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Around the League 2019-2025 Edition

The Bruins still have a devastating forward group, good goaltending, and a stud dman. They'll be good.
 
zeke said:
The Bruins still have a devastating forward group, good goaltending, and a stud dman. They'll be good.
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Probably, but for the first time in many years the bones for rapid and significant decline are there. Bergeron and Krejci taking a step towards aging in their mid 30s, or marchand's late career rise to superstardom coming to an end in his early 30s. Either would do it.
 
MindzEye said:
Probably, but for the first time in many years the bones for rapid and significant decline are there. Bergeron and Krejci taking a step towards aging in their mid 30s, or marchand's late career rise to superstardom coming to an end in his early 30s. Either would do it.
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i'd say krejci has already taken that step back. but the add of Smith this offseason was pretty genius. he's really good, and along with coyle debrusk kase that's a great group of middle 6ers.

but yeah, a lot relies on that superline up front. any one of them takes a significant step back and they have issues.
 
Yup still an awesome team but clearly not as awesome as in years past. They have some solid young pieces but I'm not sure they'll be able to recover from one of their 2 backbones up front declining. Could happen any year really.
 
but there's no doubt their dcorps is in rough rough shape.

Grezlcyk has to go from dermott usage all the way up to top pair usage, and i'm not sure he dominated enough against easy usage to make that jump smoothly. Meanwhile, Carlo is tres mediocre and might be in real tough without a puckmover like Krug beside him.

relying on the corpse of John Moore to be a top 4 guy seems a large stretch, and i'm not sure any of their youngsters are anything to write home about back there.
 
What we really need to happen is for Marchand to come apart at the seams the same way other little guys like Tucker & Clark did in their early 30’s.

Or for Bergeron to finally start showing his age. Until then, the Bruins will probably continue being pretty good.
 
I like Grizz but yeah it's a big ask. I'd be more concerned about their second pairing, though I feel I'm a touch unfair to Carlo. He's probably pretty good.
 
Looking long term, as awesome as pastrnak is, I think it's reasonable to question what he is when that super line gets old. We have seen similar lines before where the whole was greater than the sum of its (admittedly, incredible) parts. I think of that heatley-spezza-alfie line in ottawa that was obscene for a few years but then never the same (though still very good) when alfie lost a step to age.
 
I've been playing around with evolvingwild's numbers a bit and specifically with their 3yr-weighted-sample player grades. I don't think they're perfect (both with the 3yr sample maybe overrating older players, and with of course qoc still somewhat underestimated though at least its in there), and you can really get a sense of how good some of those bruins forwards have been.

Again, though, i would tend to think that the older players (Thornton, Bergeron, etc) here should likely be graded lower, even though admittedly they are already utilizing comprehensive aging curve data so maybe they're right.

And I do think some guys with great grades in lower ice time / usage (Smith, Gourde, Killorn, Maroon, Kaseetc.) are probably graded too high too.

Matthews 99 --- Pastrnak 99 --- Point 99
Tavares 93 ---- Marchand 99 --- Kucherov 99
Marner 91 ----- Bergeron 96 --- Stamkos 96

Nylander 84 --- Smith 90 ------- Cirelli 93
Thornton 72 --- Debrusk 88 ---- Killorn 91
Kerfoot 70 ----- Coyle 79 ------- Gourde 85

Hyman 67 ----- Krejci 78 ------- Coleman 81
Mikheyev 54 --- Kase 71 -------- Palat 75
Engvall 52 ------ Bork 50 ------- Maroon 59

Boyd 48 ------ Lindholm 39 ----- Johnson 56
Spezza 46 ---- Ritchie 22 ------- Joseph 53
Vesey 45 ------ Kuraly 10 ------- Goodrow 45
Simmonds 5 -- Wagner 7 ------ Stephens 38


Funnily enough, it's on the dcorps where Toronto shines more:


Muzzin 92 ----- McAvoy 98 ----- Hedman 99
Rielly 88 ------- Grezlcyk 72 ---- Sergachev 79

Brodie 82 ------ Carlo 41 -------- Cernak 71
Dermott 78 ---- Moore 8 ------- McDonagh 67

Holl 34 -------- xxxxxxxxxx ------- Rutta 43
Bogosian 21 --- XXXXXXX ------- Schenn 3

and to be even fairer, Grezlcyk and Sergachev's usage has been in closer to a Dermott kind of role than a top pair role, so really they should probably be lined up against Dermott in this comp.

