Hey Wild fans! In this installment of "The 5-Hole" we'll be looking through the electron microscope at the 22 game's worth of special teams for this season's Wenatchee Wild.
As I write this, the Wild are still in the state of Alaska and getting ready to play the final two games of their six scheduled there against the Kenai River Brown Bears, who will trail Wenatchee by only 2 points in the race for first place in the Western Division standings when the puck drops for game one of the series on Friday, November 19th.
Wenatchee is also on a three game losing skid at the moment, having dropped the second game of two with the Fairbanks Ice Dogs on November 13th and being swept by the Alaska Avalanche in a pair of games on November 16th and 17th, which became the first time the Av's have ever swept the Wild in their history, and only the sixth time in 31 games head-to-head Alaska had ever won in regulation time over Wenatchee!
The rut also marks the first time all season that the Wild have dropped three games in a row, and only the fourth time in club history that they have lost three or more consecutive games (the longest losing streak in the team record books is five, and occurred within the first seven games during their inaugural season in 2008...let's hope they don't tie or break that one any time soon;-).
One of the biggest statistical reasons Wenatchee has had both success and failure during the 2010-2011 season to date is special teams. It's a large part of the game and, if you observe very closely, tends to typically represent a conspectus of all those "little things" we talk about so often in allocated specimens of two minutes or less (and sometimes four minutes or less and yes, even five minutes or less).
Since we've already hammered home a bit of the ugly that's been going on of late, let's begin with some of the "happy" surrounding the club's special teams numbers.
The Wild currently have the second best powerplay in the NAHL at 21.9% (30-for-137), and prior to November 17th's game against Alaska, they had laid claim to the league's number one ranking in that category for over a month.
Exactly 40% of Wenatchee's 75 team goals on the season have come with the man advanatge, and 48% are on special teams in general, when you toss in the Wild's half-dozen shorthanded markers. Those six shorties also place the team second in the league on that leaderboard for the season (the Motor City Metal Jackets are tops on the powerplay at 22.7% and have 7 shorties to lead the league in both categories).
Wenatchee has registered at least one powerplay goal in 12 of their 13 wins on the season and have two or more man advantage goals in six of those games (including a team record six against Fresno on October 16th). They have also posted five game winning powerplay goals on the season, plus two game winning shorthanded redlighters as well.
Over 63% of the Wild's powerplay goals have been scored at home, where they are humming along at a 28.7% clip for the season (19-for-66).
Individually, Wenatchee's Michael DiPuma is in the top five in the league among powerplay goal scorers with six and defensemen Chris Rumble and Zach Frye are in the top ten of the league's powerplay assist leaders with nine a piece. Rumble is also third in the entire league in overall powerplay points with 13, which is tops among defensemen in that category to boot.
And on the shorthanded front, Eliot Grauer and Evan Schmidbauer are among nine players in the league who have tallied two goals with their team down a man, which ties them both for number one in the league in that stat. As a team the Wild are also one of only three teams in the league that have not yielded a shorthanded goal this season (Motor City and Kenai River are the other two).
So all of that is great! Right? Well, there's also an unsightly underbelly to this dissection that we must also analyize before we turn in our final report from the hockey laboratory.
Wenatchee's penalty kill is 17th in the NAHL at 82.7% (115-for-139) and they are the eighth most penalized team in the league, averaging 6.31 times shorthanded per game (Port Huron is worst in the league in case you were curious at 8.76 average times shorthanded per game!).
The Wild have racked up the fourth most penalty minutes in the league as a team this season with 614 in 22 games (albeit that's a far cry from Corpus Christi's league leading 913 in 21 games!) and of the 57 goals against they have allowed as a team this season, 42.1% of them have been scored on the powerplay.
In the team's nine losses, the Wild have allowed a powerplay goal in seven of them and have scored a powerplay goal in only two. Even worse, 66.7% of the game winning goals scored by their opposition this season have been while Wenatchee is shorthanded.
And when we plunge the statistical scalpel even deeper into this penalty box frog we discover this rather disturbing affliction; in 14 games this season, subsequent to when the Wild have taken a two goal advantage over an opponent, they have been tagged for 82 minor penalties for a total of 164 minutes shorthanded and have allowed 16 powerplay goals, including two game winning tallies on two occasions when their opposition registered three consecutive powerplay markers to come from behind and prevail. Yikes!
Wenatchee also appears to be letting their man advantage Bunsen burner cool down of recent times too! In their first 11 games of the season the Wild went 28.9% (20-for-69) on the powerplay, but in their last 11 contests they are only 14.7% (10-for-68). In their last five games they are a mere 2-for-26 (7.6%) with the man advantage, including 1-for-19 (5.2%) on the current road trip and are 0 for their last 15 chances (..."Mr. Blutoski, that's 0.0%!").
So what's our final analogy?
That timing isn't everything, but it appears to have the most to do with special teams. At least for this season's Wenatchee Wild squad through 22 games anyway.
It goes without saying that if you are only going to be so opportunistic as to score one powerplay goal in a dozen chances, you'd hope that it would be with half a minute to go in regulation time to win the game. Yes?
Just the same, if you are going to sit in the box an average of more than six times per contest, it had better be after the rout is on in your favor. You savvy?
Given the season numbers and their struggles on the current road trip and last five games, it's obvious that the Wild are shooting themselves in the collective foot time and time again this season, while managing to dodge some other trajectiles that would further deepen the wounds of this club if not for their own enormous ability as a team...especially on special teams!
Which brings us back around once again to all of those "little things". Things like skating, being hard to and on the puck in all zones of the ice, taking the body and blocking shots. These as it turns out are not "little" components to the game at all. Instead they are in fact, the fundamental cornerstones for every successful hockey team and will not only defy any stat line you can dig up about a flashy powerplay, but also magnify the efforts of such a hard working squad when they are up or down a man.
Just play hard Wenatchee! And let the laws that govern hockey's chaotic science of special teams sort out themselves.
No testing was done on any animals during the manufacturing of, or scientific studies related to this blog...
Please share your thoughts with me on this installment of "The 5-Hole"!
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