Draft Profile – Blake Siebenaler

Rather than do my typical scoring chances post I have decided to change it up and do a summary on draft eligible defencemen Blake Siebenaler. I have seen him play numerous times this season for Niagara. He is currently listed at 6’1, 183 so he needs to add some muscle as he continues to develop and grow. Central Scouting has him ranked 47^th on their list of North American skaters which would have him going in roughly the late second early third round of the draft.    

As a fancy stats enthusiast the first place I always look at is a players stats. I am a big believer as you know of the 0.6 points per game for CHL defencemen. Siebenaler had 30 points (6G, 24A) in 68 games, which is only 0.44 ppg. Normally I would advocate to not drafting a player like this, however from watching him, there are several reasons for his limited offensive output.

The first would be limited special teams time. He plays on the second defensive unit with Vince Dunn on both the power play and penalty kill, as well second pairing time on 5 on 5. The deflated power play ice time is big reason his point totals are low. If he get first power play time next season we should see his point totals rise considerably just through the added ice time alone.

The second reason his point totals are low is that Niagara is not a very good team so the teammates Siebenaler plays with are not the best. As mentioned he gets second pairing minutes for all situations which means he conveniently misses playing with the much talked about Perlini, Verhaege, Difrusia line. The second line on Niagara consists of Billy Jenkins, Jordan Maletta and Eric Ming. All three of those players were passed over in their respective NHL draft years, which give you an idea of their (lack of) skill. This line gets killed in the possession battle, consistently playing in the defensive zone. When this line does create pressure it is usually started by the defencemen, either Siebenaler or his partner Dunn.

Siebenaler is an excellent skater; he has a real fluid motion and gets up the ice quick. He is able to create turnovers in his own zone and rather than pass to his inferior line mates he simply carries the puck out of trouble. Not only does he take it out of his own zone, he has good stick handling and puck control which allow him to carry the puck through the neutral zone and into the offensive zone. He along with Dunn are a big reason why Niagara gets any chances from their secondary lines. From what I've seen of his shot it’s decent but nothing special. He doesn’t get a lot of chances to shoot however as he is the one who has to create the scoring chances. He doesn’t have line mates who can set him up consistently.

Defensively he does a good job of cutting off the lane and forcing players to take low quality shots from the outside. He has good stick work which he uses to create turnovers. His ability to leave the zone is great as mentioned previously. When he gets closed off he has the vision and IQ to make a good first pass out of trouble. He is not very physical but that’s not an issue as he has the puck a lot. Plus physicality can be taught very easily in my opinion.

To conclude here’s my quick profile on Blake Siebenaler.  

Siebenaler is a two way defencemen, with great skating stride. Has the ability to carry the puck out of traffic and makes a good first pass. He plays on a poor Niagara team which limits his chances offensively. Defensively he keeps players to the outside, preventing chances. He is not the most physical player but creates turnovers with good stick work. 

North Bay Battalion vs. Niagara Ice Dogs – Game Summary

First off before getting into reviewing the keys I laid out yesterday, I have to say Eric Ming WOW. He was not someone I had anticipated doing much in this game, but he was very impressive scoring two goals, one of which was absolutely dirty as he toe dragged around the defender and went backhand top shelf (not quite backhand bar down unfortunately).

Now on to the three keys (for a recap check the previous post)

The Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia line for the Ice Dogs did go out and dominate recording 6 of the 11 scoring chances recorded by Niagara. It could have easily been more except for the fact that Perlini was the recipient of two huge hits from behind, going head first into the board on both occasions. The first hit required Perlini to head to the dressing room to be checked over. He missed about a quarter of the period. The second hit was not as bad and Perlini stayed in the game after it. There zone starts as unit were fairly even by my estimation, I didn’t record it but I would guess they were around even for offensive and defensive starts. Again like much like every other game, this line did a good job of creating pressure, along with the 6 created chances, the line combined for a goal and three assists. This key was definitely completed.  

