Maybe Matty’s just doing a Julio, start with a slump, then get back up to normal production, and then just go god mode in like February.
EelsEverywhere
Calder Curse
He’ll be fine but he needs a bit more bulk to really succeed
Give that man a GNC gift card already
DJwalrus
To my untrained eye it looks like hes being utilized differently in the scheme.
Its like hes ending up in high traffic areas and shut down quickly. He is better able to utilize his skill more with some open ice.
Whereas kartye is a better fit for this system.
figure32
That extensions looking like less of a cap hit right now at least
refdaddy
He’s getting hit way too much. Probably a result of his success last season. Without Tanev out there to protect him, who’s going to?
Dymills77
From what I’ve seen they are using him like Yanni, they’ve got him hustling hard and playing good defense and battling for pucks. It looks to me like they kinda said “we know you can score, but we need to work on your other skills right now”
Wompie
Matty has been one of the worst players on the team and it’s unfortunate. They moved McCann around to try to get him going, and now Bjorkstrand as well.
The problem we’re running into is that we can’t move Matty down to line 2 or 3 because nobody is better as far as centers go. We’re so weak at that position, but we really need to get Matty taking on less of a burden than he currently is right now.
I’m hoping for a trade for a center. I’d expect Eberle and Wennberg to go this year, so they could be chips for something.
MartialSpark
Eh, +/- is something you should never care about. I’d say it’s a useless stat, but it’s worse than that. [A low +/- is actually a positive indicator about a player as often as it is a negative one.](https://www.arcticicehockey.com/how-useful-is-raw-1550494216/) This happens because you tend to throw good players onto the ice to cut the bleeding, so they end up in crappy situations. Being on the power play is bad your for +/-, because you can get shortied and get a minus, but scoring on the PP doesn’t give a plus. Getting empty netted still counts against you. It’s a counting stat, so it basically either goes up or down with TOI and which direction it goes doesn’t really have all that much to do with how the player is playing.
It’s also bad because there is a bunch of randomness in goals, and they are fairly rare events. It takes a REALLY long time for goal based stats to converge to how a player is actually doing. Shot based stats are generally preferred just because they have less randomness in them, happen way more often, and converge to actual performance much more quickly.
If you sort by TOI/GP, you see that Matty and Wennberg are leading the team in TOI. That maps onto what I already said about +/-. Playing lots of minutes gets you an extreme +/-, and Wennberg is our most positive player with Matty being our most negative.
If you look at the CF and CA columns, you’ll see their Corsi (shot attempt) numbers. Beniers is actually outperforming Wennberg a bit here. Looking at the xGF and xGA columns Wennberg has a little edge on Beniers, but the numbers aren’t drastically different. The Corsi favoring Beniers but xG favoring Wennberg suggests that Benier’s lines have let up some higher danger chances, which I think we’ve all seen. There have been some notable giveaway to goal situations for Matty, and that is bad.
I also want to call out PDO though, which is kind of the luck stat. It is just shooting percentage + save percentage while they player is on the nice. So a big PDO means getting a good SV% out of your goalie and great SH% from your linemates. Wennberg is at 1.04, and Beniers is at 0.93. That suggests that Wennberg has had a bit more luck with him with the times he happens to be on the ice. He’s gotten more of the great stand-on-head goalie saves and awesome snipes, where Beniers has gotten more of the leaky goals and off-target shots.
Finally we can bookend all this with cumulative xG differential. Beniers is at -1.3, so he’s not really doing great. Do keep in mind though what he’s been up against. Our difficulty of schedule has been insane, so he’s mostly been out there playing against REALLY good lines. Only being at -1.3 might not be really all that bad against that level of competition.
So for Matty, I think the story is similar to what I said for the team. His play has been a little bit worse, he’s been playing against really tough opposition, and the guy is having just no puck luck at all. I don’t think he really needs to change too much, just the little incremental stuff guys always do to lock down their play and keep improving. The luck will swing back around at some point, and we won’t be playing such stiff competition forever.
It just looks and feels REALLY bad when you slump a bit, get unlucky, and also play the hardest teams at all the same time.
9 Comments
It’s 10 games. Chill.
Maybe Matty’s just doing a Julio, start with a slump, then get back up to normal production, and then just go god mode in like February.
