rakii's line matching thread
The prehistory of this thread comes from me and Taro talking about the line matching during the preseason. It's hard to pay attention watching online, so I had to look at how Housley is matching lines using the NHL's html reports. Normally I would sit on this for a while, because it's difficult to tell if the numbers are right, but this is interesting for me, so I'm going to go ahead and post, and if I decide the numbers are wrong, there's worse things in life than being wrong on the internet.
I will cut and paste the first couple games from the New Lineup thread, which was successful, I think, in getting readers to understand what the metric is exactly when I talk about matching lines. What I'm keeping track of is the average power play time of opponent forwards, which is easier to calculate than you might think. This is the Montreal game, it's home, so Housley gets to match lines.
POULIOT 10.74
O'REILLY 10.17
OKPOSO 9.97
BEAULIEU8.38
SCANDELLA7.96
TENNYSON7.81
RISTOLAINEN7.31
Lehner 7.12
NOLAN6.66
JOSEFSON6.65
LARSSON6.64
KANE6.14
EICHEL5.83
POMINVILLE5.71
ANTIPIN4.98
MCCABE4.97
REINHART4.80
GRIFFITH4.38
GIRGENSONS4.23
So my theory is, I've talked about this a couple times now, is that Housley's strategy is to get the O'Reilly line against the other team's top line, the 4th line against the 2nd line, Eichel against the 3rd line, and Reinhart against the 4th line. These numbers above bear (bare? beer?) this out.
Game 2 was against the Islanders. It's a road game, so it's the Islanders given the opportunity to match lines. Johnson must have a penalty, but there are still two Beaulieus, my guess is they changed goaltenders, so the middle Beaulieu is still Lehner.. So for game 2, Reinhart sees the tough competition, because that's more what the Islanders want.
GIRGENSONS9.61
O'REILLY9.28
RISTOLAINEN9.00
GRIFFITH8.79
BEAULIEU8.51
REINHART8.37
OKPOSO8.20
LARSSON8.11
MCCABE7.95
JOHNSON7.55
Lehner 7.54
KANE7.44
EICHEL7.31
POMINVILLE7.17
ANTIPIN6.76
SCANDELLA6.75
POULIOT6.04
TENNYSON6.01
JOSEFSON5.59
MOULSON5.52