With the preseason behind us and a rough idea of how everyone has performed thus far I wanted to go ahead and take a look at the St. Louis Scarecrows and how their preseason shaped up. I will be going through a brief analysis of the team and how their grading performed. Enjoy!

To get things started, let's take a look at the overall team performance over their 7 games. The Scarecrows went 4-2-1 with a 27-24 goal differential. There Home record over the course of these three games was 3-0-1 (goal differential of 20-13) with an Away record of 1-2-0 (goal differential of 7-11). At first glance, it would appear that home-ice advantage may be a big deal for the Scarecrows moving forward into the regular season, and this could definitely be true. The team as a whole will definitely need to figure out what it is that allows them to put their opponents on their heels at home and do that while on the road.

Overall, the team performed well in the games they played in. The team as a whole was very even in terms of offensive grading and defensive grading, with a grade of 60 in each category (overall average grade of 61 somehow). The offensive grades ranged from 49-75 and the defensive grades ranged from 47 to 87. The distribution of said grades can be seen using the following graphs.



As can be seen, the majority of the players on the team hovered in the 50-60 grade range, with a huge outlier in the defensive grading. Overall, this indicates that the team is playing at worst on par with their opponents and at best better than their competition.

Now let's do the same kind of analysis for the players.


From taking a look at the centers, they appear to be performing even or slightly better than their opponents in all categories. The only category where there is anyone below is a single player between 45-50 DGR, indicating that they are slightly worse than their opponents when on the defensive side of the puck. All in all though, yet again, the players are performing very well.


Again, nothing surprising here given the overall team outlook. The Left Wings are also performing their jobs exceptionally well, especially on the offensive side of the puck.


Hey look, a little more spread this time. There are obviously some Right Wings for the team that are a cut above the rest of their opponents and it shows here.


And now we come to the defense. As can be seen, there is definitely a separation between the top pairs and the bottom pairs. On the defensive side of the game, all defenders are performing at worst on pair with the opposing offense, and some players well above. Offensive side is a bit worse with a player under 50 but still overall not too shabby (especially when you take into consideration how well the forwards perform).

Last, but certainly not least, we have the goalies. Since there are only 2 of them, there is no point in doing a distribution chart. We can use the more traditional stats in addition to overall GR.

Elizabeth Doyle, who is a maxed out tender, is sitting pretty at a 2.95 GAA with a 0.922 SV% for a GR of 78. Richard Majors, a freshly drafted tender, is sitting at a 3.67 GAA with a 0.878 SV% for a GR of 59. As we all know, the goaltender is heavily reliant on the team out front of them and a great goalie will buckle behind a bad team and vice-versa. The Scarecrows are in good hands with this duo though and should feel confident no matter who is in net.

I hope you enjoyed this brief analysis of the St. Louis Scarecrows preseason.