Game 20: Flyers at Penguins; 3/2/21 @ 7, NBCSP

[mojo1917]

37 minutes ago, CoachX said:

does it jack Hart up long term? 

I like that he's a competitor and holds himself to a really high standard.

Every interview I've seen with that kid, he's so even keeled.

Even after he's busted equipment in anger he's kind of calm and analytical about it.

I don't think it jacks him up even in the short term.

 

Like OR says I think he needs to work through the adversity and make the adjustments to his game. 

Looks to me like the league has scouted him pretty well and shooters have an idea where they want to put the puck against him.

He'll have to adjust, I think based on everything I've seen so far he will. 

 

I definitely see where Gustafsson wasn't a good signing, get a guy to help the top 4 and I think many of Carter's troubles miraculously solve themselves. 

 

 

 

 

[OccamsRazor]

48 minutes ago, CoachX said:

Its something Im worried about

 

No need to worry he will be fine.

 

His numbers so far are very close to the best goalie in the NHL at the same age: Andrei Vasilevskiy.

 

And at 21 Hart had slightly better numbers than him actually. Hart won 24 games at that age and Andrei only 11. So there is still hope....I hope they get lucky and he does end up as good as Andrei.

 

#fingerscrossed

[OccamsRazor]

8 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

Looks to me like the league has scouted him pretty well and shooters have an idea where they want to put the puck against him

 

Yep blocker side since he has such a solid glove.

 

So it is something he needs to work on and I am confident he will. 

 

The hardest position to play in all of sports maybe only behind QB in the NFL.

 

And unfortunately like QB you get all the glory and all the blame.

 

Right or wrong it is how it is.

[Podein25]

10 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

I like that he's a competitor and holds himself to a really high standard.

Every interview I've seen with that kid, he's so even keeled.

Even after he's busted equipment in anger he's kind of calm and analytical about it.

I don't think it jacks him up even in the short term.

 

Like OR says I think he needs to work through the adversity and make the adjustments to his game. 

Looks to me like the league has scouted him pretty well and shooters have an idea where they want to put the puck against him.

He'll have to adjust, I think based on everything I've seen so far he will. 

 

I definitely see where Gustafsson wasn't a good signing, get a guy to help the top 4 and I think many of Carter's troubles miraculously solve themselves. 

 

 

 

 

 

He's been seeing a sports shrink since he was 13 or something. Most adults aren't that mentally tough. He not only will be fine. He is fine.

[RonJeremy]

14 hours ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

Danny Briere and Giroux where very good in the 2010 playoffs.

 

Danny B's performance was the best i have ever witnessed in the playoffs for the Flyers.

When Giroux was in a secondary role behind Carter, Richards, Briere etc , there was no pressure on him, and he did well. Since he is the Captain , he is expected to be one of our top scorers, to lead the other players and he also has the pressure of having to explain to the media why the team lost , played like crap and all that. A lot of players do not have the psychological makeup to handle all that responsibility and it affects their play. I never thought G was Captain material and neither was Lindros. Your best and highest payed player does not equate to being Captain material.  A guy with a Bobby Clarke type of drive and determination is the kind of guy you want as captain. 

[OccamsRazor]

1 hour ago, mojo1917 said:

He'll have to adjust, I think based on everything I've seen so far he will. 

 

If you have time for a good read on said subject. I hope it copies and paste well.

 

@CoachX

 

This year was supposed to be a coronation for Carter Hart.

Coming into the 2020-21 season, the Philadelphia Flyers goaltender had just completed his first NHL playoff run with a stellar .926 save percentage and had been the single biggest reason his team won its first series in eight years.

 

He ranked as one of the best starting goalies in the league in the 2019-20 regular season by public advanced metrics. And he was only 22 years old. Betting services had him on the shortlist for the Vezina Trophy;

 

Philadelphia fans counted him as the least of their worries for a season with serious expectations for contention.

 

Instead, 19 games in, Hart is sitting on a ghastly .893 save percentage and more losses than wins.

