The “System”

14 comments

1. A good coach would adapt or modify the system to suit the players he currently has, not continuously bash his head against a wall trying to make players incapable of playing his exact system magically make it work.

2. At some point (when every major player on the team is slumping or regressing), it makes sense to think they might not be being deployed in ways that suit their strengths. One or two guys in a big slump makes sense. Happens all the time. Damn near everybody playing below the level that we know they can play at…that sounds more systemic.

3. Both things can be true, but I tend to agree, players have to score the system can’t do that. Being a -9 differential is a problem too.

   We’re also shooting at a terrible rate . 8%, league average is 10%-11%.

4. Fitz is the bigger problem for constructing this roster that ran into predictable problems, for re signing Markstrom to a massive contract when Markstrom is so often a sieve before he needed to, and for handing out no trade and no move clauses like candy. 

   Fitz needs to go at the end of this season for how he is mismanaging the team. Then new GM should be able to decide if he wants to keep Keefe or have a fresh start with a new coach. 

5. This post is about “the system,” but makes no mention of the style of play. It’s an overly conservative system, which leads to less rush opportunities and is much easier to defend.

   How does your chart show that it’s working? This is a team that has regularly posted a strong xGF% the last 3 years, but has been underwater all season long (look at that expected goal differential).

   Even Ken Daneyko, the ultimate stay-at-home defenseman, is getting more and more exasperated about how they don’t get the puck up the ice.

6. You post as though 13th in xG is good enough. It is not, especially given that the 25/26 Devils are **28th (5th WORST) in xGA.**

   You want to see a system matched to a roster that worked? Here you go….

   https://preview.redd.it/b6rkg3eqmbfg1.png?width=3116&format=png&auto=webp&s=2619ac401e7b91b371819ebb5b64caf0a44bdb38

7. > My question really is this. If the Devils are ranked in the top half of the league for expected goals, but last in goals for, is it not on the players at that point and not the system?

   Some systems systematically undershoot expected goals, because expected goals is not a perfect statistic. See the Carolina Hurricanes every year.

   If you don’t prioritize stuff expected goals miss, then you will systematically undershot it.

8. It is on the players at some point players have to eat their pride and play a system at some point . Now that being said the system has to work with the players you have and these players can’t play Keefe’s system they look lost and they don’t know how to pick their opportunities in the offensive zone .While in the defensive zone things get chaotic after 5 seconds and teams spend minutes in the devils zone or it’s in the back of the net

9. The biggest red flag to me is a guy like Dadanov putting up a 20/20/40 season last year and so far he’s got 0 points in 12 games. The system clearly isn’t working.

   On top of that we lack any true sniper. You know how we always wish that Markstrom could steal a game for us but can’t? Same can be said about a lethal shooter. For instance, the Buffalo Sabres could play a terrible game but still win because Tage Thompson put up a hat trick. We don’t have a sniper of the same caliber to will us to victory like that.

10. What your saying makes a lot of intuitive sense but imo we have guys that excel at run and gun. This kind of has to do with defensive zone and transition game than it does offensive zone strategies.

    We have players that seem really good at odd man rushes as opposed to cycle game.

    If we dont have great tippers or netfront presence or rebound guys then we could be generating a lot of perimeter chances that add up to a lot of expected goals but it doesnt play to our star’s strengths.

    Nico is good in tight, Meier should be, we’ve seen it from Mercer so you’d think this style would suit them as well but all 3 of them seem streaky with their finishing.

    To prove my theory I’d have to go back and see how many breakaways and odd man rushes we got in 2023 compared to past 2 years. And it SEEMS like you could debunk my theory by pointing out we’re 0 for like… 15 on our last 15 breakaways but still lol.

11. The Devils players from top to bottom are underperforming. Regardless who’s system was implemented, the GA and GF stats would still be fucked

12. Just forget this stat exists. xG is still a basic ass template and moneypuck’s is the worst of them. If they made a lot fewer dumbass decisions during games this team would easily be second in the dvision.

13. Devils are 19th in the league for expected goals for per 60 minutes played per money puck. They are showing up as 14th on your list because they’ve played more 5 on 5 minutes. So they are slightly below average in expected goals for, and way below average in actual goals for.

14. money pucks xG model is flawed. It doesn’t take into account things like puck movement and goalie movement and a lot of stuff that it simply does not have the data for.

    So all its doing is basically taking shots taken and stripping all context from them besides where they were taken from. What that means is that these numbers tend to overvalue a certain style of play which pushes a lot of low danger chances at the net but doesn’t necessarily result in a lot of goals.

    I.e. theres a lot of shots which have higher than xG chance of being goals and a lot of shots that have lower than xG chance of being goals and its seemed to me from watching this year that Keefe’s system creates a lot of the latter type and very little of the former.