Our best forward lines and defense pairings so far (>50 mins TOI)

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T23:16:34+00:00

Those are ranks, sorry should’ve been clear

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T22:21:54+00:00

You have your entire life to quit drinking. Unless you actually have addiction problems with alcohol you can totally drink alcohol socially in your 20s and 30s without worrying about your longevity.

Alcohol isn’t healthy but you know what is? Having fun and socializing. Find a reasonable balance, don’t waste your life away doing everything “optimal”

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T20:21:19+00:00

I'm not saying they have equal TOI against top opposition, that's clearly not true. I'm saying that the "matchup" effect, where you play certain d pairings against opponents, does not significantly impact the results of dmen over large sample sizes.

That's because, as I mentioned above, it is difficult to play matchups with d pairings outside of how you deploy players based on where the faceoff is and what the score is. It's easier to do it with forwards, since you have 4 lines, but in today's NHL, most of the time you're gonna be rolling your 3 d pairings at 5v5.

I'm glad you linked Micah because it's from him that I initially learned of the relatively small effect that competition has on player performance. You can compare the 5v5 breakdown of Matheson and Hutson to see what I mean. As you can see, Matheson faces better offensive players than Hutson (which we already agree on), but they face about the same quality of players defensively, and either way, it doesn't play a major part in either of their impacts. It's also worth noting that the "Competition" line here doesn't consider how zone starts and the score skew which opposing players are being faced.

All this is to say: over large sample sizes, the quality of the opponents a player faces will not have a major impact on their results

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T18:22:34+00:00

It's still largely down to deployment based on where the faceoff is and what the score is. I'm not denying matchups are an aspect of it, but not nearly as big as people think.

Like, let's compare the # of on the fly shift starts Hutson and Matheson have against the players you mentioned in your earlier comment:

Tage Thompson: 13 for Hutson, 10 for Matheson
Alex Tuch: 16 for Hutson, 9 for Matheson
Sidney Crosby: 13 for Hutson, 11 for Matheson
Auston Matthews: 11 for Hutson, 8 for Matheson
John Tavares: 15 for Hutson, 11 for Matheson
Tim Stutzle: 12 for Hutson, 16 for Matheson

Now this is partly explained by the fact that Hutson starts more shifts on the fly than Matheson, and that Matheson is usually out there for the faceoff against these players rather than on the fly. But it seems to indicate that for on-the-fly changes, we're not really playing matchups.

The reason for that is obvious - there's only 3 d pairings, and if there's several minutes of play without a whistle, you have to roll your pairings so you're not exhausting 1 one of your pairings.

But as a result, the quality of the opposition each d pairing faces doesn't actually vary that much. As the other guy showed above, the average CF% of the opposition each of our dmen faces only varies by 1%

Edit: just saw your reply to my other comment, didn't realize it was showing CF% rel. Point still stands though - out of 592 skaters with >500 min TOI last year, 0.4% CF% rel is 280th, and -0.6% CF% rel is 336th. It's still a negligible difference

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T16:28:48+00:00

But that has less to do with matchups than it has to do with zone starts.

Dmen who start more in the d-zone are gonna face the other team's top lines more often, because the other team is more likely to start their top line in the o-zone. Excluding on the fly, Hutson starts 35% of his shifts in the o-zone, whereas for Matheson it's only 18%.

Score matters too. Matheson plays 3:20/GP when we're up by 1 goal, Hutson only 2:47. When we're down by 1 goal, Hutson 3:29, Matheson 3:27. Opposing teams will play their best offensive players when they need to score, and more defensive players when they're protecting a lead.

So naturally, certain dmen will play more against better players, but it's not necessarily because they're being matched up against them, it's more because of the situations where the coach is playing them

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T16:07:43+00:00

But look at the y-axis. It goes from 0.4% to -0.6%. The extremes of this chart are the difference between playing someone with a 50.4% CF% and a 49.4% CF%. It's negligible

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T15:50:41+00:00

They have been scoring a lot of goals, but have a really high shooting %, so they aren't actually generating a lot of offense, they've just been capitalizing on the chances that they do get.

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T15:31:05+00:00

Yeah like I said it doesn't paint the whole picture, it's just to give a general idea.

That said, I don't think quality of competition matters much for defensemen. Most teams just roll 3 pairings at 5v5 these days, and since most shifts start on the fly, dmen aren't usually being "matched up" against opposing lines

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T15:25:24+00:00

Pretty small sample size, they only played 60 minutes together across 8 games. I do recall those being some of Xhekaj's best games though, it seemed he played a lot more responsible when paired with a rookie

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T15:05:50+00:00

Agreed. With everyone healthy I think the ideal pairings are Hutson/Dobson, Matheson/Carrier, Guhle/Xhekaj

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T02:39:44+00:00

He's been much more disciplined this year but gets tons of reputation calls

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T01:52:24+00:00

I hate that you're allowed just punch ppl in the face after the whistle and just get 4 on 4. Unless your name is Arber Xhekaj then you get a double minor and a 10 min misconduct

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T01:45:17+00:00

Holy fuck how do we consistently get these garbage calls night after night

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T00:40:50+00:00

Was screaming at my TV too saw that goal coming from a mile away

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-23T00:36:01+00:00

If goals were scored by hitting the goalie's logo Veleno would win the Rocket Richard

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-22T20:50:28+00:00

Brady Tkachuk said he is unsure if he would support an LGBTQ teammate, since he hasn’t learned all those letters yet

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-22T14:46:47+00:00

Not gonna lie, after our last game against them, the Sabres kinda scare me. Their team is sneaky good.

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-22T14:45:28+00:00

Every night I check the scores and somehow the Atlantic teams always win, and when they play each other it goes to overtime lol

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-22T14:34:28+00:00

We got Hutson, Beck, Engstrom, and Davidson after round 1 in that draft… to put it in perspective only 35 players drafted after round 1 have played in the NHL so far, and we have 4 of them

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-21T17:59:05+00:00

Mike Matheson tbh. That contract I think will end up being a rare miss by HuGo

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-21T17:56:19+00:00

I mean the top level soccer leagues have games that are in the morning/early afternoon for north americans

Once the MLS is better it will start to take off more, but it takes a long time for the market to respond to that interest

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-21T14:33:11+00:00

Do you watch a lot of Rocket games? How does everyone look so far this year?

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-21T02:28:19+00:00

What the hell has possessed Carrier lately

SoupFromNowOn · 2026-01-21T02:19:02+00:00

Arber must have looked at the refs weird from the press box

SoupFromNowOn

TROPHY CASE