 

The concern level in Philadelphia regarding the young netminder isn’t exactly low. It’s probably somewhere between “uh-oh, is this just the randomly poor season that even great goalies sometimes have?” and “Hart isn’t actually as good as we all hoped.” Is it fair? Not quite, especially given the fact that Hart has appeared in a mere 13 games so far. But it is understandable, given the numerous false saviors in net whom Flyers fans have been offered over the past 30 seasons. For Hart, it might just be his first poor statistical season at any major level since he put himself on the map as a viable NHL prospect.

 

For fans, it’s just one more in a long line of disappointing goaltending performances.

But strange things happen in small samples. Is Hart actually playing as poorly as his numbers indicate? What have been his major issues so far? And is there reason to believe a statistical turnaround is coming?

The numbers don’t love Hart

Measuring the performance of goalies using numbers is still an inexact science. The impact of shot quality on a netminder’s results is undeniable, and even public metrics that attempt to account for shot location fail to pick up on key factors such as screens and the quality of the pass before the shot. (More on this later.)

 

That said, when all of a goalie’s public metrics are poor, it’s not exactly a good sign for the quality of his play. Hart so far this season fits that bill.

 

His raw save percentage (.893), which ranks him 54th among 66 goalies with at least 100 minutes this year, already puts him in a hole. And the public expected goal models, all of which attempt to account for shot quality, don’t do much to pull him out of it. In fact, by Evolving-Hockey’s Goals Saved Above Expectation (GSAx) metric, Hart actually ranks even lower.

Even by the most generous metric, Hart still clearly ranks in the bottom half of NHL netminders. And it really shouldn’t be a major shock. The foundation of all public xG models is shot location. It’s the easiest variable to add, since the NHL does track shot distance to the best of its ability. Hart, at the moment, has faced the 60th-furthest average shot distance in the league this year, at 38.04 feet. In other words, xG models aren’t likely to view his workload as abnormally difficult. More on that later, as well.

Clean looks, glove side

As noted, numbers only go so far in evaluating goaltender performance, particularly those available to the public sphere. With that in mind, I watched and charted each of the 43 goals that Hart has allowed this season, with the goal of identifying any key recurring trends — both in the mistakes he has made and in the types of shots he has faced.

So where have Hart’s goals against “beaten” him?

It doesn’t take an eagle-eyed observer to notice where the highest concentration lies: Hart has given up a lot of goals high to his glove side.

 

Now, to be fair to Hart, these goals don’t all imply a glove-side weakness. Many were the result of high-quality pre-shot passes or uncovered net-front forwards.

 

But by my count, Hart has been beaten clean to the glove side nine times so far this season when given a clear look at the shooter and enough time to square up.

Individually, many of these goals can be explained and even excused. Backhanders are very tricky (Curtis Lazar’s goal). Alex Ovechkin is one of the best snipers in NHL history. The outdoor game was a unique set of circumstances, with changing sightlines and little practice time to adapt to the setting. Jordan Eberle’s goal was a quick one-timer from a very dangerous area. Taken one by one, it’s not difficult to wave away serious culpability on the part of Hart.

 

But taken as a whole? That’s nine goals — 20.9 percent of all he’s allowed this season — that had Hart waving his glove and coming up empty. It’s not a large enough sample to call it an inherent weakness, of course, but it is fair to say that this season, opponents have beaten Hart glove side quite a lot, even when Hart has been in a relatively good position to stop them. That can’t continue.

Rebounds are an occasional problem

To be clear: I’m not a goaltending expert. But out of the 43 goals allowed by Hart, 20 caught my eye as falling on the weaker end of the “Could he have stopped it?” spectrum. The biggest group was the nine glove-side goals. The second-biggest? Rebounds.

 

Ten of Hart’s 43 goals against came off rebounds, but not all 10 can be blamed on Hart. To my eyes, five, in particular, could have been swallowed up or ideally directed to a less-dangerous spot.

In fairness, on a few of these goals — Brandon Tanev’s and Charlie Coyle’s, in particular — the defensemen could have tracked down the rebounds better and provided more puck pressure in support of Hart. In addition, only one of these tallies occurred since January, so if rebound control ever was an issue, Hart very well might have already addressed it with slight technical tweaks or simply by increasing his all-around sharpness.

