kevin shattenkirk

In case you missed it, and judging by the effort I wouldn’t be surprised if you turned the game off after the second period, Kevin Shattenkirk did not see a shift in the third period in the shutout loss to Ottawa. From a selfish standpoint, I like the timing of it, since it was right after we noted Shattenkirk had been sneaky bad all year. Sometimes I get things right.

Anywho, Shattenkirk was far from the only player deserving blame for last night’s kidney punch. They all decided to mail that game in. While I don’t have any specific video of where/why Shattenkirk was benched, we do have the single game stats.

Again as a disclaimer, single game stats are not the best barometer for true performance. People have good games and bad games. But in this context, analyzing why he was benched, it is in the heat of the moment, thus the single game review matters.

From a raw possession standpoint, Shatty was on the ice for 15 shot attempts for and 10 against (60%, 17.5% relative). That’s good! However his xGF% was 44.10. That’s bad! But his relative xGF% was 13.90. That’s good!

So looking at the raw data, Shattenkirk was the best of the bad last night. Obviously there was something else at play here. There’s nothing David Quinn will say either, since his response was “That’s between Kevin and I” when asked postgame.

At this point, we are just spitballing, but there could be any number of reasons why he was benched:

  • Re-injured his knee?
  • Wasn’t skating or hustling?
  • Didn’t shoot the puck that one time?
  • A turnover?
  • Trade looming?
  • Too much baldness?
  • Punched Quinn’s puppy?

We honestly don’t know. But since Shatty was one of the better players –relatively– last night, the timing seems a little off. It isn’t rare to see something like this happen, so perhaps we are just over analyzing it. As of today, there are no call ups pending for tomorrow’s game in Montreal, so this likely isn’t going to carry over.

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