Possession and the Preseason

The Games

The Players

• I think that the most overrated player coming out of training camp is probably Josh Leivo. It’s the same basic point that I made in my TLN Top Prospects post on him; people are high on what he can be, but he isn’t there yet. People see him turning into Joffrey Lupul. He’s not yet Joffrey Lupul. Leivo posted a 39.3 CF% with the Leafs this preseason; worse than anybody who played three recorded games. Leivo, of course, played five, and put up three points. A shooting percentage of 33% made him look like a sniper, but this is a guy who managed to take three shots in five games was likely detrimental to the flow of the game. Let him rip it up with the Marlies – if this is any indication, he’s not to be trusted yet with top six NHL minutes. If you can’t put him high in the lineup, there isn’t another place to put him.
• But the Leafs still need to figure out who starts on the right wing on line two, no? David Clarkson is hurt, and so is David Booth. The latter is definitely going to miss time, and the Chief of the Water Bottle Police is a question mark. My thoughts? This is where you reward William Nylander. Yes, there are parts of his game where it’s evident that he’s not ready for prime time. He makes the odd foolish giveaway, and he doesn’t seem up to snuff in terms of his physical frame. But at 52.3%, he was one of Toronto’s best possession players. He was a positive in four of six games, and generates a lot of offence on his own. I don’t know if you can trust him to put up points, but he doesn’t appear to be a liability yet. Plus, it buys you time to decide what league you want him in.
• Brandon Kozun is the biggest breakout story at the end of the preseason, as it looks like he’ll be making the Leafs roster. This is an interesting one – I had him pegged behind Spencer Abbott, who got just one game before being sent down, in the Marlies depth chart. With that said, Kozun impressed many with his speed and lit up the scoreboard with a three point night tonight. The fancy stats have him just below the curve in terms of relative possession – the team is 0.9% better with him off the ice, but I think that his second of six games plays into that. In the Ottawa split-squad game, Kozun was on for 10 attempts for and 22 attempts against. Pull that out, and he’s even.
• By the way, 22 attempts against? That’s only two fewer than Carter Ashton saw on the ice, for either team, this entire preseason. It’s hard to say that he was in a position to succeed when he was given two games and next to no ice time. Ashton was a horrendous 23.1% in his first game, but was also on a line with Colton Orr and Trevor Smith. He was more respectable last night, but still didn’t play very much. I assume he will be waived in the coming days, but it would have been nice to see him, you know, have a shot at making the team in a hockey-playing role.
• Dion Phaneuf‘s game seemed to go the way of his defensive partners. With Franson and Robidas? A shade over 59%. With Polak and Granberg? Under 30%. The Leafs can’t keep trying him with immobile defensive defencemen – it doesn’t work. It’s a small sample, but seems to be a recurring pattern in Phaneuf’s career. Robidas looked both mobile and positionally intelligent tonight, however, so that may be a pair we see a lot of to start.
• If I’m the Leafs, I’m not opposed to a third line of Daniel Winnik, Mike Santorelli, and Leo Komarov, at least to start the year. Santorelli and Komarov were Toronto’s best possession forwards. All three are capable of contributing a bit offensively, and all three are penalty killers. If Carlyle wants to recreate the magic of his Anaheim “shutdown line”, this is probably the closest thing he’ll get to it right now. 
• The last spot in the defensive rotation seems to be pretty contested right now. Some are in favour of Korbinian Holzer, while others like Stuart Percy. Of the two, Holzer put up the better full preseason numbers, getting 50.9% of the attempts while on the ice (5.18% above the curve). Percy, on the other hand, was 1% below the curve at 45.9%. I’ve been saying that I preferred Percy’s game more throughout the preseason, but it didn’t occur to me how well Holzer actually performed. Even when he was bad, he was ahead of the team’s relative curve for in all four of his games. Percy had a team-best game against the Sabres on the 26th (Toronto’s only 50% player), but was negative relative to the team in every other game. This is where I miss having easily accessible zone start percentages; I wonder how well they come into play. In any event, this is enough to make me feel that it would be best for Percy to go down, and have Holzer run as the extra; he had a bad first go with the Leafs, but maybe he’ll be better off on Pair 3 rather than facing elite forwards with Phaneuf.