4th Line?

[hobie]

The best attribute of the 4th line is that 2 of them are part of one of the best PK teams in the NHL. Martin is no longer used in that capacity.

The Corsi of those 3 is:

Martin=48%

Sosh=46%

Gauthier=38%

All stats via Hockey Reference.

If these figures were against the opposition's best and they were playing some sort of shutdown role then fine perhaps but these figures are 5v5 and this line basically faces the opposition's 4th line. They aren't holding up their end of their responsibilities. Considering their opposition on a nightly basis and how poorly they score there is very little to recommend them as legitimate NHL players.

I think when Babs finally gets around to having faith in other players in different roles we might see see Matthews and Kadri, for instance, spending time in PKing roles which can/might produce even better results. I think right now Babs likes Gauthier as a PKer because he can win faceoffs but is winning faceoffs a proper trade off for a player who has no possession ability, I don't think so.

According to the Corsi stats Gauthier is a huge black hole of possession on that line so it is very possible that should TO replace him with someone better the results for the other 2 will improve ultimately producing a viable line. 

 

[WordsOfWisdom]

On 1/30/2017 at 2:40 PM, hobie said:

The Corsi of those 3 is:

Martin=48%

Sosh=46%

Gauthier=38%

 

Agreed. I think Gauthier is dragging the other two down. My numbers have Martin and Sosh performing well with Gauthier identified as the weak link:

 

Def%

Sosh: .995

Martin: .993

--------------------------

Gauthier: .983 

 

Huge dropoff.

 

It bears mentioning that I have no idea what the league average for Def% among forwards would be, but I imagine it would probably be somewhere around .987.

 

[hf101]

I dunno about Kadri as a penalty killer, you've likely watched more Leaf's games than me this season, but while observing him on the pp against the Flyers he lost a lot of board battles and due to his small size was easily pushed off the puck.  Granted some speed is needed to winning puck battles, but I think the Leafs have other options that might be a bit better.

[hobie]

Kadri is no big solution on the PK but he has speed and when so inclined is like a dog on a bone when in pursuit of the puck. The Hyman/Brown PKing duo is TO's best because of puck pursuit, constantly pressuring whoever has the puck making them make hasty decisions. It's the speedy puck pursuit rather than being able to win board battles that's making TO's Pking so good this year. Philly did the same thing to TO in their last game against each other, constant puck pressure.

 

I've seen many different Pking strategies on TO and hounding the puck is the best if a team has the right players, it's always been effective against TO, far superior to the 4 man box passive Pking TO had usually adopted.