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***Scrufdaddy*** · 01-03-2019, 03:56 AM

Slip McScruff's Greatest Hits, S44 Regular Season Edition
by SD, for the Sim Herald

Hey folks, I'm coming at you today with the long overdue S44 Regular Season analysis of Slip McScruff's Greatest Hits. The IT nerds at the Sim Herald put a lot of work into the Greatest Hits tool which really streamlined the process, and we've survived the massive influx of news from this passed off-season, so future Greatest Hits analysis should be much more timely. In fact, you can see a recent analysis I was able to crank out on the enforcers in the Prospects Showcase.

This Regular Season analysis is going to call back to the Preseason edition in order to track improvements and goals for the season, so that is worth a skim.

Before getting into in-depth analysis, we should touch upon Slip's high level season stats. First of all, Slip saw 621 minutes of ice time in the regular season, an increase over the 615 minutes in the preseason. So the sample size of his performance is almost totally even and I won't need to perform any AMG based adjustment.

Second, Slip had a decidedly more offensive time in the regular season, likely due to his pairing with Gordie Maple at the end of the season. He notched 10 points in the regular season, compared to just 4 in the preseason, which could be an indication that he saw more offensive minutes than before. With this particular tool, we can analyze his effectiveness at giving and taking hits, but in the absence of a Corsi metric, we should be careful about correlating the season over season change to raw HIT / HTT with a change in contribution to the team. (That is to say, repeatedly stripping the puck on the back-check and getting it out to the offensive zone would result in less hits than repeatedly stripping on the back-check and failing to clear the zone.)

Lastly, Slip had a not so great -2 goal differential in the regular season as opposed to a stellar +12 in the preseason. This difference is striking, however it's a trend we also see for the team as a whole, rather than an individual failing. In the preseason, the Crows had two skaters slightly negative, then the rest of the team ranging from +5 to +25. In the regular season, eight skaters finished negative with just five skaters ranging from +6 to +12. While the Crows went on to win the cup this season, they did so with a +11 differential instead of the luxurious +42 they had in the preseason.

Hits Analysis
Hit Stats:

Code:
1st: 15 strips on 18 hits

2nd: 16 strips on 20 hits

3rd: 15 strips on 18 hits

Total: 46 strips on 56 hits (82.1%)

Preseason Total: 48 strips on 64 hits (75.0%)

Hits Taken Stats:

Code:
1st: 3 strips on 3 hits taken

2nd: 6 strips on 9 hits taken

3rd: 11 strips on 11 hits taken

Total: 20 strips on 23 hits taken (87.0%)

Preseason Total: 14 strips on 15 hits taken (93.3%)

In the regular season, we saw Slip's raw HITs go down and his raw HTTs go up, but his effectiveness in each of those categories saw definite improvement. He stripped the puck 7.1% more often on hits and gave up the puck 6.3% less on hits taken. In regards to hit count and effectiveness, there isn't a severe drop off in the 3rd period like we saw in the preseason, which can likely be attributed to an increased Endurance and dumb luck. We don't have the preseason data about the spread of hits taken across periods, but here we see a trending of more hits taken later in the game. That's something to keep an eye on for future analysis in case that trend keeps up.

There are three Slip Hit targets of note this season, Cody Johansen (@Marko04) , Mister McCarty (@Mark H), and Eero Makinen (@mcgriddleluver). Johansen (MTL) and McCarty (HAL) both proved to be easy pickings for Slip, giving up 100% of strips on 4 and 3 hits respectively. Johansen should have been a tougher opponent given his much better strength and puck handling, but he took on average 3 times as many hits as Slip, so he may have been worn down frequently. McCarty was a similar story, outclassing Slip in strength but taking 2 times as many hits, however McCarty also had a drastically lower endurance to begin with. Makinen (DET) is the exact opposite because he's the only player to have resisted Slip's advances twice in throughout the season. There isn't anything standing out to give Makinen the edge, so we'll have to blame the alignment of the celestial bodies.

As for hits that Slip took, there were four people that got to Slip more than once: Nat Emerson (@Thelastheraclid), Arsene Arsenich (@Kris), Bust (@Smirnov Light), and Luke Thomason (@"luketd"). Thomason also joins Eero Niemi (@spooked) and Vegeta Muerto (@Vegeta) as the three skaters who managed a hit on Slip that didn't strip the puck. The only thing that stands out here is Arsenich dummying Slip twice with such low strength and average puck handling. There aren't enough repeat hits from the same individual to make any conclusions here, so this is more of a mention to stop picking on poor, dumb Slip.

My predictions from the preseason analysis:

Quote:We should hope to see some dramatic improvement in his ability to hold onto the puck and maybe more hits in general from an improved ability to keep up with players, but his late game hits will continue to fall off until he trains up his Endurance.

From that, we can see I was right in terms of holding onto the puck and seem to be right about 3rd period improvements from the bit of endurance training. Where I missed the mark was raw number of hits which actually went down by 12.5%.

Penalty Analysis
Penalties by Period:

Code:
1st: 8

2nd: 5

3rd: 6

Total: 19

Preseason Total: 23

Skating Penalties by Period: (defined as Holding or Tripping)

Code:
1st: 1

2nd: 2

3rd: 1

Total: 4

Preseason Total: 7

Penalties by Type:

Code:
Roughing - 6

Hooking - 4

Tripping - 3

High Sticking - 2

Holding - 1

Interference - 1

Holding Stick -1

There are two main takeaways here. First, the Skating training really paid off as we see a 42.9% reduction in Skating Penalties from 7 to 4. Second, is the distribution of penalties between periods show that the Endurance training paid off. We saw it with the Hits no longer dropping off in effectiveness later in the games, and we see it here with the penalties being more evenly distributed between periods. As to be expected, Roughing and Hooking are primary contributors to Slip's PIMs, however there is an interesting decline in High Sticking from 5 in the preseason to 2 in the regular. We don't know what exactly goes into High Sticking, so we'll have to keep an eye on that to see if it's just a fluke.

Predictions
For the next season, Slip has focused on his Defense, Puck Handling, Skating, and a small bit of Strength. All of these ratings play into the effectiveness of his hits, so we should hope to see that effectiveness % keep climbing. We may see a regression in 3rd period performance as he did not drastically increase Endurance, however he will be playing top pair and PK minutes. With a dramatic improvement over the offseason, we should see a new bar being set with the S45 preseason with the new effects of top line minutes, but then Slip will be at his prime until he gets called up for the Jets. That means we'll have a chance to monitor a relatively stable state until his call up to see what patterns hold.

SD

Quote:Word Count: ~1400

DeletedAtUserRequest · 01-03-2019, 06:20 AM

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