It's early in the season and things can occasionally get weird. For example, UMass is undefeated through three games. No one saw that coming, nor should they have.
And sure, UMass is 3-0 because it's shooting almost 17 percent to start the year against weak competition (and still has a sub-40 corsi-for!), so that helps. But still, the record is illustrative of the fact that this is a time of year when very odd things happen. Perhaps the oddest though — odder than a 3-0 Minutemen club — is what's happening out in Mankato.
The Minnesota State Mavericks, who dominated the WCHA last season and were clearly one of the 10 or 15 best teams in the nation regardless of conference affiliations, are currently 0-4 to start the year. That gets them halfway to the number they lost for the entirety of last season.
But why they're losing is no great mystery: They've scored two goals in four games, and conceded 12. Getting outscored 3-0.5 on average is a good way to lose a lot of games, but moreover, they haven't scored a goal since early in the third period of their first game, meaning they've gone 195:23 without a goal. Which is a long time.
[Play Yahoo Daily Fantasy and get a 100% deposit bonus with your first deposit]
Of course, the hallmark of teams coached by Mike Hastings — coming off signing an eight-year contract extension this summer — is that they are possession juggernauts. He clearly has a system that keeps the puck on his team's sticks for the vast majority of the game; last year they had the best corsi- and fenwick-for in the nation at 57.9 percent and 58.2 percent, respectively, as well as the best numbers when the score was close. And maybe you'd say there's a cause for concern if that had eluded them. But no, the Mavs are currently eighth and 11th nationwide in corsi- (60.4 percent) and fenwick-for (58.7 percent), respectively. So clearly there's something else at play here.
And when you're taking that many more shots than your opponents but losing that dramatically, you're usually going to be correct in guessing that percentages are killing you. Indeed, the Mavericks are shooting 2.04 percent at 5-on-5, and 3.03 percent overall. Meanwhile, Cole Huggins is carrying a 5-on-5 save percentage of just .848. So yes, plenty of room for improvement there.
“How good does Cole have to be for 120 minutes (in the weekend sweep) when we don't get one?” Hastings asked rhetorically after the game. “He has to be perfect. I don't think you can ask a goalie to be perfect. … You look at it, and I think you've gotta go to your best players and say, 'Y'know what, let's point thumbs, starting with me,' and point thumbs and get it going in the right direction. We gotta have some guys to finish some pucks and find a way to stay in it mentally if it doesn't go your way.”
Now, to be fair to the Mavericks, their opponents haven't exactly been easy draws. St. Cloud, which swept them in St. Cloud this weekend, is playing very well so far this year (4-0 start), as is the previous week's opponent, Omaha (also 4-0). Both were nationally ranked, at the time, which isn't always an indicator of quality — for example, so too is 0-3 Minnesota as we speak — but these are clearly perfectly good teams that do have the ability to beat just about anyone in the country. You obviously want to walk away from those four games with a PDO that's north of 86.9, but this start is very troubling.
It is not, however, the end of the world.
As discussed, the possession is still there, meaning that things necessarily have to turn around. Because if you can push around some of the best teams in the country at 5-on-5 to the tune of 60 percent corsi, you're doing something right and it's only a matter of time before things go your way.
For those more inclined to believe in won-lost records alone as the end-all, be-all of success at this level (and boy, that still counts more than anything else for a lot of people for some reason), there's not going to be much convincing to do here. However, when you actually examine the process, and some of the peripheral issues around the team, you have to understand that while the results haven't gone their way, nothing else has really changed for the Mavs.
If the number of posts the Mavs hit so far this season (four) had ended up in the back of the net instead, they would have scored on 4.27 percent of their attempts, rather than 0.85 percent, which would be a lot more in line with what they did last year. This is an issue that will almost certainly sort itself out, especially because Minnesota State has games coming up against relatively weak competition: two each against Bemidji, Alaska, and Ferris make up their next six games, and there are probably plenty of wins in that three-week slate.