Calder Curse
He’ll be fine but he needs a bit more bulk to really succeed
Give that man a GNC gift card already
To my untrained eye it looks like hes being utilized differently in the scheme.
Its like hes ending up in high traffic areas and shut down quickly. He is better able to utilize his skill more with some open ice.
Whereas kartye is a better fit for this system.
That extensions looking like less of a cap hit right now at least
He’s getting hit way too much. Probably a result of his success last season. Without Tanev out there to protect him, who’s going to?
From what I’ve seen they are using him like Yanni, they’ve got him hustling hard and playing good defense and battling for pucks. It looks to me like they kinda said “we know you can score, but we need to work on your other skills right now”
Matty has been one of the worst players on the team and it’s unfortunate. They moved McCann around to try to get him going, and now Bjorkstrand as well.
The problem we’re running into is that we can’t move Matty down to line 2 or 3 because nobody is better as far as centers go. We’re so weak at that position, but we really need to get Matty taking on less of a burden than he currently is right now.
I’m hoping for a trade for a center. I’d expect Eberle and Wennberg to go this year, so they could be chips for something.
Eh, +/- is something you should never care about. I’d say it’s a useless stat, but it’s worse than that. [A low +/- is actually a positive indicator about a player as often as it is a negative one.](https://www.arcticicehockey.com/how-useful-is-raw-1550494216/) This happens because you tend to throw good players onto the ice to cut the bleeding, so they end up in crappy situations. Being on the power play is bad your for +/-, because you can get shortied and get a minus, but scoring on the PP doesn’t give a plus. Getting empty netted still counts against you. It’s a counting stat, so it basically either goes up or down with TOI and which direction it goes doesn’t really have all that much to do with how the player is playing.
It’s also bad because there is a bunch of randomness in goals, and they are fairly rare events. It takes a REALLY long time for goal based stats to converge to how a player is actually doing. Shot based stats are generally preferred just because they have less randomness in them, happen way more often, and converge to actual performance much more quickly.
[This on-ice chart from Natural Stat Trick](https://www.naturalstattrick.com/playerteams.php?fromseason=20232024&thruseason=20232024&stype=2&sit=all&score=all&stdoi=oi&rate=y&team=SEA&pos=F&loc=B&toi=0&gpfilt=none&fd=&td=&tgp=410&lines=single&draftteam=ALL) is a good place to look to understand what’s going on with Matty.
If you sort by TOI/GP, you see that Matty and Wennberg are leading the team in TOI. That maps onto what I already said about +/-. Playing lots of minutes gets you an extreme +/-, and Wennberg is our most positive player with Matty being our most negative.
If you look at the CF and CA columns, you’ll see their Corsi (shot attempt) numbers. Beniers is actually outperforming Wennberg a bit here. Looking at the xGF and xGA columns Wennberg has a little edge on Beniers, but the numbers aren’t drastically different. The Corsi favoring Beniers but xG favoring Wennberg suggests that Benier’s lines have let up some higher danger chances, which I think we’ve all seen. There have been some notable giveaway to goal situations for Matty, and that is bad.
I also want to call out PDO though, which is kind of the luck stat. It is just shooting percentage + save percentage while they player is on the nice. So a big PDO means getting a good SV% out of your goalie and great SH% from your linemates. Wennberg is at 1.04, and Beniers is at 0.93. That suggests that Wennberg has had a bit more luck with him with the times he happens to be on the ice. He’s gotten more of the great stand-on-head goalie saves and awesome snipes, where Beniers has gotten more of the leaky goals and off-target shots.
Finally we can bookend all this with cumulative xG differential. Beniers is at -1.3, so he’s not really doing great. Do keep in mind though what he’s been up against. Our difficulty of schedule has been insane, so he’s mostly been out there playing against REALLY good lines. Only being at -1.3 might not be really all that bad against that level of competition.
So for Matty, I think the story is similar to what I said for the team. His play has been a little bit worse, he’s been playing against really tough opposition, and the guy is having just no puck luck at all. I don’t think he really needs to change too much, just the little incremental stuff guys always do to lock down their play and keep improving. The luck will swing back around at some point, and we won’t be playing such stiff competition forever.
It just looks and feels REALLY bad when you slump a bit, get unlucky, and also play the hardest teams at all the same time.