As the entire world seemingly waits for the NYRangersCast to put up a new episode Mats Sundin to make up his mind, I really can’t find anything worth posting. I thought about doing an analysis on Drury and Gomez with regards to which is more valuable to the team, but really, it’s not necessary at this point simply because I have done enough Drury/Gomez venting to last 10 lifetimes. So, I will continue to sit back and eagerly wait for the Traverse City tournament to begin. I wish there would be some sort of broadcast on it, even if it were just a web stream, but it appears highly unlikely that would happen. Apparently MSG would rather air 25 year old Knicks game, than a tournament that would likely be the only time any of us will see some of these kids play for the next 3 years.
Don’t worry though, should their be breaking news, of the trade, or Sundin variety (or maybe even a NYRangersCast ep?) I will be back in full blown analysis form.
So there is a nice long thread going on over at the HF Boards concerning this team, and if it has improved or not. My personal opinion was that we will likely be a team that has about the same record as we did last year, but will be far more entertaining to watch. The thread is an excellent read, as there are opinions that pretty much run the gamut of possible stances on the question.
I did wonder though, how would last years team compare to this year team if we go by numbers put up last year.
Essentially our line for most of last year looked like this:
Staal (2) - Rozsival (13)
Tyutin (5) - Girardi (10)
Mara (1) - Strudwick (1)
Malik (2)
Granted Sjostrom, Backman, etc did play a bit in there, but for the most part, that was the lineup you saw for most nights, or some combination of those players. Those players account for 200 of our 205 goals last season. Now, let’s compare a likely lineup for next season, using last seasons totals, shall we?
Now this is assuming Pock scores zero goals, Prucha has another terrible season, and we carry an extra forward. Still, with those numbers this group puts up 208 goals, and you can assume pretty safely assume another 5 goals scored from fill ins, Pock, etc. So an expectation of 213 goals isn’t that far off the mark. And I for one expect the defense to actually improve as well. Interestingly enough, a rise to 213 goals (from 205) would bring us from 25th in the league in goals for up to 20th, definitely an improvement.
Clearly this is all just offseason musing, no real weight can be put on any of this, but it would seem, from the numbers at least, that this team has either improved, or at least stayed about the same.
There have been a lot of players over the past few years that fallen in and out of favor of the fickle Rangers fans. You saw Marek Malik rise to near God-like heights of fame after his between the leg shot in the marathon shootout against the caps a few years back, and now the guy would be scared for his life if he had to pull a Sean Avery like act of sitting with the die hards in the 400’s. There has never, in my hockey life, been one who has risen to such highs, and dropped to such lows in a relatively short period of time, without a single explainable reason as Petr Prucha (those are Pruuuu’s not boooooos). This isn’t Marek Malik with bonehead turnover after bonehead turnover. This isn’t Theo Fleury getting wasted or Eric Lindros with a scrambled brain. He’s not an incompetent player (or an alcoholic) like Sandis Bozolinsch, and he’s not ultra soft like Tom “You F’ing Nerd” Poti. So what is it exactly about Petr Prucha that seems to draw so much ire from the Rangers fans I have come across on the net (since I don’t live in NY, that’s what I have to go with)?
It’s an interesting question, because with Petr it’s really easy to just point to 2 things, his lack of production this past year, and his constant imitation of of this pickup…
Let’s break down Petr to get a more accurate picture though, so we can formulate a theory of what is going on here. In year 1 of Petrs’ career he had a ridiculous season. He scored 30 goals and 17 assists in only 68 games for 47 points. But if you recall he suffered a pretty bad knee injury just before the olympic break, forcing him to miss a little over a month, and devastating the kid by keeping him out of the Olympics in what might have been his only shot to represent his country on the biggest international stage. The interesting thing about his numbers was that he scored only 5 goals and 8 assists in his final 19 games of the season after coming back from his injury, which means he scored 25 goals and 9 assists in the previous 49 games. To break down the numbers further, after coming back from his injury, his numbers extrapolated to 82 games were 22 goals and 35 assists for 47 points, but in the first part of the season his numbers extrapolate to 42 goals and 15 assists for 57 points. Huge goal differential there dontcha think? This lends a lot of credence to the second theory that Petr getting constantly destroyed night in and night out must result in deleterious play by him. Still though, if you think about it, coming back from the first major injury in his entire career, Prucha still produced at a relatively high level, and if you recall a lot of his primary minutes when he came back were being taken by one Petr Sykora.
