I had composed the following revised time-on-ice chart
before I read your review- and will submit it here, in a panel that I can access, so that I can revise it if further miscalculations are discovered:
To review, first number is road/defensively oriented line-up, second number is home/offensively oriented line-up, and 3rd number is the 7D look, which will primarily be used at home, too. the */† symbols indicate that either Nesterenko OR Westfall will be used for the assignment- it'll be Westfall more often than not.
Center | ES | PP | PK | TOT |
Kennedy | 13 | 1 | 5 | 19 |
Draisaitl | 12 | 3 | | 15 |
M Bentley | 11 | 2 | | 13 |
Datsyuk | 11 | 1 | 1/1/2 | 13/13/14 |
Winger | ES | PP | PK | TOT |
Lindsay | 15/14/16 | 3 | | 18/17/19 |
P Thompson | 11/11/12 | 4 | | 15/15/16 |
C Giroux | 9/9/10 | 3 | 1/2/2 | 13/14/15 |
Tikkanen | 9/10/X | | 2/2/X | 11.12/X |
Selänne | 14/14/16 | 3 | | 17/17/19 |
Gilbert | 12 | 1 | | 13 |
Nesterenko | 11/X/12* | | 2/X/4* | 13/X/16* |
Westfall | 10/10/12† | | 2/X/4† | 13/X/16† |
Kovalchuk | X/11/13 | | X/3/3 | X/14/16 |
Defenseman | ES | PP | PK | TOT |
Lidström | 17/17/16 | 4 | 3 | 24/24/23 |
G Boucher | 16/16/14 | 3/X/X | 2 | 21/18/16 |
Leo Reise Jr | 13/13/11 | | 2/2/X | 15/15/11 |
Leo Boivin | X/X/10 | | X/X/2 | X/X/12 |
MacInnis | 18/18/16 | 4 | 1 | 23/23/21 |
Suchý | 13/13/14 | 3 | 4 | 22/22/21 |
Numminen | 13/13/11 | | 2 | 15/15/13 |
A couple of your well-considered points are addressed with the info above. To begin with, Datsyuk is not our leading PK forward, Kennedy is. Secondly, we'll be leaning a bit more on Westfall and/or Nesterenko (but not at the same time) on the Penalty Kill.
The Penalty-Kill credentials for Suchý (with supporting video) may be found here:
One thing that has impressed me very much when watching peak Jan Suchy play is how great of a penalty killer he was. Because of this I decided to take a in-depth look at the penalty killing of Suchy during the 66/67-70/71 time frame by analyzing the available video footage from major...
forums.hfboards.com
Of course, we all recognize that calling Suchý "European Bobby Orr" is a bit of an over-hype. However, just as casuals (but not
cognoscenti!) under-rate Bobby Orr's defensive-zone play, even serious hockey-history analysts may sometimes be prone to under-rating Suchý's defensive-zone play.
Re: Draisaitl: in last year's ATD, McDavid, on his way to finishing up his seventh season, was 2C for the ATD Champion. This year, Draisaitl is on his way to wrapping up his eighth
complete season (ninth overall, counting his rush-to-service year as a teenager). Draisaitl played 116 NHL games before it was legal for him to publicly consume an alcoholic beverage in America. Interesting, huh? Well (digression alert), Ilya Kovalchuk played 227 NHL games before his 21st birthday.*
Re: Power Play- particularly P Thompson and Lindsay: as I'd hinted before in the "Line-Up Advice" thread, the two good things depression-era Chicago could typically do were: 1) play great defense, 2) convert power plays. Paul Thompson was the league's premier Power Play Forward of mid-to-late '30s- more than Nels Stewart, more than Sweeney Schriner.
Re: expending a draft-pick on Kostka: around Round 19. Gimli started discussing the acquisition of Kostka. We had noted, with interest, that several teams, including one Divisional rival, had starting Units of all L-hand shots. Kostka was pretty much the author of a proven defensive scheme that could be applied for just such a situation. Please note that I'm certainly not suggesting that Gimli's the only one could could set up a LW-lock (c.f.: my comments about all of the 1-3-1 Power Play set-ups out there). That said, we wanted to make it a point of emphasis- and expect that on those occasions we decide to deploy it, we'd be able to do so more effectively than anyone else in the League, with the possible exception of the Bowman-coached team.
Since we've started drafting, there have been research surprises in both directions- pleasant ones (like Paul Thompson's Power Play impact), and unpleasant ones (like Datsyuk's lack of Penalty-Kill usage IRL). Because we're playing, first and foremost, to learn, I thought I'd pass on some of what I've picked up on- good and bad-
Additional negative-ledger discoveries: it wasn't stunning for us to see that Kovalchuk was something of a "home-boy." [86 points of plus/minus difference between home and road.] What WAS surprising was that Tikkanen was nearly as much of a "home-boy." [84 points of plus/minus difference between home and road.] Leo Boivin is even more of a "home boy." [153 points of plus/minus difference between home and road- data excludes the '50s, where plus/minus stats aren't available.] And our biggest home-boy of all is Ed Westfall(!) [180 points of plus/minus difference between home and road.] Nonetheless, he is NOT the biggest home-boy in the Division. We found someone on another team- who was minus 234 between home and road. Basically, this might make the guy ATD useless at even-strength on-the-road. Still- we'll spend more time concerning ourselves with the planks in our eyes, and not so much the specks in other people's eyes.
Contrarily, Eric Nesterenko is our depth-forward Road Warrior, and, for his career, was event-positive on-the-road (but still better at home). This data comes with the bug/feature/caveat that Nesterenko played eight complete seasons before plus/minus stats become available. We've already discussed Paul Thompson and his era-topping Power Play points. We should make a concluding note about Datsyuk's takeaway numbers. Yeah, we know that advanced metrics afcionados tend to look down on the takeaway stat, for many of the same reasons that they look down on the "hits" stat. (You don't have the puck if you're registering a 'hit.' And if you spend a lot time not having the puck, how does that reflect favorably on you?) Still, it's not like the Red Wings of Datsyuk's era were known for loose possession- and even at that, Datsyuk's takeaway numbers are so vastly ahead of his pursuers that even if the metrics were suspicious, they'd have to be about 20%+ suspicious over a 10-year period to make an appreciable difference to his own era-leading totals.
*[from above re: Kovalchuk- not so much a statistically relevant point as much as it's a human interest perspective- consider Kovalchuk at the end of his first three years. He's three seasons into his career, staked out his ground as the NHL goal-scoring leader before turning age 21 [in spite of playing for a craptastic team], and at that point in his recently starting-to-be-hopeful career, he gets hit by the lockout. The "what-might-have-beens" concerning Kovalchuk's career may have their origins in the bad taste in the mouth that must have left...]