Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Looking At Detroit's 3-on-3 Play

08/20/2018 at 11:40am EDT

from Travis Yost of TSN,

I’m fascinated by Detroit, the league’s worst 3-on-3 team over the last two years. It’s worth noting that this wasn’t one year of randomness – the Red Wings were the league’s worst team by goal differential here in each of the past two seasons. They have also been outshot over that same interval and Corsica’s expected goal model has them in the red as well. So we can reasonably conclude that this is a serious area of improvement for Detroit.

Digging into Detroit’s play a little bit deeper, there is no single area of concern. Red Wings goaltenders have stopped only 77 per cent of shots at 3-on-3 – median save percentage in this game state is around 86 per cent for a frame of reference. But they don’t generate a lot of offence either. Their 10 per cent shooting in 3-on-3 is second worst in the league and they barely generate anything in terms of volume.

If you look at who they are frequently putting over the boards at 3-on-3, you start to see the issue. Whereas most teams can throw one or two superstars on the ice consistently, Detroit just doesn’t have that right now in the player personnel department. Their most commonly leveraged players are a 32-year-old Mike Green, a 32-year-old Henrik Zetterberg who may seriously be considering retirement, and 22-year-old Dylan Larkin.

more plus general discussion on 3-on-3 play in the NHL...

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.

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