Regardless Petr has a superb rookie season, finishing second on the team in goals behind Jaromir Jagrs’ record setting 54, and also setting the Rangers rookie record for Power Play goals with 16. In short, he produced, and earned a bigger role the next year. At least that is what one would assume wouldn’t you think? Instead Glen Sather went out and brought in one of my all time favorite players, Brendan Shanahan. A slap in the face of Petr for sure, since it was clear to all of us that Brendan would be eating up the majority of Petrs primary power play minutes since you knew that Straka, Jagr, Nylander, and Rozsival were going nowhere off the main units. Sure enough Brendan Shanahan did just that, leading the Rangers with 14 Power Play goals in 2006-2007, and playing the majority of Petrs minutes. Still despite a lesser role in his second season, Petr put up 22 goals and 18 assists in 79 games. Playing primarily on the 3rd and 4th lines, with less power play minutes these numbers are actually quite staggering if you think about it. How many 3rd and 4th liners put up 20+ goals in the NHL? Not too many.
Petrs’ third year in the NHL was a disaster. There really is no other way to put it. His confidence shot, he was unable to buy a goal. His shooting percentage went to a ridiculous 7.87% after being at 23.08% his first year. His shots on goal dropped, his games played dropped, his goals sunk to a disgusting 7, and he only managed to score 2 power play goals, his bread and butter. So what the hell happened? Going from 30 goals, to 22, to 7 is not the way you want to go in the NHL. You want to get better, not worse. So did he in fact get worse? Or is there a little more to this story than just that? Well, let’s look at a few stats shall we?
First let’s look at some pretty straight forward stats, easy to read, no explanation needed:
Year
GP
Goals
Assists
Points
TOI
PP TOI/G
2005-2006
68
30
17
47
13:41
3:49
2006-2007
79
22
18
40
12:59
2:53
2007-2008
62
7
10
17
11:38
1:38
The problem here though, is that nothing is normalized. I don’t like to compare numbers when everything is all askew by the number of games played. So let’s normalize everything to projected based on 82 games played and assuming the same amount of average TOI/G and PP TOI/G since those are averages anyway…
Year
Normalized GP
Normalized Goals
Normalized Assists
Normalized Points
TOI
PP TOI/G
2005-2006
82
36
21
57
13:41
3:49
2006-2007
82
23
19
42
12:59
2:53
2007-2008
62
9
13
22
11:38
1:38
So, there we have everything normalized, in fact it looks even worse for Petr here than it does before, because the numbers drop off by a bigger margin. But if you look at the way Petr plays his game, and if you look at the video I made and posted above, you’ll note that he gets a lot of garbage goals, garbage goals are conducive to power play players, hence why he sees so much of his offensive production on the Power Play, and really, can you blame him, I mean playing regular minutes with Blair Betts isn’t going to help ones offensive totals I can assure you. So, next let’s examine difference. How does his goal total relate to the minutes played? Assists and points are more or less meaningless since we can all agree, Petr is a goal scorer, any assists he gets aren’t because of great passes, but because he misses a goal, and someone bangs home his rebound (generally). Now, these are some more geeky stat calculations, but I think they are interesting enough to do the math for you.
