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 Geplaatst: 18-11-2019 08:17:47 Onderwerp: fans that it is committed to achieving success |
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| In the pantheon of brutally difficult things to accomplish in the National Hockey League, succeeding as a 21-or-under defenceman ranks near the top. Wholesale Shoes Black Friday . It takes a unique combination of talent and early physical development to even bring a guy into NHL consideration at such a young age, and only a portion of this small-group can hold down regular shifts without getting killed against the world’s toughest competition. And, it’s worth remembering that a huge majority of 21-or-under players are not NHL-regulars – the junior leagues, international leagues, and American Hockey League are filled with guys still rounding out their game. There are myriad reasons why making a super-early jump as a defenceman is tougher than as a forward, but two of the big ones include expectations and exposure. Expectations at the position are tied into shot and goal suppression, and slowing down some of the world’s best players from scoring is a tall task. Exposure also makes things tricky – it’s a bit easier to insulate a young forward with at least one quality linemate, or hide the player on a third or fourth line in limited minutes. On defence, since only six defencemen play, it’s harder to hide a guy by sheer limitation of ice-time. You can run out a quality partner with the young defender, but doing so ensures that they’ll play a fair amount each game. No third-pairing minutes here. Naturally, I’m always intrigued to see how coaches bring along these players, because it varies from team to team. Believe it or not, there are only 11 regular 21-or-under defenders this season. Success has been variable. First, let’s take a quick look as to how these skaters have been deployed based on teammate quality and competition quality. For the sake of this graph and this graph only, I have omitted both Nikita Zadorov and Rasmus Ristolainen. As is always the case this season, the Sabres – by virtue of being a historically awful hockey team – distort data visualization. Just know that both players frequently play with terrible teammates and against difficult competition, and would sit far east of Morgan Rielly in the graph below. The dotted line gives us a nice first look at what the players are generally seeing on a day-to-day basis. The three names to the left (Rielly, Ceci, and Murphy) of the dotted line generally see more oppressive competition, somewhat due to the fact that they play on average or subpar teams. Severson splits the middle. On the other side, you can see that Aaron Ekblad, Dougie Hamilton, and Seth Jones are being supported by virtue of their common linemates being of higher quality than their opposition. Quality of Teammate and Quality of Competition isn’t the only way to look at how a player is being used, though. We can also look at how frequently a player starts in the offensive zone as another way to capture whether or not a playing is being insulated in his deployment. Here, we can look at Relative Offensive Zone Start% -- players above 0.0% start more shifts in the offensive zone relative to the team norm, players below 0.0% start less shifts in the offensive zone relative to the team norm. We know from the first graph that Morgan Rielly, Connor Murphy, and Cody Ceci were seeing significantly tougher competition than teammate quality. Here, only Cody Ceci sees tough deployment as it pertains to offensive zone start numbers – he sees fewer shifts than the regular Ottawa Senator in terms of starting in the offensive zone; Morgan Rielly and Connor Murphy, on the other hand, see more shifts than the regular player from their respective teams. The two other names that pop from this table are Damon Severson (brutal zone starts) and Aaron Ekblad (lofty zone starts). At this point, we can start to draw conclusions about a handful of players, and use it to craft future analysis: Damon Severson, Cody Ceci, are in pretty tough spots for young defenders, and Morgan Rielly – by virtue of team effects – isn’t far behind. Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones are well protected. Both Buffalo Sabres guys are getting killed by their team, but Rasmus Ristolainen sees much more difficult deployment than Nikita Zadorov. Through this, we can contextualize to some degree the performance of each player by their raw Corsi% numbers. For each of the eleven skaters, I pulled each team’s Corsi% with the player on the ice, and each team’s Corsi% with the player off of the ice. We know Seth Jones and Aaron Ekblad are being put in positions to really succeed, so we expect the team to have a better Corsi% with them on the ice than off. For both players here, that’s true, though the data seems to suggest Seth Jones is having a more favourable impact than Aaron Ekblad in fairly comparable minutes. This graph is the most damning for Connor Murphy. Recall that Murphy has been given plenty of offensive zone starts, and he isn’t experiencing the kind of competition/teammate disparity that the two Sabres’ skaters, Morgan Rielly, and Cody Ceci are. Despite that, the Arizona Coyotes are significantly better with him off of the ice. Who is the player with the most encouraging underlying numbers? Damon Severson. Severson’s numbers and deployment are somewhat to comparable to that of Cody Ceci and Morgan Rielly, but both of those players had significant NHL-experience last season. Severson’s a full-blown rookie. For that reason, New Jersey should be thrilled about what they have found in their 2012 second-round pick. Wholesale Shoes Black Friday Free Shipping . The 27-year-old forward has informed the Leafs that he will be unable to play in Monday nights home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Fake Shoes Black Friday . Both sides came closest to scoring in the first half, when Roma had a goal from Mattia Destro waved off for offside and Inters Rodrigo Palacio headed high. "A draw was a fair result. Neither squad had many chances," Roma midfielder Miralem Pjanic said. https://www.cheapshoesblackfriday.com/ . Ireland was the last unbeaten side in the championship after France fell to Wales on Friday, and was favoured to end a three-match losing run to England with a side with more than twice as many caps, rampant momentum, and added incentive to celebrate Brian ODriscolls world record-tying 139th test cap.On July 24, 2014, MLS expansion team New York City FC unveiled Frank Lampard as the club’s latest star player, following on from the signing of Spanish striker David Villa. At the time of the announcement, the club and the league went to great lengths to laud the arrival of Lampard as a sign that NYCFC meant business when it came to building their inaugural