Post-Deadline Catch-up Notebook
Garland Integration, Sillinger Experiment, Werenski Absence, Deployment Woes, Playoff Chances
Apologies for the gap in coverage lately. Real-life was quite busy this week. The “newsletter” or whatever you call this was also busy but that involved putting a lot of film work into the next installment of Zach Werenski’s Season. That part was planned for this weekend until the wind-storm in Columbus knocked out by power from 3pm Friday to 6pm Sunday.
I’m working on some ways to ameliorate these gaps, especially with post-game tracking charts, but in the meantime I’ll be posting them all on BlueSky!
This is merely the first in the thread of posts with each version of the post-game visualizations.
Without further ado, into the storylines of the past week-and-a-bit.
The Garland Integration
Conor Garland has leapt onto the Blue Jackets roster and hit the ground running.
He has, simply put, been as good as he could have been reasonably expected to be. He brings a ton of energy and enthusiasm which manifests itself in playmaking and offensive movement speed. There’s not a lot of slowing the game down. This works for him because his deception and general squirrelly-ness gives him incredible escapability in tight spaces. The result is an outrageous number of off-puck slot chances and a number of rebounds that is difficult to believe.
This gives us some critical information with respect to Sean Monahan and Kent Johnson and what they need to be successful. First and foremost, both are great facilitators but they don’t necessarily play as fast as they possibly can. Monahan, in particular, is a very fast skater but prefers to deploy that skating as judiciously as possible. He prefers to maintain support and centrality rather than stress defenses.
Kent Johnson benefits from Garland’s pace and puck carrying as well. He’s long been an underrated off-puck mover and he’s completely capable of controlling the middle of the ice, but he’s not fast. As such, he cannot necessarily handle the full attention of a defense in the way many offensive scoring wing stars can.
Garland’s movement, alongside passing ability, appears to be just what he needs. I will point out, as I did before, that Kent Johnson’s offensive game was already in a good spot prior to Bowness’ scratching. Perhaps liberation from mistake-punishment was all he needed but there’s more to be said about what’s actually opening space for him. It’s not nastiness and hitting that makes his life easier, it’s someone to draw attention, to give him possessed pucks inside space and movement threat.
The Sillinger Experiment
Cole Sillinger has been perhaps the worst Blue Jacket since the Olympic break. And yet, it is him that receives the promotion to the top-line in Bowness’ first pass on line adjustments.
The treatment of other players begs the question, why is this one so different? Since the Olympic break Sillinger ranks last in xG differential/60 at 5v5, second last in most other categories and 5th last in CorsiDifferential/60. The only other contestant in this particular battle has been Erik Gudbranson.
The following chart is since Bowness’ arrival, which complicates the picture, but it’s quite clear that he hasn’t been a particularly positive contributor for quite some time.
The defensive aspects aren’t quite so dreadful, though he’s still around the bottom. It’s his offensive contributions that are quite bad. His at-best invisibility was most noticeable when placed alongside Marchenko and Fantilli but his capacity to degrade possession and waste puck-touches has gone unnoticed for far too long.
I agree that he’s been better this season. He’s a very active skater with significant improvement in physical engagement and his defensive stick creates a lot of opportunities. Still, the movement and rotations aren’t there. The decision-making, at both ends, isn’t there either.
His offensive contributions, despite receiving the second most 5v5 icetime since Bowness’ arrival in January, have been putrid. Worse than we ever saw from Kent Johnson.
At this point, I can only hope that Bowness decides to deploy some better lines.
Winning Without Werenski
I don’t have any particularly critical stats for this one, just some simple observations. Since the Olympic Break, save for his first game, Werenski has been mostly a shell of his former self.
To be expected, a sickness that sends you to the hospital, or requires an IV at least, and causes you to lose 10 lbs is quite obviously a serious one. He isn’t himself and we probably shouldn’t expect him to be.
I think the team should be commended for winning games in his absence and even with him when he’s not at full capacity.
Still, it must be said that his presence has been sorely missed. At 5v5 he has no points, despite being continually one of the better leaguewide producers at this strength, and his lack-of-gravity has had significant implications for the game quality. I don’t think we should be surprised that the “matchup line” doesn’t quite feel the same when his chemistry with Charlie Coyle was such a driving force.
In the games against LA and Utah, he made some uncharacteristic mistakes and was a big negative in terms of actual goals. While I do think he’s owns some of that responsibility, he was also quite letdown by some egregious defensive mistakes on the part of forwards.