Year
Normalized GP
Normalized Goals
% Drop In Goals
TOI
% Drop in TOI
PP TOI/G
% Drop In PP TOI/G
Normalized PP Goals
% Drop In PP Goals
2005-2006
82
36
-
13:41
-
3:49
-
19
-
2006-2007
82
23
36%
12:59
5.2%
2:53
24%
8
50%
2007-2008
82
9
61%
11:38
10.4%
1:38
43%
3
63%
So, the interesting thing here is that Petrs overall year to year drop in time on the ice isn’t that large. We’re only talking 5% from year 1 to year 2, and 10% from year 2 to year 3, which makes sense considering the Rangers brought in Brendan Shanahan between the first 2 years, and then brought in Chris Drury and Scotty Gomez the next year. However the drop in power play time is extreme, 24% from year 1 to year 2, and 43% from year 2 to year 3. A total drop off of 57% from year 1 to year 3. Imagine that, the guy’s power play time on the ice has been more than sliced in half. Clearly his 3rd year production has a lot to do with his shooting percentage going into the toilet, but regardless the drop in ice time has been gigantic. His drop in production, it seems, can be at least partially blamed on the lack of quality ice time because of the Rangers going out and bringing in 3 guys who demand big time minutes.
So, all this discussion has led has back to the same place. What exactly is up with Prucha? Well, the way I look at it is this, the guy isn’t going to give you much in the way of offense at even strength. I figure at his very best the guy will give you 15-20 goals at even strength. And that is if everything goes right. More likely you should expect, with adequate minutes and competent linemates, somewhere between 10 and 15 (closer to 12 I would wager). The key to the kids success though is the Power Play. He needs to be on the left side, and he needs to get pucks directed at the net to get those rebound goals home. The Rangers last year were disgusting at directing pucks at the net on the power play. They always tried for the perfect pass, the tic tac toe goal, and that killed them. Petrs game is not suited for that kind of hockey since he really doesn’t have great vision. What he does have is a nose for the net, and he is willing to pay the price to get those goals.
However this year with the subtraction of Jagr, Straka, and probably Shanahan, one would hope that Petr would get adequate power play time, but if you really think about it, on the left side you definitely have Naslund and Dawes blocking him, since both are better offensive players than him, but on the right side there may only be Zherdev blocking him (as of now). Can Petr adjust to getting power play minutes on the right side? I honestly don’t know. I think the kid has the nose for the net regardless of where he plays, even if the left side is his strongest.
My final thoughts on Petr? Now is not the time to trade him. His value is at an all time low, and you likely won’t get much more than a 3rd rounder, or an equivalent player. In my personal opinion, Petr is worth more, probably even a low first rounder. He is fearless, he gets to those danger zones that so many of our guys are scared to go, and he plays balls to the wall every second of every shift. Personally, I say we give him regular minutes on the power play, regular minutes at even strength, and see what happens. There are really only 1 of 2 things that can happen, either he fails, and does nothing, like last year, in which case you are no worse off than you were last year, or he succeeds and builds back his value.
Regardless I think THAT is the time to trade him. Keep him till he either proves himself again, and then trade him when his value is high, or keep him till he proves his first 2 years were just flukes, and he can’t do it anymore, and then just dump him off for about what you would get for him now anyway. I simply do not see a future for Petr Prucha with this team. Not because of anything Petr has done, only because I think the depth behind him in the form of Lauri Korpikoski, Alexei Cherepanov, Artem Anisimov, Ryan Callahan, etc are worth more in his roster spot than he is.
Buy low (7th round) sell high. Don’t buy low and sell low, that is exactly what we would be doing right now if we gave up on this former 30 goal scorer at this juncture.
There have been a lot of players over the past few years that fallen in and out of favor of the fickle Rangers fans. You saw Marek Malik rise to near God-like heights of fame after his between the leg shot in the marathon shootout against the caps a few years back, and now the guy would be scared for his life if he had to pull a Sean Avery like act of sitting with the die hards in the 400’s. There has never, in my hockey life, been one who has risen to such highs, and dropped to such lows in a relatively short period of time, without a single explainable reason as Petr Prucha (those are Pruuuu’s not boooooos). This isn’t Marek Malik with bonehead turnover after bonehead turnover. This isn’t Theo Fleury getting wasted or Eric Lindros with a scrambled brain. He’s not an incompetent player (or an alcoholic) like Sandis Bozolinsch, and he’s not ultra soft like Tom “You F’ing Nerd” Poti. So what is it exactly about Petr Prucha that seems to draw so much ire from the Rangers fans I have come across on the net (since I don’t live in NY, that’s what I have to go with)?