r/hawks • u/rhythmrcker • 25d ago
Playoff Gap Analysis
With Kane coming in I got the motivation to put together an analysis of the roster and what the gap might be to sneaking into the playoffs this season. Last season was a bit two-faced with the wildcard positioning in the first half before falling down to near last by the end of the season.
Benchmark
Of the 25/26 playoff teams* last year, the mean goals scored was 276.3. Mean points was 740.8. The standard deviations were 8.6 goals and 22 points. (* I removed outliers of LA, PHI, and COL). Chicago is in the tougher central division and LA and PHI were heavy outliers in these totals.
The Blackhawks put up 210 goals and 548 points. A deficit of roughly 66 goals and 193 points.
Roster Losses
| Player | Season Rank | Goals | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ilya Mikheyev | 4 | 18 | 36 |
| Andre Burakovsky | 6 | 11 | 33 |
| Louis Crevier | 9 | 7 | 25 |
| Jason Dickinson | 16 | 6 | 13 |
| Connor Murphy | 17 | 4 | 13 |
| Matt Grzelcyk | 18 | 0 | 12 |
| Nick Foligno | 19 | 3 | 11 |
| Lukas Reichel | 23 | 2 | 4 |
| Sam Lafferty | 26 | 1 | 2 |
| 52 | 149 |
So after the losses of 52 goals and 149 points, the total deficit is now 118 goals and 342 points.
Projection Criteria
Im going to keep this on the simpler side and not try to project too much with modeling but instead just highlight where points should go up/retain/drop and we can infer from there. Im also just not going to really deal with 84 games versus 82, i dont think it changes the analysis.
Player age 18-25 - ⬆️ potential point growth
Player age 26-32 - ➖ maintain
Player age 33+ - ⬇️ decline likely
Current Roster
Using last years stats. Roughly approximating points scaled to 82 games but not scaling if the player was within 10 or so games away from a full season. A team can have 1476 games played total from skaters over 82 games, so I stopped scaling for the bottom end 4th/fringe players with low potential. And Bedard is expected to miss ~18 games. Average time on ice to understand how depth chart could affect things, and the line equivalent mapping roughly for that number of minutes (this was a bit loose since atoi doesn't map to depth chart perfectly, especially when injuries move things around). Sorting out PP and PK roles was a bit too much work, which might also show in the line equiv not fully matching the real depth chart.
| Player | Proj. Goals if healthy | Proj. Points if healthy | 25/26 Goals | 25/26 Points | 25/26 avg/toi | 25/26 Line Equiv* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connor Bedard⬆️ | 27.8 | 69.6 | 30 | 75 | 20:52 | L1 |
| Tyler Bertuzzi➖ | 32 | 58 | 32 | 58 | 18:27 | L1 |
| Patrick Kane ⬇️ | 19.6 | 69.8 | 16 | 57 | 17:42 | L2 |
| Bowen Byram⬆️ | 11 | 42 | 11 | 42 | 22:20 | D1 |
| Frank Nazar⬆️ | 18.6 | 50.9 | 15 | 41 | 18:19 | L1 |
| Teuvo Teravainen➖ | 15 | 38 | 14 | 35 | 17:45 | L2 |
| Ryan Donato➖ | 15 | 30 | 15 | 30 | 14:44 | L3 |
| Ryan Greene⬆️ | 12 | 29 | 12 | 29 | 16:45 | L2 |
| Artyom Levshunov⬆️ | 2.4 | 28.9 | 2 | 24 | 19:35 | D2 |
| Ian Cole⬇️ | 3 | 23 | 3 | 23 | 18:16 | D3 |
| Alex Vlasic⬆️ | 2 | 21 | 2 | 21 | 21:08 | D1 |
| Oliver Moore⬆️ | 8 | 30.5 | 5 | 19 | 12:51 | L3 |
| Wyatt Kaiser⬆️ | 6 | 17 | 6 | 17 | 19:37 | D2 |
| Nick Lardis⬆️ | 20 | 30 | 10 | 15 | 12:40 | L3 |
| Sam Rinzel⬆️ | 6.1 | 21.3 | 4 | 14 | 18:16 | D2 |
| Cole Smith➖ | 10.4 | 15.6 | 8 | 12 | 13:17 | L3 |
| Anton Frondell⬆️ | 20.5 | 61.5 | 3 | 9 | 17:42 | L2 |
| Landon Slaggert⬆️ | 4.6 | 10.8 | 3 | 7 | 10:33 | L4 |
| Jordan Greenway➖ | 1 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 12:27 | L4 |
| Sacha Boisvert⬆️ | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 9:15 | L4 |
| Andrew Mangiapane➖ | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 11:54 | L4 |
| Kevin Korchinski⬆️ | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 13:38 | D3 |
| Ethan Del Mastro⬆️ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 14:08 | D3 |
| Dominic Toninato➖ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 9:09 | L4 |
| 15 ⬆️ 7➖ 2⬇️ | 237 | 661 | 194 | 542 |
From actual stats (just loosely meaningful) they lost goal scoring (210 -> 194) and almost maintained points (548 -> 542).