 

Still, these types of plays add up. If Hart never has to make those saves in the first place — because he either squeezed the puck or sent it to a less-dangerous spot — he’s holding a .905 save percentage right now, not an .893.

In defense of Hart: Dangerous passes

It’s clear that public expected goal models don’t think highly of Hart’s play. But there’s one element of shot quality that those xG models simply can’t measure: the impact of a pass on the quality of the ensuing shot.

 

There’s a reason that two-on-ones, for example, are so dangerous. Get a goalie moving from side-to-side with a cross-ice pass and combine that with a quick release, and there’s simply no way a netminder can be fully prepared to make the save. It becomes sheer desperation mode. That’s also why power plays are designed for rapid passes through seams, and why teams place so much emphasis on defending the slot and crease area. If a goalie can see the puck and properly set for the shot, there’s a very good chance the shot is stopped. If a pre-shot pass gets the goalie moving, though? Another story entirely.

 

In front of Hart, the Flyers’ defense simply hasn’t done a good job of preventing dangerous pre-shot passes.

 

On a whopping 20 of Hart’s goals against, the opponents set up their shot with a pass that either crossed through the slot, originated from below the goal line or was passed directly into the slot area from the outside. Public xG models just aren’t built to quantify that degree of shot quality. For reference, Evolving-Hockey deemed those 20 shots to be worth a collective 3.25 worth of xG, meaning that Hart “should” have allowed only three to four goals on them. But that model almost exclusively bases its judgment (in these cases) on the location of the shot. And locations can be very deceptive.

Let’s start with this goal from the Flyers’ Feb. 7 game in Washington.

An xG model based largely on shot location can only know that Tom Wilson took a wrist shot from 13 feet away, so it spits out a 10 percent goal likelihood. It can’t know that Ovechkin completely undressed Philippe Myers, and then slid a gorgeous pass through the crease, requiring Wilson only to tap the puck into the resulting open net. Now, the goal likelihood shouldn’t be 100 percent — Wilson could have missed or Hart could have made an incredible lunging save — but accounting for pre-shot passing movement, it should be a heck of a lot higher than 10 percent.

 

Here’s one from January 18 against Buffalo.

It’s easy to see how a model would look at a shot from this sharp of an angle and give it a 6 percent goal likelihood. But Hart doesn’t do a lot wrong here, given Taylor Hall’s point of attack. He’s protecting the near post and understandably assuming that there’s no way his defense will allow a backdoor pass through to Sam Reinhart. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what happens, and once Reinhart has the puck on his stick, his chances of scoring are undoubtedly much greater than six percent.

 

Finally, a recent one: Kasperi Kapanen’s goal on Tuesday.

To our eyes, this is a no-chance goal with two (and bordering on three) high-danger passes leading up to Kapanen burying the puck into a wide-open net. By the model, it’s simply a shot with a 12 percent goal likelihood. Again, that seems to be vastly undershooting its actual threat.

 

Every goalie, of course, has to deal with shots like these — ones that are close to unstoppable not because of where they are taken but because of what happens leading up to the shot itself. That said, 20 is quite a lot across just 13 games. It seems likely that the xG models in the public sphere are underrating the quality of shots that Hart has faced, and back on Feb. 2, Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher more or less said exactly that.

 

“Obviously our goaltenders have been consistently good for us this year, and they give us a chance,” he said before clarifying more fully what he meant later in the interview.

 

“There hasn’t been perfection, but I think as a group, considering again the way the forwards have played up-ice a lot of the time, we’ve put a lot of pressure on our defensemen and our goaltending. I think both groups have done a pretty good job for us.”

 

In other words, after 10 games, Fletcher and the Flyers seemed to be — at least publicly — holding to the belief that the goalies (Hart included) were doing the best they could be expected to do given the regular defensive lapses, particularly on the part of the forwards. Considering the sheer number of dangerous passing plays Hart has been asked to face this season, it’s not at all a difficult stance to accept.

Hart hasn’t been great, but neither has the defense

So is Hart truly in the midst of a disastrous start to his third NHL season? Or has he secretly been fine, his poor numbers actually the product of a leaky defense?

