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9.21.2014

Tbirds shutout in home opener, zone entries

I'm running a little short on time today but I wanted to put up some quick thoughts about last night and give everyone the zone entries.


  • Seattle started a bit flat (shocking considering the pomp and circumstance surrounding team intros) and it cost them an early goal. It was a goal that wound up being the game winner for Everett as Silvertips goaltender Carter Hart was fantastic earning the 26 save shutout.
  • While Hart was very good for Everett but I also thought Seattle put way too many shots right into his chest and at the end of the game wound up putting way too many shots wide of the net.
  • Obviously, nobody scored last night for Seattle but this was precisely my concern going into the season. There are going to be nights when the top line doesn't score and you're going to need some other guys to step forward and last night that didn't happen.
  • Taran Kozun played well again and I see no reason why he won't be the guy going forward. Hard to imagine them not keeping him around.
Zone entries. Several disclaimers here. One, we cannot possibly make any conclusions from these numbers. It is one game. This was more for my enjoyment and for fun to see what it looked like within the context of one game. Two, I'm sure I missed things. So don't assume these are 100% accurate, they aren't. Three, tracking these numbers is very subjective. For instance, Jared Hauf and Ethan Bear both took shots from around center ice that resulted in shots on goal. I think I counted the Hauf one as a dump because we had players going towards the zone and I didn't count Bear's because everyone was going for a change. These kind of judgment calls happened all game and it's pretty tough. So what I might consider a carry-in and a dump is not going to be exactly the same as other people.

With all of that out of the way... here you go.

20 Dumps
8 Possessions Gained (40%)
4 Shots (20%)

32 Carry-ins
22 Possessions Gained (68.75%)
10 Shots (31.25%)

Seattle actually carried the puck a lot more than I thought they would. That's a really good sign. They started the game dump heavy and that is when they fell behind and had only 3 or 4 shots. As the carries went up, the shots went up. However, the 31.25% shot percentage on possessions gained is way too low. Gropp, just for example, had 5 carries that only resulted in 1 shot on goal. Seattle has to find a way to get the puck to the net more. As you can see, the way to do that... is NOT to dump the puck in more. As low as I thought the "Carry Shots" were they still outpaced the number of shots on goal gained with dumps.

Barzal, not surprisingly, lead the team in carries with 8. 7 of those resulted in possession and 4 resulted in shots on goal. Pretty good on a night where he can definitely play better.




6 comments :

Anonymous said...

I agree.. Sitting behind the net last night, I had a good view of the quality of shots and who was taking them. Really hoping that the new guys Holowko, Elder, Volcan, and Baltram don't wind up to be the 2nd coming of Wray, Holub, Folk, and Senturin. We have seen our fair share of Farwell draft picks that can skate fairly well but can't shoot for anything.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't any of those guys who were shooting wide though. Unfortunately it was mostly Henry, Smith and Bear. Hopefully just a one of those games kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

where is Calvin spencer? is he hurt?

Anonymous said...

I heard Spencer has mono.

Anonymous said...

One thing I've noticed during the first two games is that the T-Birds appear to be a better posession team this year (small sample size I realize). If they can keep that up, the goals will start to come, have to believe when Theodore returns from injury they'll be even better in terms of posession.

Unknown said...

Again, since we are only two games in it is hard to judge anything, but so far the T-Birds have been out shooting their opponents by a total of 19 (63 for, 44 against). I bring this up because last season we were out shot by a total of 177 shots (2300 shots for, 2477 shots against... Just regular season). I think the most impressive stat so far is that they have only given up 6 shots in the 3rd period (4 shots and 2 shots). Now I understand that there is no way we can get through the entire season and only give up an average of 3 shots in the third period, but if we can manage to keep the average shots on goal to below 10 per period (and therefore below 30 shots per game), that could make a huge difference. Just for reference, last season we gave up an average of 34.4 shots per game (11.75 shots in the 1st, 11.04 shots in the 2nd, 11 shots in the 3rd, and 2.44 shots in the 18 OT games we played in).

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