I Tell You One Thing: We’re Better Together

 

Editor’s Note: This is an entry in our search for Fresh Blood at TLN. Every possible contributor will get three posts to strut their stuff and then we’ll ask you readers to help us choose who is going to join. 

A couple of weeks ago, after a disappointing loss to the Ottawa Senators, Maple Leafs’ coach Ron Wilson, in an effort to stimulate the offence, made a very public decision to split up the best pair of wingers this season; Phil Kessel and Joffery Lupul. To some surprise Lupul was dominant in that next game, putting up three points in a 4-1 win. It seemed as though Kessel and Lupul were apart for good. However, before the end of the next game the pair were back together, and have been since.

Having Kessel and Lupul on separate lines (and having it work), would give the Leafs two extremely dangerous lines and be a dream come true for Leafs fans. Although, would splitting up the pair be the smartest decision? I considered this and determined the best way to look at it would be to see what the best teams in the league did with their top scorers, i.e. do they play together a lot, or do they play on separate lines?

Follow me over the jump to find out.

Using behindthenet.ca‘s line-mates tool I was able to find the percentage of ice time that the two top scoring forwards on a team share. With this information I divided the percentage of ice time that Player A shares with Player B by Player A’s TOI/60. This determines what I call ‘TOI/60 with top player’ (TOI/60 W TOP), meaning, the average time that, for example, Datsyuk shares with Franzen. I decided to take a look at the top eight teams in the league, which would theoretically be home ice advantage in the playoffs.

TOI/60 W TOP gives some insight into how a coach plays their top players, i.e. how many minutes they are out on the ice together, and how many minutes they are apart. This does not mean that these two players play together this amount of time every game, it is simply an average. All of these numbers are at even strength.

Here is the data from the top eight teams:

TOI/60 – the average amount of minutes a player sees per game
TOI% W TOP – percentage of total ice time played with the top (or second) scorer
TOI/60 W TOP – the average amount of minutes a player sees per game, with the top (or second) scorer

And the Leafs:

Normally when a top player heads out on the ice with a different set of line mates, especially in Toronto, a lot is made out of it. Announcers say that the players just aren’t clicking, their chemistry is off, or that it just wasn’t there in the first place. But coaches changing around their lines isn’t something that’s so odd.