The second thing I was watching for was the playing tome of the defencemen. It was clear in this game that Luke Mercer and Aaron Haydon are the top defensive pair used by Niagara. They received first power-play and penalty kill time. In being the top pair they benefit from playing with the top line mentioned above. The fact that Haydon more than likely has been receiving this kind of ice time all season and only managed to put up 16 points on the season is crazy to me. He has no offensive upside and someone I am definitely avoiding come draft day. Mercer isn’t as crazy to play more as he is the veteran on the team and the captain. He did lead the Ice Dogs in scoring this season with 39 points; however that was only 6 more than Vince Dunn who is two years younger. It’s pretty clear to me anyway that Dunn and Blake Siebenaler are the better two defencemen.

They played exactly the way I said they would in the preview post. They both have the ability to create turnovers in their own end and when they do both are able to skate the puck out the zone. One thing I really liked from these two players was how they both never seemed to dump the puck it. On numerous occasions they created a turnover in the defensive end and took the puck all the way into the opponents end by themselves. Another thing I liked from both of these defencemen was their stick work. They both have excellent hand eye coordination to bat the puck down at the line and keep it in. Siebenaler is draft eligible this season. He is currently ranked 47^th among North American skaters, and 19 spots below Haydon. I would pick Siebenaler over Haydon any day. Dunn is not draft eligible until next season, he is someone who I don’t see being ranked very highly due to his size (6’ 185), but I see the upside in his game and he could real steal for a team that looks past his size. 

Finally we come to Brent Moran, who despite receiving the first star in this game was rather shaky in this one. I said in the preview that he would face 40 shots and would have to stop 38-39 of them to win. He practically did just that. He faced 39 shots and saved 36 of them(.923 SV%) . Moran did not look good in the first period. He was making plenty of saves but he looked like he had no idea where the puck was. He allowed tons of rebounds, even when the puck hit him in the chest it would drop to the ground allowing North Bay a chance to get a few more whacks at it. Despite all that he only managed to give up one goal in the first period and eventually settled down.

Even though only two of my three keys occurred in this game, Niagara managed to pull off the victory 5-3. This gives them a 3-1 lead in the series and a chance to end it tonight in North Bay. I will be watching that game tonight and again will be looking for these same things.    

Scoring Chances by Period

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
North Bay	10(3)	9(3)	4(3)	23(8)
Niagara	3(3)	6(1)	2(2)	11(6)

North Bay Battalion vs. Niagara Ice Dogs – Preview

I'm headed down to “The Jack” tonight to watch the Ice Dogs take on the Battalion in OHL playoff play. The Dogs are up 2-1 in the series after shutting out North Bay in game 3. This will be my fourth time seeing Niagara live this season (along with multiple times on TV), so I feel I have a decent understanding of how their team works. With that being said here are the some things I will be watching for in tonight’s game.

1.     I want to see the line of Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia dominate play for the majority of time they are on the ice. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts this is the one line on Niagara that can drive play and keep possession in the offensive zone. It doesn’t matter what zone they start in whether defensive or neutral zone they find a way to get the puck out and into the opponents end. The Ice Dogs need this line to create that pressure and score in order to have a chance.  

2.    They need to get the D pair of Vince Dunn and Blake Siebenaler, more playing time. From what I have seen those two are the Ice Dogs best D pair. I know Luke Mercer has the experience (229 career OHL games played) and Aaron Haydon has the draft pedigree (28^th among NA Skaters per CSS), but from what I've seen from that defence pair is they are always pinned in their own end. They do a poor job of getting possession and getting the puck into the offensive zone. They do block shots and get in passing lanes a lot but the reason they have to do that so much is they don’t have the puck.  What Dunn and Siebenaler do are they get control of the puck and are able to either carry it out their zone and into the offensive end or they make a good first pass to the forward who usually dumps it or carries it into the zone. I'm hoping to see significant playing time for both of them.  

3.    Brent Moran has to the stop the puck. Yes this is what all goalies have to do, but as mentioned all lines other than the Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia line, and Dunn-Siebenaler, get beat in the possession game. Moran is going to be peppered with shots whenever those five are not on the ice. Moran is likely going to face 40 shots tonight; he needs to save 38-39 of those in order for the Ice Dogs to win.

If those three things happen tonight the Ice Dogs will win this game and have a 3-1 stranglehold on the series. 