Now, it already seems unlikely that this is a club that will win 29 games again this season, but then again, they only started out last season at 2-2 against these same teams, then went 11-2 against almost nothing but WCHA competition for the remainder of the calendar year. The only time they had a winless streak of any kind was when they went 0-1-2 in from mid- to late February. This is a team that scored 145 goals in 40 games last season. Not a bad number. It's also a team that returned all four guys who scored at least 10 goals last season, and two of the three who scored nine. Bryce Gervais probably won't shoot 22 percent to score 27 goals next season, but if he can put up 100-plus shots again, 15 or even 20 might not be out of reach.
The question is whether Huggins will be as bad as he was last year (.864 in nine games) or as good as he was as a freshman (.926 in 34 appearances). Early returns suggest that the 11 goals he's allowed on 99 shots this season are a huge part of the problem, but if he can get back to even being a national-average goaltender, Minnesota State will likely be fine.
All they have to do is keep dominating possession, which they will. And maybe find a way to put 195-plus minutes of goalless hockey behind them. That would help too.
The craziest game of the week
Speaking of results that really didn't go the way of the dominant team, Northeastern hosted Bentley on Friday night and crushed the Falcons in possession.
Lack of having-the-puck has long been a bugaboo for the Huskies, but that was an issue that began to sort itself out around Thanksgiving last year. And in the first game of this season, they dominated nationally ranked Colgate in possession en route to a narrow win. Statistically, it should have been more of the same last Friday.
In all, Northeastern outshot Bentley 51-11, and out-attempted them 83-21 at evens. They also lost 3-2.
At one point in the game, shots were 39-8, but Northeastern was losing 3-0. Only a furious third-period comeback even made the score look remotely respectable for a Huskies team that should have been dramatically improved this season.
Simply put, this is a thing that should not happen, but hockey is and shall always remain a funny old game. Jayson Argue picked up the big W for the Falcons, stopping 49 of 51, including 42 of 43 at 5-on-5. Andrew Gladiuk scored all three Bentley goals.
What should have been good news for Northeastern — the fact that they played Bentley again the next night and could therefore exact some revenge — also turned out to be bad news. The Falcons won Saturday's game 4-1, with Bentley once again jumping out to a massive lead before Northeastern scored its only goal late in the third. And once again, 5-on-5 attempts were 53-24, though shots were 41-27.
This was a deeply bizarre series from start to finish, but it typifies what's happening in all of Hockey East right now. The league went just 11-8-1 in out-of-conference play on the weekend, with the biggest winners being Merrimack (a sweep of Clarkson and St. Lawrence), Lowell (sweep of Colorado College), and UMass (win over Sacred Heart).
October, I guess.
Rough start for the Big 10
Speaking of ugly starts for entire conferences, the Big 10 went an appalling 3-9 on the weekend, with the only wins coming through Penn State (at Notre Dame) and Michigan (sweep of Mercyhurst).
Minnesota is 0-3, Michigan State is 1-2-1, Wisconsin is 0-2-2, Ohio State is 0-4. Michigan is 2-0, Penn State 2-1. That's a combined record of 5-12-3 (.325 win percentage). There is good news, though, folks. With games next weekend against teams like Lake State, Ferris State, AIC, and Northeastern, they might be able to get within striking distance of .400 by the end of next weekend.
No guarantees, though.
A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)
1. Providence College (beat Holy Cross)
2. Nebraska-Omaha (swept at Vermont)
3. North Dakota (three points at Bemidji)
4. UMass Lowell (swept Colorado College)
5. Denver (swept Michigan State)
6. St. Cloud (swept Minnesota State)
7. Minnesota-Duluth (swept Minnesota in a home-and-home)
8. Quinnipiac (beat Arizona State)
9. Boston College (beat Wisconsin)
10. Miami (swept Ohio State)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY:
from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1knbEU4
via IFTTT
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire