Breaking down the Red Wings’ eighth segment: Detroit showing signs of improvement at right time

(Adam Glanzman)

Red Wings fans have panicked for the last two and a half months. They had their reasons. Detroit went from fighting for home ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs to fighting to get into the playoffs, and all those battles came just months after the Red Wings were one of the top three teams in the league.

The playoffs are here now. Detroit is in. But wide-eyed hope morphed into closed-eyed wincing. The Red Wings haven’t been good for three months. In their last 11 games of the season they posted a 4-4-3 record, good for 11 points. That’s the same pace they were on last year when inched into the playoffs and then lost in the first round.

But look past the record and there’s a fllicker of light. The Red Wings might be out of their second-half woes. Here’s a look at the numbers:

(*The splits don’t add up to the total because I didn’t include empty-net goals, short-handed goals, 6-on-5 goals, etc. on the chart.)

Their goal differential isn’t negative and their five-on-five goal differential is positive for the first time in three segments.

Detroit spent the middle part of the year as a good team masking itself as a great team due to an unsustainable rate of power play goals. The power play calmed down. The Red Wings showed themselves as the team they always were. But now, with a positive even strength goal differential, Detroit showed right before the playoffs that they might be a little better than above average.

There’s still hope.

Here were the top five Red Wings in terms of Adjusted GRM this segment:

(A note before the numbers: Unadjusted GRM favors forwards over defensemen. With two years of data we somewhat overcome that by making adjustments based on position. I averaged all the GRM totals from every segment ever recorded — including this one — separately for forwards and defensemen, and subtracted that number from a player’s score depending on his position. The average GRM for a forward was 0.68. For a defensemen it was -0.87. So a forward who posted a 0.00 GRM will have an Adjusted GRM of -0.68, while a defenseman with a 0.00 total GRM has an Adjusted GRM of +0.87.)

Top 5 Red Wings

1. Pavel Datsyuk, +1.91

2. Stephen Weiss, +1.73

3. Niklas Kronwall, +1.53

4. Jakub Kindl, +1.12

5. Gustav Nyquist, +0.58

Datsyuk played in eight of the 11 games this segment and was by far the Red Wings’ best player at even strength, posting a +1.89 5-on-5 GRM. The only other player to have over a +1.00 5-on-5 GRM was Justin Abdelkader at +1.25.

Weiss pushed his way into the second spot as a result of his contribution on the power play. He was involved in half of the Red Wings’ six goals with the man advantage.

Kronwall pulled off the rare feat of being a defenseman and not recording a minus. That combined with contributions on two Red Wings goals earned him a spot in the top five.

There’s always one player that sneaks onto the list as a result of a low playing time and the positional adjustment. This time it’s Jakub Kindl, who played in two games, but recorded two points in one of them. With no playing time he couldn’t record any negatives, so he arrive in the top five.

Nyquist had almost the same offensive GRM as Datsyuk (2.93 to 2.94), but giveaways like this one against the Sharks prevented him from being higher.

On the other side, here were the bottom five Red Wings in terms of Adjusted GRM:

Bottom 5 Red Wings:

1. Joakim Andersson, -2.66

2. Drew Miller, -1.76

3. Tomas Tatar, -1.58

4. Riley Sheahan, -1.42

5. Dan Cleary, -1.01

Yes, Andersson is here partly as the result of him being a penalty killer, but it’s not all that. Passing it to the other team and then losing your man in front of the net also had something to do with it.

Miller didn’t make a lot of mistakes. There was one penalty, one mistake on the penalty kill, and one even strength mistake. The last one came against Washington. He lost a battle and then didn’t cover his man, causing a Mike Green slap shot goal. But I guess we should give him a break. His face was sliced open.

Tatar posted decent offensive numbers but fell apart defensively. He contributed to five goals allowed, including this one. Not his finest moment.

All of Sheahan’s scoring, both for and against, came during five-on-five play. No other notes needed.

Cleary played in four games this segment, so he’s a victim of the positional adjustment. He had just one negative GRM event, and it came on the penalty kill.