Friday Night Hockey Scoring Chances–Playoff Edition

I had the pleasure of watching Jonathan Drouin and the Halifax Mooseheads take on the Charlottetown Islanders in the first game of what expects to be a long playoff run again for the Mooseheads. The QMJHL playoffs are a little different than what most people are used to. Rather than the typical 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7 etc. the “Q” seeds all playoff teams together from 1-16. So Halifax who finished second in the Q with 97 points (Baie-Comeau had 99) is playing Charlottetown who are the #15 seed. On paper this game (and the whole series really) should be a cake walk for Halifax. Halifax won the game 6-3 out chancing Charlottetown 25-11 and 15-4 at even strength.

Obviously Drouin was the star of this game, not much I can add that you don’t already know. He looked like an NHL player. He had 8 scoring chances of his own and set up numerous others. Playing alongside Drouin and not looking out of place was potential top 5 pick Nikolaj Ehlers. Ehlers finished the season second on the team to Drouin with 104 points in 63 games (49G, 55A). What impressed me most about Ehlers wasn’t the impressive skill level, or the fact that he dominated in the possession game, no it was how his coach trusted him in all situations. He played the power play obviously, but also received significant time with Drouin on the penalty kill. From this game anyway it seemed that Drouin and Ehlers were the team’s top penalty killing forwards. As you probably know from previous posts, I love players who are trusted to kill penalties. It shows they are trusted as good defensive players by their coach. The one issue I had with Elhers was when he was killing a penalty in the second; he took a very undisciplined slashing penalty in retaliation to being interfered with. It gave Charlottetown a long 5-3 power play which they ended up scoring on. It wasn’t crucial in the end result of the game as the score was so one-sided but against a better team he can’t afford to take those bad penalties.

Turing our attention to the 2015 NHL draft, 16 year old right winger Daniel Sprong stood out for Charlottetown. He had 4 of the 11 scoring chances for Charlottetown. He came to Charlottetown via the bantam draft going 13^th overall in 2013. He has become the team’s best player leading them in all sorts of offensive categories including goals (30), assists (38), points (68) power play goals (9) and shots (260). His 1.01 points per game was third among QMJHL rookies, behind Ehlers, and Vladimir Tkachev. He is already being projected by some mock drafts to go in the late first round, but I think he could go even higher if he takes a big jump next season and improves even more. I can honestly see 100 points for Sprong next season, provided health of course, and a shot of going in the top 15 in next summer’s draft. He is someone I am definitely going to be keeping my eye on next season.

Scoring Chances by Period

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
Charlottetown	6(2)	3(1)	2(1)	11(4)
Halifax	10(4)	10(9)	5(2)	25(15)

OHL Playoff Preview 2014

The OHL playoffs begin tonight with Sudbury taking on Barrie. Rather than do a traditional playoff preview going through each match up, I thought in the spirit of March Madness I would post my OHL playoff bracket!

*Hopefully that is legible enough, apologies if its not.

I'm taking the favourites this year, with Peterborough as my only upset pick of the first round.

In the Eastern Conference I see Oshawa rolling through the first two rounds pretty easily before a tough match-up against Barrie in the East finals. Oshawa wins the East through their great offense lead by potential top 10 Michael Dal Colle, and Flyers first round pick Scott Laughton (20^th overall, 2012). Dal Colle led the Generals in scoring with 95 points (39G, 56A) in 67 games this season (1.4ppg). Laughton is highly regarded for his two-way play helped the Generals to the third best penalty kill in the league (82.9%), and even chipped in with five shorthanded goals.

Barrie on the other hand is carried by big time defencemen Aaron Ekblad. Ekblad led the Colts to the best goal differential in the East (+48) which resulted in a fourth place finish in the standings. Ekblad has been deadly from the back end this season, especially on the power-play where he has scored 16 of his 23 goals. Those 16 power play goals were tops among OHL defencemen and third in the lead behind Erie snipers Conner Brown and Dane Fox. Offensively the Colts are led by winger Andreas Athanasiou who put up 95 

points (49G, 46A) in 66 games (1.4ppg).

