The Sharks scored four even strength goals last night. These goals came against two different forward lines.
Cleary-Zetterberg-Filppula and Brunnstrom-Helm-Hudler
For all four goals the trio of forwards was on the ice well in advance of the goal being scored. Lets take a closer look at the historical performance of theses line combos.
Frequent references will be made to my previous article where I solve the Red Wings problems with the perfect line combos.
All stats are going back through the 2009 season and do not include the game against the sharks. Yesterday’s article went back through 2008 but due to ongoing development on my local computer the 2008 season is being refreshed and unavailable at the moment.
Cleary-Zetterberg-Filpulla
So historically this line hasn’t been terrible, but it hasn’t been great either. The results look even worse when we see that both of Zetterberg’s goals were of the empty net variety. So the Red Wings have never scored a real goal with these three forwards on the ice. Compare this trio’s performance to the results when Franzen is swapped in for Cleary.
| 0 Hours, 55 Minutes, 50 Seconds | Goals | Assists |
|---|---|---|
| Filpulla | 0 | 1 |
| Zetterberg | 2 | 0 |
| Cleary | 0 | 1 |
| Wings | 2 | - |
| Wings Opponents | 1 | - |
Cleary-Zetterberg
Cleary and Zetterberg have spent a lot of time together over the years and the results have been fairly equivocal. Still the Wings have been outscored when these two are on the ice. I think we can do better than that. Further analysis shows that 9 of the Wings goals in this situation were into an empty net.
| 15 hours, 49 MINUTES, 4 SECONDS | GOALS | ASSISTS |
|---|---|---|
| Cleary | 12 | 16 |
| Zetterberg | 15 | 20 |
| Wings | 48 | - |
| Wings Opponents | 51 | - |
Cleary-Filppula
This pair has not been terrible but once again the stats are relatively unremarkable. 2 of the goals for the Wings were into an empty net.
| 7 HOURS, 45 MINUTES, 27 SECONDS | GOALS | ASSISTS |
|---|---|---|
| Cleary | 8 | 7 |
| Filppula | 3 | 12 |
| Wings | 18 | - |
| Wings Opponents | 16 | - |
Zetterberg-Filppula
Oh hey guys look at this! The wings outscore the competition by just better than 2-1 with this pair on the ice. And as a I proposed earlier when Franzen is added the wings have outscored their opponents 11-1.
Further analysis shows that 6 of the 34 Wings goals with Zetterberg-Filppula on ice where empty netters while only 1 of the goals allowed was without Howard in net.
Only 1 of the 11 goals scored with Zetterberg-Filppula-Franzen together was an empty netter. And the single goal allowed was also with the opponent goalie pulled in a 6-5 situation.
| 8 HOURS, 2 MINUTES, 33 SECONDS | GOALS | ASSISTS |
|---|---|---|
| Zetterberg | 14 | 8 |
| Filppula | 5 | 16 |
| Wings | 34 | - |
| Wings Opponents | 15 | - |
If we were to eliminate all empty net goals and look at Zetterberg-Filppula Without Franzen. They have 6h 42m with 18 Goals For and 13 Goals Against so the fact that the above table looks so good is mostly attributable to the performance of the Filppula-Zetterberg With Franzen line. Keep This Line Together!!!
Brunnstrom-Helm-Hudler
We are simple going to leave Brunnstrom out of this because he hasn’t logged enough ice time to really matter. We will just take a quick look at Hudler-Helm
| 2 HOURS, 27 MINUTES, 39 SECONDS | GOALS | ASSISTS |
|---|---|---|
| Hudler | 1 | 4 |
| Helm | 2 | 3 |
| Wings | 5 | - |
| Wings Opponents | 3 | - |
In summary, I really do not understand why we put skater’s together who have not had historical success or why we split up lines that have played well historically and recently.
But I guess that’s why I am just a nerd with a database that has a couple of gigs of hockey data in it and not a player or coach or something….