If i were to line them up based on usage off the top of my head:

Rielly 88 ------- McAvoy 98 ------ McDonagh 67
Muzzin 92 ----- xxxxxxxxxxx ------ Hedman 99

Brodie 82 ----- xxxxxxxxxxx ------ xxxxxxxxxx
Holl 34 --------- Carlo 41 -------- Cernak 71

Dermott 78 ---- Grezlcyk 72 ----- Sergachev 79
Bogosian 21 ---- Moore 8 -------- Rutta 43
 
MindzEye said:
Looking long term, as awesome as pastrnak is, I think it's reasonable to question what he is when that super line gets old. We have seen similar lines before where the whole was greater than the sum of its (admittedly, incredible) parts. I think of that heatley-spezza-alfie line in ottawa that was obscene for a few years but then never the same (though still very good) when alfie lost a step to age.
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and that line gets very specific usage too. while they get elite qoc, they actually don't get huge minutes - especially Bergeron whose minutes are strictly limited at ES. And possession-wise it's bergy and marchand who do the heavy lifting, while pastrnak seems to ride their coattails to the scoring glory.

the other thing of course is how devestating their PP has been. it's imo the most beautiful in the league. but then again, Krug was a big part of that constantly morphing interchangeable unguardable PP.
 
zeke said:
I've been playing around with evolvingwild's numbers a bit and specifically with their 3yr-weighted-sample player grades. I don't think they're perfect (both with the 3yr sample maybe overrating older players, and with of course qoc still somewhat underestimated though at least its in there), and you can really get a sense of how good some of those bruins forwards have been.

Again, though, i would tend to think that the older players (Thornton, Bergeron, etc) here should likely be graded lower, even though admittedly they are already utilizing comprehensive aging curve data so maybe they're right.

And I do think some guys with great grades in lower ice time / usage (Smith, Gourde, Killorn, Maroon, Kaseetc.) are probably graded too high too.

Matthews 99 --- Pastrnak 99 --- Point 99
Tavares 93 ---- Marchand 99 --- Kucherov 99
Marner 91 ----- Bergeron 96 --- Stamkos 96

Nylander 84 --- Smith 90 ------- Cirelli 93
Thornton 72 --- Debrusk 88 ---- Killorn 91
Kerfoot 70 ----- Coyle 79 ------- Gourde 85

Hyman 67 ----- Krejci 78 ------- Coleman 81
Mikheyev 54 --- Kase 71 -------- Palat 75
Engvall 52 ------ Bork 50 ------- Maroon 59

Boyd 48 ------ Lindholm 39 ----- Johnson 56
Spezza 46 ---- Ritchie 22 ------- Joseph 53
Vesey 45 ------ Kuraly 10 ------- Goodrow 45
Simmonds 5 -- Wagner 7 ------ Stephens 38


Funnily enough, it's on the dcorps where Toronto shines more:


Muzzin 92 ----- McAvoy 98 ----- Hedman 99
Rielly 88 ------- Grezlcyk 72 ---- Sergachev 79

Brodie 82 ------ Carlo 41 -------- Cernak 71
Dermott 78 ---- Moore 8 ------- McDonagh 67

Holl 34 -------- xxxxxxxxxx ------- Rutta 43
Bogosian 21 --- XXXXXXX ------- Schenn 3

and to be even fairer, Grezlcyk and Sergachev's usage has been in closer to a Dermott kind of role than a top pair role, so really they should probably be lined up against Dermott in this comp.

If i were to line them up based on usage off the top of my head:

Rielly 88 ------- McAvoy 98 ------ McDonagh 67
Muzzin 92 ----- xxxxxxxxxxx ------ Hedman 99

Brodie 82 ----- xxxxxxxxxxx ------ xxxxxxxxxx
Holl 34 --------- Carlo 41 -------- Cernak 71

Dermott 78 ---- Grezlcyk 72 ----- Sergachev 79
Bogosian 21 ---- Moore 8 -------- Rutta 43
Click to expand...

In case you were wondering:


Johnsson 53
Kapanen 45

Barrie 46
Ceci 14
 
Trying some different stuff with different numbers.

Dom finished all his Canadian team projections based on his Game Score Above Average stat. I wanted to line them up side by side to see how they all compared. I decided to keep it simple to remove any zeke bias and just line them up from best rating to worst, even though this is a bit misleading in cases where usage is dramatic different. But its a good start at least. Maybe later I will try to adjust to compare more role to role.

I decided to try something new and try to heatmap the comparison - the bluer the better, the redder the worse, to see quickly generally how each fares. But remember this heatmap is only about how the teams compare directly to each other, and doesn't consider the rest of the league or league average at all.

Anyways, here's my first go:

20201231_132811.jpg


Of note, Dom's numbers are actually much lower on the leafs than others that ill try to do the same thing for soon.
 
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