The battles out west are going to be fun. With four super teams set to collide in the second round, expect each series to be a long fought battle. I predict Guelph and Erie to win the battles with Erie winning the West and then getting through Oshawa to be the OHL’s representative (along with hosts London) at the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

I like Erie to win the OHL championship because they are the perfect example of how to win in today’s hockey. I've had the chance to see Erie play a few times this season, granted it was against some weaker teams, but they are a puck possession team. They have so much skill on offense that once they gain the zone with the puck they do not relinquish it. That style of play on offense was the key to only allowing 170 goals all season, fewest in the OHL. That offense featuring some of the best in the league, be it OHL point leader Conner Brown (128), OHL goal leader Dane Fox (64) or phenom Conner McDavid who just missed the 100 point mark as a 16 year old (he finished with 99), helped keep the pressure off of the defence. It’s not like the defence is poor either, with team Canada defencemen Adam Pelech and silver medalist Oscar Dansk. This team has an excellent offensive core, god defence and a solid goalie, that’s why they are my pick to be the OHL Champions.   

Counting Cards at the Draft – NCAA Defencemen

As mentioned in my previous post, I am going to study the draft to see if point production in a players draft season, translates into NHL success. The goal of this is to hopefully identify the type of player who is more likely to succeed, thus being able to hit on later round picks and beat the odds of any given draft. Today we are going to look at defencemen drafted out of American colleges or the NCAA.

I defined the NCAA as the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association (ECHA), Hockey-East (H-East) and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). These were all described as NCAA Division I schools on the site hockey data base. I tried to follow what “That’s Offside” did in their piece on CHL defencemen. I had to make some tweaks obviously but overall I tried to follow the same methodology for consistency purposes.

I followed the same time period of 1998-2008, and also used the “NHL regular” definition of having played in at least 40% of your eligible NHL games. The one change I made was I included all defencemen taken in the draft, rather than just the ones taken in the first three rounds. I did this predominately because of sample size issues. There are just not as many NCAA players taken compared to the CHL and I wanted the largest sample size to increase reliability. I calculated the points per game of each player in their draft eligible season and compared it to the percentage of NHL games played in. Plotting these in a scatter plat yields the following graph:

The cluster of dots on the bottom line of the graph (0% of NHL games), begins to take off at around 0.45 points per game. Dividing this graph into quadrants at 40% and 0.50 points per game gives us the following. 

As you can tell the majority players who are unlikely to make the NHL are the ones who fall below the 0.50 points per game. These results are encouraging as they are quite similar percentage wise to what “That’s Offside” found.

There definitely appears to be a trend here at 0.50 points per game but before this goes too far the exceptions need to be looked to see why the players who scored over 0.50 (the bottom right) failed and why the players under 0.50 (top left) succeeded.

How they Missed:

• Grant Lewis (40^th overall, 2004), Juha Alen (90^th overall, 2003), Zach Redmond (184^th overall, 2001), and Mike Gabinet (237^th overall, 2001). These players all suffered significant injuries which cut short their careers.
• Mark McRae (288^th overall, 2000), Bobby Allen (52^nd overall, 1998), Peter Metcalf (267^th overall, 1999), Cody Wild (140^th overall, 2006) Chris Bahen (189^th overall, 2000). These players all had a scoring drop off either there next season in college or when they made the jump to the AHL.
• AJ Thelen (12^th overall, 2004), Danny Richmond (31^st overall, 2003), both went to the CHL. Thelen went because he was kicked off his college team for underage drinking, and struggled in the WHL. Richmond was solid in the OHL (0.59ppg) but struggled in the AHL.
• Jeff Jillson (14^th overall, 2004). He bounded around the NHL for a number of seasons, but couldn’t shake the label of being a poor defender he was given in his rookie season.  He is now playing over in the Czech-Republic.
• Brian Salcido (141^st overall, 2005). Had some success in the AHL before going to Europe.

Alec Martinez was excluded from this list as he just missed the threshold of being an NHL regular (38%), but he has defiantly moved past the 40% mark with the number of games he has played this season.

How They Made it:

Here is the list of all the players who fell below the 0.50 points per game but still managed to have an NHL career; Duncan Keith, Brooks Orpik, Ron Hainsey, Mike Komisarek, Kevin Bieksa , Mike Commodore, Matt Hunwick, Mike Lundin.

