On a train to Kirkcaldy so thought I would look at some stats after Wannabe’s point about Joey’s points production.
It’s a conundrum at the moment as to what to suggest. If you look at the first two lines (however they are configured) then all six are pretty much a point a game:
Cox is the top point scorer with 17, Crandall and Martin the bottom with 12 and the others grouped around 14/15 points so… it would be useful to have more and the balance still isn’t quite right but, there’s enough there to suggest that we have six players who are going to contribute game in, game out.
The problem is the drop off after the top six. Penny, Waller and Brittain have 7, 6 and 5 respectively so not quite 0.5 a game.
The final line is a little all over the place with Davies having 8 points and Brandt/Duggan on 4 so, on the face of it we need to be focused on these two lines if we are tweaking line ups.
Clearly I am I oversimplifying things a lot. Although Penny is not offering a vast amount offensively, he is our best face off player and that’s an area that we have struggled at recently so that needs to be factored in.
Defensively, the picture is even more confused. Bowns is well above 92% save percentage which is impressive, but Kozun is higher still. The problem of course is that you are not comparing like with like. Bar two stellar saves last night, Kozun could have gone to the bar and had a beer for most of the night, so straightforward was his night so I remain unconvinced that there a much difference between the two.
Amongst D men it is even harder to come to clear conclusions, it is quite clear that two are carrying injuries and one more went down last night so I think that needs to be taken into account but Crawford’s +/- is significantly higher than anyone else’s, whilst Ritchie’s is lowest for the first time I can remember.
So what does all this mean? To be honest if I knew that I probably wouldn’t be doing my current job but on the face of it the issue appears to be depth of scoring and D cover so I wonder if we might see a new body at some point to try to fire the lower lines?
On the other hand maybe we need one more throw of the dice with the current top 9?
It’s a conundrum at the moment as to what to suggest. If you look at the first two lines (however they are configured) then all six are pretty much a point a game:
Cox is the top point scorer with 17, Crandall and Martin the bottom with 12 and the others grouped around 14/15 points so… it would be useful to have more and the balance still isn’t quite right but, there’s enough there to suggest that we have six players who are going to contribute game in, game out.
The problem is the drop off after the top six. Penny, Waller and Brittain have 7, 6 and 5 respectively so not quite 0.5 a game.
The final line is a little all over the place with Davies having 8 points and Brandt/Duggan on 4 so, on the face of it we need to be focused on these two lines if we are tweaking line ups.
Clearly I am I oversimplifying things a lot. Although Penny is not offering a vast amount offensively, he is our best face off player and that’s an area that we have struggled at recently so that needs to be factored in.
Defensively, the picture is even more confused. Bowns is well above 92% save percentage which is impressive, but Kozun is higher still. The problem of course is that you are not comparing like with like. Bar two stellar saves last night, Kozun could have gone to the bar and had a beer for most of the night, so straightforward was his night so I remain unconvinced that there a much difference between the two.
Amongst D men it is even harder to come to clear conclusions, it is quite clear that two are carrying injuries and one more went down last night so I think that needs to be taken into account but Crawford’s +/- is significantly higher than anyone else’s, whilst Ritchie’s is lowest for the first time I can remember.
So what does all this mean? To be honest if I knew that I probably wouldn’t be doing my current job but on the face of it the issue appears to be depth of scoring and D cover so I wonder if we might see a new body at some point to try to fire the lower lines?
On the other hand maybe we need one more throw of the dice with the current top 9?