Fan Mail: By the Numbers Part Deux

We love it when you send us email and love on the social networks. But, we love it even more when we can rip off your material that you send us. Christian Mora from the University of Texas – Arlington chimes in once again with some great analysis. This time, in addition to his spreadsheet, he has some graphs. You can follow Christian on Twitter. What do you think of his analysis?

Here’s the latest spreadsheet. Looking at the games 17-24 was ugly. We scored 15 goals. We gave up 28 (7 of which was on a night I’d rather not remember). To try and look at the bright side/big picture, we are still on pace for making the playoffs, although just by the thinnest of margins. I included some graphs because hey, who doesn’t like pictures? If you notice I also added 3 more tabs.

Our 5on5 ratio came back down to earth and is at .94. The 2 percentage point decline on the PP dropped us down 8 ranks to 18th overall. Fortunately our PK is ever so slowly climbing its way out of the gutter at 76.7%.

Explanation: In order to make all of the graphs look a lot nicer in terms of rankings 30th equates to NHL best and 1st equates to the worst

As you guys touched upon in Episode 4 of the podcast, Jonathan Quick’s win column continues to spit in the face of a mediocre goals against and a poor save percentage. What I really want to know is how the King’s 2nd best shots against of 26.6/G factors in to everything. To me, it could mean a few things. Either the defense is doing a really good job of blocking shots and taking away shooting lanes or Quick is just not that good. OR we do great in most of the game but break down a couple of times and give up really juicy scoring chances which other teams pounce upon much to our disappointment. Here are a couple of games that highlight my question:

11/18 vs Philly: 3 goals on 20 shots. Loss.
11/7 vs Nashville: 3 goals on 25 shots. Loss.
11/2 vs Phoenix: 3 goals on 16 shots. Win.

I know Quick played really well last night against Chicago and that’s kick-ass, but we need that kind of goaltending a lot more consistently if we want to last. Personally I think he needs to play less often. All of the people ahead of him in the win column have played fewer minutes. Brodeur has played 3 fewer games and I feel those are all important rest days. And I know a lot of people say that we can’t ease up on Quick because we don’t have much confidence in Ersberg but playing him once every month doesn’t exactly boost his bravado.

Scoring has also been extremely sparse. 13 goals the past 8 games dating back from last night. I don’t what needs to happen to get those pucks in the net but I hope it happens soon. We can’t wait on Smyth to come back and fix everything.

Hopefully the big win against a scary good team in the Blackhawks will serve as a momentum builder as the dog days of December embark upon us.

As usual, questions and comments are greatly appreciated!

Go Kings – screw Anaheim.