All of those players, with the exception of Commodore, managed to improve their scoring up to 0.5 before they finished college, or in the case of Keith went and succeeded in the CHL (1.20ppg).

Here is the short list of draft eligible defencemen from the NCAA as per Central Scouting.

*stats as of March 13 2014*

Player	Rank	GP	Goals	Assists	Points	PPG
Gavin Bayreuther	115	34	8	25	33	0.97
Parker Reno	161	20	1	1	2	0.05
Scott Savage	202	29	4	12	16	0.55

Some team is going to get a steal with Gavin Bayreuther. Scoring at almost a point per game, he is projected to go about mid-fourth round. I personally would try and target him a little earlier than that, early fourth, late third perhaps. Scott Savage could be an even bigger steal, likely a 7^th round pick if he even gets drafted at all. If he can maintain that scoring pace or even improve it, some team is going to have themselves an NHL defencemen at very minimal cost. He is definitely worth a gamble in the seventh round. Teams should all just avoid Parker Reno until he can show at least some ability to put up points.  

We have gotten this far and now seems like a good time to mention the big elephant in the room; age. I have not accounted for how old a player was at the time of being drafted. The NCAA does not have age regulations like the CHL does so players can be much older, which could have some impact on the results. If this study were to be re-done it is something to include but for now I think the current analysis gives us a pretty good framework of what players will succeed coming out of the NCAA.

To conclude this study supports the idea that players who make the NHL are ones who can put up points as amateurs. If I am looking to draft a defencemen from the NCAA I would be looking for the players who are putting up points, such as Gavin Bayreuther. This study obviously only covered players who were drafted but I feel this same principle would apply to undrafted college free agents as well. This study is limited by not including age. Future studies should look at including age, as well as looking at other leagues and positions.

All stats are from hockey database and information on players from Hockey’s Future. 

If you have an questions/comments, feel free to leave them below.

Counting Cards at the Draft

We all know that drafting is an inexact science. It is extremely difficult to project what a player is going to do down the road. In doing research on the draft it’s clear the top half of the first round (picks 1-15) have the highest probability of NHL success.  This chart from Derek Zona of Copper Blue outlines these odds very nicely.

Draft Number	Total	Top Players	Percentage
1	7	6	0.857
2-3	17	15	0.882
4-7	32	16	0.500
8-13	51	21	0.412
14-25	99	29	0.293
26-50	202	30	0.149
51-100	405	30	0.074
101-200	771	30	0.039
201+	572	18	0.031

He looked at drafts from 1997-2005. He defined a top player as having as having played a minimum of 200 NHL games having scored at least 0.5 points per game. This eliminates all the grinders and goons who can easily be had in free agency each season for cheap. For defencemen he used the same 200 games played minimum, but reduced the scoring rate to 0.15 points per-game and 18:30 time on ice, this again eliminates any goons but also eliminates players who are just power-play specialists.

As you can the drop from the top picks is pretty staggering.  After pick 7 you have a less than 50% chance of becoming a top NHL player. It’s for all intents purposes a coin flip.

The goal of a team’s draft should be to beat those odds. If you can find a top NHL player after pick 13 you have done very well for your organization. This is what scouting boils down too in my opinion trying to beat the odds. Everyone knows who the top 10-15 players are in a draft class the hard part is knowing the guys after that.

What I want to do is use numbers to study what players have done as amateurs and see if any trends emerge with the goal of beating those odds. This is much what Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s did in Moneyball. The odds were (and still are) stacked against them and they used stats so that they could stack the deck and be card counters at the casino. I want to be able to be the card counter at the draft. 

The best research I have found was the study previously mentioned in this blog from “That’s Offide” Defence, Defencemen andthe Draft. He of course found that among defencemen selected in the top three rounds, the ones who became NHL regulars scored at 0.6 points per game in junior. I have done some research trying to find other studies like this and so far to no avail. In the months leading up to the draft I hope to replicate this study using other leagues and positions. With this I hope to find out more ways to predict NHL success which I understand is not perfect and there will always be exceptions to the rule. But hopefully it will be a better understanding of how to predict future NHL players which can increase the odds of draft picks which really should be every team’s goal.