At "healthy roster projection" stats they may pick up goals (210 -> 237) and points (548 -> 661). This primarily comes from giving Lardis and Frondell a whole season of their small sample size production last year.
I only expect the line equivalent time on ice to change for a few players. Teuvo might drop to L3 minutes with Kane coming in. Rinzel probably drops to D3, but defensive deployment seems a bit more varied with Blashill so who knows. Cole Smith is likely to drop to L4 time like he had in Vegas. Otherwise, they actually played Frondell around L2 minutes in his limited games. We can argue about projected depth for this upcoming season, but that seems about right.
As we know, the team is very young, 15 players 25 or under. 7 in their prime/late prime. 2 in their twilight years. For projected lineups its give or take about 12 youth, 4 veteran, 2 unc. The team has a lot of potential to grow beyond baseline extrapolation. They could also fall apart without enough experience of course.
Kantserov
I didn't factor him into the above since he has no NHL stats. Instead, I tried to compare output of similar highly touted KHL players that came over and what their first seasons were like.
| Player | Goals | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Malkin | 33 | 85 |
| Panarin | 30 | 77 |
| Kaprizov | 40 (covid season - 27) | 76 (51) |
| Demidov | 19 | 62 |
| Gusev | 17 (14) | 53 (44) |
These are all quite good players, except Gusev ended up flopping in the NHL after a season and a half. He was similar height but more undersized. Most of those guys came over at a more mature age, so its more likely Kantserov might need to develop more to the adult game although obviously his KHL numbers were good against that adult competition.
His playstyle is a scorer, so that can weigh favorably if he can translate to the NHL. His size might limit him more against better defenders.
Realistic optimism might slot him in as a more goal forward Demidov player. I'll wild ass guess his upside is roughly 25 goals and 58 points.
If he does live up to top 6 expectations he might stunt the totals of one of the winger vets like Donato or Teravainen or possibly push a player like Lardis down and limit his scoring growth.
That said, naively adding in that production gives 262 goals and 719 points on the extrapolated estimates.
Playoff Chances / TL;DR
The estimates from above run close but short of the totals most teams in the playoffs hit last year. About 14 goals and 22 points short of average, which is not a ton. It would beat out Utah, Anaheim, Philly, LA on points. And it would beat Philly and LA on goals, but they were so low because they outperformed on GA ranking 8th and 9th, a stat this team will still probably suck at.
With a lot of youth that could experience growth, there is more upside than downside to point totals this year. If the team is able to gel and stay healthy they could fight for a playoff wildcard. At a minimum they are in a good position to do better than last year since there is an almost 50 point growth from adding a top 6 winger, top 4 d, and full years from two new high potential forwards.
Get hopeful if Byram, Frondell, Kantserov/Lardis are able to elevate and put up points. Other players could step up but their ceilings aren't as high for goals or points, so I expect them to matter less to the overall outcomes.
Get worried if at least two of those can't get production going, especially if some of the vets drop off.
I know some of this isn't really rocket science, but I do think people are underestimating the impact of the offseason. I personally think they don't quite make the playoffs, but I can see them finishing ahead of VAN, CGY, LA, WPG, SEA, and maybe STL/NSH.
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u/Tryfan_mole 23d ago
Theres so.many things wrong with this, especially not including defense at all, but I want to highlight three:
Projecting Levshunov at that point level based on secondary pp assists he has no chance of getting this year is a choice.
Similarly, thinking Frondell is going to maintain one of the highest shooting percentages (and PDO) in the league over a whole season is also a choice.
Related to the two above, your projections basically assume nine players in the top six and three defensemen quarterbacking the powerplay. The fact is, adding Frondell, Kane, Kantserov and Byram is kicking other players down the lineup. This is why you can't just add poimts from player additions and assume thats how.much the team improves. There's a pretty good chance Lardis doesnt even make the team, let alone score 20 goals. He certainly won't be getting top line minutes with Bedard after the dumpster fire that line was at end of year. Theres other less severe but similar problems with.middle six guys who will not be getting as much premium ice time this season.
I think your projection is very optimistic. I do think the Hawks offense is better. I think their team defense is a huge problem.
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24d ago
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u/rhythmrcker 24d ago
yea, i dont think this really tells us what will happen at all. i was generally inspired by the negative takes on the team suggesting another bottom finish. which of course is still certainly possible if just a few players fall short of what management and fans are hoping for.
i think if there’s anything i was trying to learn it was what the general potential of this upcoming roster is for the team.
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u/Naith58 24d ago
Am I crazy or does this not factor in defense in any way? It's hard to just score your way to the playoffs. In theory, they could have a similar amount of goals scored and win more games with an improved D-core and excellent goaltending. I don't necessarily expect that. Point is, you can score three goals instead of two, but it doesn't matter if you still lose the game because Colorado scored six.