Mailbag: How has Alain Vigneault done?

Two questions for the mailbag. These came in a while ago, but I honestly haven’t had the chance to address. Sorry for the delay. As always, if you have questions, submit via the mailbag tool on the right.

Vigneault

RFiB asks: What are your opinions of the job AV has done through his 2+ years as Rangers coach? Questions have been popping up recently about his ability to lead this team to the Cup, and I wanted to get the official BSB take.

This is tough to answer. I think Alain Vigneault is a great coach. After the adjustment period when he first came on board, the Rangers steamrolled the Eastern Conference in the second half, but struggled to close out teams in the playoffs. They made it to the Cup Final and lost the closes five game series you’ll ever see. The Rangers had horrible luck in that series. Overall, his first year was a rounding success.

Last year is when we got a first glimpse at something I believe to be a hole in his coaching style. He is loyal to a fault to specific players. Last year it was Tanner Glass, who simply did not play well enough to continually earn playing time. The Rangers won despite this, winning the President’s Trophy and coming within three key injuries to another trip to the Cup Final. I consider last year to be another major success, but with a red flag starting to rise.

This year, in my opinion, has been a step backwards for AV. The process has completely disappeared, the Rangers aren’t driving play the way they are capable of, they aren’t playing defense, and they are relying on rush chances and goaltending way too much. These are systemic issues that are both process and execution issues. The problem is compounded when you add in the loyalty factor, continually giving players ice time that have regressed or simply don’t deserve it. Add in the most recent decision to sit Dylan McIlrath, who has been nothing short of solid this year, and you have a lot of questionable decisions.

In the end, AV is still a solid coach. I think he’s working some things out with the roster, and it’s taking longer than expected. There are holes in the roster that he has to navigate through. It’s not a question about leading the team to a Cup. I think he’s fully capable, but a Cup run goes far beyond a coach. So many things need to go right, like pucks staying on the ice and not hopping over sticks in OT. Like lucky blind stick swings deflecting pucks away from empty nets in OT. Freak injuries. These are things out of a coach’s control. AV can guide this team to a Cup, but he will need better process and better playoff luck.

Jim asks: Can you go in depth about how you use stats to analyze predicted team performance? (I cut this question down a lot.)

An over simplified answer is this: The better a team is at driving possession, the better their chances at a sustained playoff run. But in all statistics you will have outliers, like last year’s LA Kings team that was the best possession team but missed the playoffs. Or the prior year’s Avalanche team that had horrible possession numbers but made the playoffs. These are outliers, they happen all the time, but they are exceptions to the rule. Score-adjusted measures take into account things like protecting leads in the third period, and all numbers should be taken at even strength.

This is where something like PDO (SV%+SH%) comes into play. Generally speaking, most teams will be around 100 PDO (roughly 92% SV% and 8% SH%). This matters because we use PDO in conjunction with possession as tools to identify underachieving or overachieving teams. The Rangers this year had a PDO of 107 at one point. That’s completely unsustainable. Couple that with bottom-third possession numbers, and the fall from the top was easy to see. The Rangers will fall to about a 102 PDO (I’ll get to why their PDO will be higher in a second), so the crash to Earth will be painful. It’s why process, as mentioned above, is so much more important than results in the regular season.

The playoffs are a different animal. Process matter, but less so than luck/PDO. In short series, I’d rather be lucky than good. We’ve seen what hot goaltending can do for a team. You want to see the right process and the right things, but luck will play a much larger role in the playoffs than in the regular season.

But here’s the dirty secret that sometimes gets overlooked: Skill matters. Goaltending plays a huge role in PDO, but only three teams have goalies that affect PDO greatly: the Rangers (Lundqvist), the Habs (Price), and the Bruins (Rask). You can make an argument for Nashville (Rinne) as well. Teams with consistently elite goaltending will have a higher SV%, thus a higher PDO.

A team like Carolina this year has great possession numbers, but are going to be one of the bottom feeders. Why? They lack skill. Their goaltending is atrocious and they have only a handful of players that can score. Driving possession is very important, but without skill a team won’t win. The reason why skill is often overlooked is because it is incredibly difficult to find repeatability in a stat like SH%, which is all we have available to measure.

It is irresponsible of anyone discussing hockey to rely 100% on the numbers or rely 0% on the numbers. Anyone who uses these stats properly will tell you that. There are other factors at play, like how a successful powerplay is a deadly weapon. Or how a suffocating penalty kill can neutralize offensive weapons. These numbers simply give us a picture, like Doppler Radar, of what we should see going forward. The meteorologist is wrong sometimes, hence the outliers like last year’s Kings, but usually the numbers can help predict what is to come.