 

As usual, the correct answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

 

The glove-side issues over the season’s first two months were very real and came to a head in Lake Tahoe, when he allowed three weak goals high glove in the second period, including a truly horrendous one permitted to Trent Frederic that capped the trio. Yes, it was the outdoor game and a tough environment for any netminder. But those goals still counted, and it’s not like the glove-hand problem was isolated to the Tahoe game. It was more a recurring one that finally blew up on a big stage. Hart also has struggled at times with his rebound control, though in recent weeks it’s been far less of an issue.

 

That said, Hart likely hasn’t been .893 save percentage bad. Because of shoddy defense on the part of the Flyers in front of him, Hart has been forced to face shots preceded by dangerous passes on 46.5 percent of the goals that he has allowed. Tuesday’s 5-2 loss to the Penguins was a perfect example.

 

Hart allowed five goals, yes, but did any truly qualify as weak? There was a breakaway, two tic-tac-toe passing plays, a deflection-plus-rebound where two Penguins forwards were allowed to stand in Hart’s crease area uncontested, then an “empty-net” goal with Hart on the ice because Travis Konecny failed to get the puck deep after the coaching staff had directed Hart to start leaving his crease. It was an .815 save percentage on the night that was wholly undeserved.

 

Hart, to be sure, needs to be better. Those high-danger passes don’t absolve Hart fully for allowing all 20 goals, even if the xG formula on Evolving-Hockey’s site surely underrates their quality by believing Hart should have stopped 83.8 percent of them.

 

Top-tier goalies are expected to make top-tier saves on the regular, and while some of those goals were unstoppable, others weren’t. Perhaps even on some of the toughest ones, better anticipation or a more active stick on the poke check would have put Hart in a better position to make a desperation save or prevent the shot from happening altogether.

 

Those are surely the aspects of his game that Hart works on behind closed doors.

 

Improvements must be made on Hart’s part. But he’s far from alone in that regard.

 

Enjoy.

[CoachX]

1 hour ago, Podein25 said:

 

He's been seeing a sports shrink since he was 13 or something

Me too. But since i was 21

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by CoachX

[mojo1917]

Speaking of whiskey, who has a good recommendation for a Rye?

That's the liquor of the month, Mrs Mojo and I are drinking our way through 2021...trying different goodies.

[CoachX]

Local guy I know distills his own using an accelerated process. Hes a retired military pilot and current pilot for a major airline. We play beer league together 

 

Anyway, if you can find it, its called

 

[OccamsRazor]

12 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

Speaking of whiskey, who has a good recommendation for a Rye?

That's the liquor of the month, Mrs Mojo and I are drinking our way through 2021...trying different goodies.

 

Sazerac Rye.

 

 

By the Buffalo Trace distillery.

[mojo1917]

@OccamsRazor

@CoachX

 

Thanks for the tips, my girlfriends' Rye at  Silverback Distillery is sold out.

https://www.sbdistillery.com/shop

 

 

Their Blackback bourbon is delicious, you may want to check it out.  Nice caramel undertone...if that's your thing.

 

 

[Podein25]

2 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

Mrs Mojo and I are drinking our way through 2021

 

Well, it worked to get you (and me) through 2020 so go with what works I say!

[OccamsRazor]

On 3/3/2021 at 5:55 PM, mojo1917 said:

However, if our guys keep their heads out of their asses long enough to not pass to the Pgh forwards I think maybe our guys stand a chance to win both games the rest of the week. 

 

Or how about the damn Captain shows up like tonight finally and leads his troops into every battle like is expected.

 

Tonight is what the fans want from him.

 

Production.

 

Do that and the fans stay happy.

 

Do that to take pressure off the whole team.

 

Lead by example.

 

So just give us more of that. 

 

Oh and someone please pull Jake's head out his ass!!!

[mkscrewy]

I’ll take any win against Pittsburg. And finally some fire from Patrick on Friedman no less

[AlaskaFlyerFan]

You guys are posting in the wrong thread...

[OccamsRazor]

3 minutes ago, AlaskaFlyerFan said:

You guys are posting in the wrong thread...

 

No I was answering mojo about what we were discussing the other day.

[mkscrewy]

14 hours ago, AlaskaFlyerFan said:

You guys are posting in the wrong thread...

oops