In any case, should he re-integrate himself as the dominant offensive force he has been, the Blue Jackets might have an incredible time down the stretch. If not, the team may continue to struggle to put winnable games away.
Diminishing Returns and the Difficulty with A Full Roster
The Blue Jackets have added Conor Garland which has essentially but Dmitri Voronkov in competition with Danton Heinen and Miles Wood for scraps of ice-time. Lately, he’s been coming up short.
That leads me to the open question: is this team good enough to waste talent? Can we have an optimized roster and expect to make, let alone thrive, the playoffs?
I point to the simple matter of line deployment. Bowness moved Sillinger up alongside Adam Fantilli and Kirill Marchenko. Those two continued to succeed in-spite of him but it was deployed as a strong first unit.
The fourth line, comprised of Jenner-Lundestrom-Heinen (or Wood or Voronkov) has been used mostly as a secondary matchup line. Bowness is leaning hard on Coyle and Monahan to kill penalties which means he needs some checking to go around.
The third line, Johnson-Monahan-Garland, has been outright dominant yet those players struggle to get more than 12 minutes per night. This line has been outrageous. I do not understand why they can’t earn more playing time. Perhaps Bowness is expertly sheltering them, or feeding them prime offensive opportunity, but I see no reason to not give them more opportunities to create.
Perhaps the difficult game-states lately have more to do with line construction and ice-time allotment than any Werenski specific factors.
To that end, adding Garland is quite obviously a positive for specific, critical members of the roster and they could easily have significantly more points if Kent Johnson wasn’t so magnetized to posts. Perhaps I’m simply wringing my hands at luck and looking for someone to blame.
Still, if adding him removes a good player and scorer in Dmitri Voronkov, and we’re eager to assign more minutes to a fourth line while overdeploying a struggling “grit” player in Cole Sillinger, have we really made this team that much better?
There’s plenty of time to figure it out but the initial sequence of line-tinkering doesn’t exactly breed confidence.
On a mild-tangent, I find it quite interesting how many of the veteran players are “playing through something” or at the very least taking off-days.
Werenski, Fabbro, Provorov, Jenner, Coyle, Monahan, Marchment. Too many of those players are UFAs for my taste. Consider, then, that veterancy and aging bodies might also struggle to maintain health leading into the playoffs. Perhaps wear and tear should be more highly considered for teams that want to make extended runs.
Playoff Probability and Character Performances
The Blue Jackets have taken few regulation losses in Bowness’ tenure behind the bench. As such, they continue to ascend up the playoff probability chart. Sometimes I think these sorts of things are useless in this use-case but it’s interesting enough to share.
The Blue Jackets, by most models, have one of the better probabilities of making the playoffs. Rarely is it more than 60% probability, which is itself only slightly more than a coinflip, but you have to be quite happy with how results have gone thus far.
Despite lacking a peak Zach Werenski, the Blue Jackets have been one of the best 5v5 teams since the Olympic Break. Maybe they are winning at an “unsustainable pace” but they’ve at least got some under-the-hood bona-fides to back it up.
All of their other most-near teams, Montreal, Islanders, Pittsbrugh, Boston, Detroit, have far worse 5v5 numbers. The Blue Jackets’ Special Teams aren’t exactly breeding confidence at the moment, so buyer beware, but there’s simply much more to hang a hat on. Ottawa is in much the same boat. If their goaltending turns around, they might help the Blue Jackets displace another Wildcard team.
Apologies for the extremely busy viz here but I think it contains the more critical intangible winning experiences from recent performance. The Blue Jackets finally strung together some comeback performances.
That left side, signifying losing often when down, has been quite the impending terror. The Blue Jackets score the first goal often, perhaps too often, and have their fair share of troubles even keeping those leads. But lately, they’ve added some comeback performances on top that, I believe, should give the group belief.
The most important character on that particular front has been Kirill Marchenko. He’s scored absolutely massive goals, single handedly defeating Philadelphia with opening period and shootout heroics. At the same time, the 5v5 glow-up of Adam Fantilli has been spectacular over the same time period.
The Blue Jackets have three games against Carolina that will be a real test of these 5v5 metrics. Outside of those, not that they can take any games from granted, they have a veritable tour of the Atlantic Division that could all be critical: 2x Montreal, 2x Boston, 1x Detroit and 1x Buffalo.