

To put things in perspective by looking at their rate stats, this season’s third line has seen a -25.92 shot attempt per 60 minutes of five-on-five ice time swing. That’s insane!

Looking at Pageau and Lazar’s ‘With or Without You’ numbers from the past two seasons, it’s easy to see that both players have struggled historically playing away from Condra. So although on paper, there were a number of somewhat reasonable points for letting Condra go, his absence has seriously diminished the productivity and effectiveness of the third line.

Complicating matters is the fact that Neil and Smith have returned from injury and have essentially submarined the performance of anyone who has slotted in alongside them… with one exception: Shane Prince.

In fact, Shane Prince may be the solution for what ails the third line. They need a speedy player who can hold onto the puck longer in the neutral zone, make plays and help create and sustain offensive zone pressure. Like Mike Hoffman and Patrick Wiercioch before him, his numbers portray a player who can help drive possession, so maybe it’s time to give him a significant role.

Of course, the detriment of this is that with a healthy MacArthur, it means that Milan Michalek, the $4-million man, would be relegated to the fourth line, but with Lazar undeservingly getting spot duty in the top six, Michalek can and should replace him there.

3. Fix the Blue Line

Relative to most NHL defencemen, Erik Karlsson’s in a league of his own. His dynamic talent allows him to impact a game like few can. Relative to Ottawa’s defencemen however, his performance underlines how much help Ottawa needs on the back end.

Via War on Ice, here is how the Senators have fared with Karlsson on and off the ice at five-on-five this season:

Thanks to Ottawa’s goaltenders saving 95.7-percent of the shots while Karlsson is off of the ice, their goals for percentage has swelled, despite the fact that they’re getting outshot and outchanced without him on the ice. For as good as Ottawa’s goaltending is, it’s completely unreasonable to assume this number will stay static without some kind of massive swing in the number of shots, shot attempts and scoring chances that the Senators give up.

It’s easy to identify the blue line as the team’s Achilles heel, but going about remedying it is another problem entirely. Maybe Patrick Wiercioch figures it out. Maybe Cody Ceci actually starts fulfilling some of the promise that the team saw in him when they made him the 15^th overall selection in 2012 rather than looking like someone who’s simply comfortable surviving at the game’s highest level. Maybe Chris Wideman, who already is a marked improvement over guys like Mark Borowiecki and Jared Cowen, can make a bigger difference than many expect. Maybe the organization will realize that Cowen and Borowiecki aren’t viable NHL defencemen and look externally for other solutions.

Judging by the comments made by those who have their finger on the pulse of the NHL rumour mills, there aren’t many deals to be made right now and that’s problematic for a team that could use a fix.

Travis Hamonic is one defenceman who has asked the Islanders for a trade to be closer to his Winnipeg home because of some undisclosed family matter. With the Jets brimming with quality right-defencemen, they don’t really line up as a viable trade partner which has fostered speculation that other teams like the Flames, Oilers, Canucks and Wild matching up as better alternatives. Flights from Ottawa to Winnipeg are comparable in length to those from Vancouver and are only one-hour longer than flights from Calgary and Edmonton. Knowing this (and as one Twitter follower also mentioned, there are more flights out of Ottawa to Winnipeg), maybe Ottawa could be a landing spot for Hamonic.

Perhaps the opportunity cost for a Hamonic is high and maybe the Senators don’t match up well, but at least it’s option that’s worth exploring – especially since the Senators are banking heavily on unproven players like Ceci and Wideman right now.

The key for Bryan Murray and his staff is to creatively find a competent asset or two without breaking the bank to do it. Considering the names that he has brought in during his tenure – Campoli, Fata, Kuba, Picard, J. Smith, Sutton, Rundblad, Hale, Gonchar, Gilroy, Sweatt, Methot, Mullen, Grant, Corvo and Fraser – the pressure is going to be on him and his staff to prove that they know how to evaluate defencemen properly and identify someone who can bolster the group. Unfortunately, being able to do that while balancing a budget should prove difficult. But, maybe that’s why the organization is reportedly trying to entice another organization to take on the rest of Colin Greening’s contract by packaging him with a prospect. Maybe they’re trying to clear salary because they have another deal in the works?

4. Goaltending Regression

Combating regression in goaltending and shooting percentage by improving other metrics is the goal, but in looking at Ottawa’s historical numbers since Craig Anderson entered the fold, their goaltending has been pretty damn strong.

And for as much league-wide analytical attention articles like this will get, Ottawa’s goaltending has managed to keep their high-event hockey team reasonably successful. Mind you, I think there’s definitely a debate to be had whether a team that consistently gives up such a disproportionate volume of shots and shot attempts can be successful for more than a round or two in the playoffs, the Senators have won their fair share of games when they give up a ton of shots.

Since Craig Anderson’s first full season with the Senators, the team has had 208 instances in which they’ve given up 30+ shots in a game. Only the Buffalo Sabres and the Toronto Maple Leafs have had more. More importantly however, no organization has won more of these games than the Ottawa Senators. To put things in perspective, they have only lost 61 of these games in regulation or 30 fewer times than Toronto (who have had seven more of these 30+ shots against games). In fact, only 11 teams have averaged 30 or more shots against per game since the start of the 2011-12 season and of those teams, Ottawa has the second-highest winning percentage (.576).

Goaltending has played a significant role in this team’s success and although some believe that it masks this team’s deficiencies and potentially hurts management’s valuations of particular players, with any kind of improvement in the team’s possession proxies, the Senators should win a significant share of games.

So for a team that has insulated itself and built up quite the margin for error, that’s a hell of a thing to have… provided this team doesn’t fall flat like the 2011-12 Wild and 2013-14 Maple Leafs.

Other News and Notes:

Craig Medaglia from the Ottawa Senators interviewed assistant general manager Randy Lee yesterday regarding the team’s prospects. There’s not much new information or anything pertaining to Mikael Wikstrand’s situation, unfortunately, but if you’re a prospect-porn indulging fan, have at it.

The Ottawa Sun published its list of the 25 greatest Senators of all-time. The list is headlined by Daniel Alfredsson and I have a few minor quibbles with the rankings (ie. Redden and Chara should be higher than Chris Phillips, Alexei Yashin should also be higher), but by and large, it’s hard not to argue too much with who was included.

According to Jim McAulay (@ifjimdontknow), today marks the six-year anniversary of Erik Karlsson being recalled from the Binghamton Senators. Time flies.