squad. In their press release, NYCFC stated that Lampard “has signed a two-year contract which starts August 1st (2014), while the player was quoted as saying this: “I am really excited about joining New York City FC and helping to play a real part in building something special in one of the sporting capitals of the world” and “It is a privilege to be able to help make history here in New York City - I just can’t wait to get started and be part of it.” Just two weeks later, the club announced that Lampard would be joining Manchester City – owned by the same group as NYCFC - in England ahead of his debut season in MLS. In that press release, Lampard was quoted as saying this: “Joining up with Manchester City is a fantastic opportunity for me to continue to train and play at the top level and make sure I am in top condition for New York City.” The assumption was that Lampard would be returning to New York at the end of 2014 in order to fully participate in NYCFC’s preseason training camp in the lead up to their first game in MLS. Since joining Manchester City, however, Lampard has made a real impact at the Premier League club – much more so than many would have expected. While he has rarely played a full 90-minute game for City, he has carved out a niche at the club as an impact player who can be relied upon to score goals and swing games in City’s favour when they need a push late on or to solidify the midfield when they need to manage a lead to the final whistle. Lampard’s spell at City has gone so well that City boss Manuel Pellegrini felt the need to extend Lampard’s stay at the club until the end of the Premier League season. There are conflicting reports about how it is even possible for that stay to be extended, as well as the terms under which Lampard initially joined Manchester City. City’s own press release stated the following: “Manchester City can confirm that it has extended Frank Lampard’s contract up to the end of Manchester City’s season, enabling his continued participation in both domestic and European campaigns.” While this may just be a case of the club making a poor choice in wording, there is a big difference between a “contract” and a “loan” in football. A contract implies ownership of a player; a loan implies an agreement between two clubs, whereby the player returns to the club that owns his playing rights at the end of the specified term of the loan. While it was originally reported that Lampard had joined City on loan back in August – as he would have had to do, since it was announced that Lampard’s NYCFC contract started on August 1 – a report from Sports Illustrated journalist Grant Wahl confirmed that this was not the case. According to Wahl’s report, MLS contends “Lampard entered into an agreement with the City Football Group to play under an MLS contract for 2015 and ’16 and to play for Man City until the end of 2014 under a Man City contract. Now that Lampard’s Man City contract has been extended to the end of this season, he will join NYCFC in July and play under an MLS contract.” The entire saga flies in the face of comments made by MLS Commissioner Don Garber in his state of the league address back in December, where he spoke about the league’s perceived lack of transparency. Cheap Shoes Black Friday. “We recognize that things aren’t as easy for people to understand as they need to be, explained Garber. We look at the Jermaine Jones situation. We had a mechanism, the only mechanism that we could have put in place, to have Jermaine Jones signed in MLS. There was no other way to do it based on the rules that we have, but the public doesn’t understand our rules and most of the media don’t either. As I did say in 2014, transparency is a priority. Transparency is a big priority in 2015. If Garber is serious about transparency being a priority for the league, then situations like Lampard’s – let alone the “blind draw” that saw US international Jones land in New England - simply cannot be allowed to happen. There is a reason that “the public doesn’t understand our rules and most of the media don’t either” as Garber put it – the league’s rules continue to change. While a single-entity league like MLS is certainly unique in the world of football, it isn’t as difficult to understand as some suggest. If the league wants its fans and media to understand its rules, then MLS needs to start by documenting all of the league rules on the league’s website so that fans and media alike can dissect them. MLS fans are passionate, dedicated supporters and they are being robbed of the chance to invest more of their emotional energy into their teams because the league’s rules – particularly the ones regarding player acquisitions - are unclear, unknown or changing on the fly. Consider allocation money, as an example. Allocation money and how it relates to the league’s salary cap isn’t as complicated as nuclear physics - anyone with even a basic understanding of mathematics can add up a team’s salary expenditures and measure that against the salary cap. What better way to create debate and discussion amongst supporters than to have them quibble over the valuation of a signing or trade? When a team trades a player within the league in exchange for allocation money, fans and media alike should have the opportunity to evaluate that trade based on the amount of allocation money exchanged. The fact that the MLS Players Union publishes the MLS player salaries is an added bonus; it gives fans more information with which to assess the performance and value of players. Opponents will contend that transfer fees are rarely disclosed when a player is bought, sold or traded in the world of football. While this is true, that information almost always makes it into the public forum, usually through an intermediary such as a player agent or reporter. There are positives for both clubs in doing this. The selling club can show its supporters that it is receiving value in exchange for selling one of its star players, while the buying club can show its fans that it is committed to achieving success and is willing to spend the money needed to do so. Fans can judge whether or not their club is providing its fans with an entertaining product given its investment in playing personnel, as well as assess the competency of their club’s management team. It’s also important to consider that MLS is a unique league – something that league executives are quick to point out – and as such, might require a different approach to informing its supporters of how its players move from team to team. One thing is certain, though: keeping fans in the dark will not help MLS grow. If anything, it will drive passionate fans of the beautiful game away from the league, frustrated by the league’s hesitancy to tell fans what is really going on. ' ' ' |
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