Looks really good to me! 3 really good lines. 4th line is serviceable. I like their top 4 D. Goaltending is not bad.

I have them 3rd in their division behind Minnesota (2) and Colorado (1).

Watch, that 3rd line is gonna be buzzing. I also get the feeling Binington is going to have a big season. I'm ready to drop the puck, let's go.

I have a very good feeling about Binnington and Parayko. I think the Blues team defense will nut up this year.

Honestly, most of their "defense problems" stem directly from bad giveaways in our half of the rink, and a majority of those aren't by defensemen. It was always an overplayed line. Is the Blues D corp elite? No, but folks act like it's terrible. It's a lot closer to elite than it is to terrible.

agreed, they were 9th in the league in GA last year

Looks Good! Can't Wait To Drop The Puck!

Yes I agree, the poor team defense stemmed almost exclusively from the forwards. There will hopefully be more of a forecheck this season and I imagine players like Schenn/Saad/Thomas will bounce back to previously strong defensive results.

In the 20’s in XGA though. Their goalies played well all season, even when they had Lindgren in

See, the thing is, xG never won a game. The Blues play to push things wide, and a not insignificant portion of their xGA comes from teams taking a lot of shots from out wide. I'm not saying they can't tidy up on allowing chances, but there is some context for these poor xGA numbers. And analytics often require context.

Well shots from out wide are typically low XG values. Teams got to the middle on the Blues a lot last year, Husso was excellent. They definitely did a good job of keeping shots on the outside in the playoffs and I expect it to be better this season.

They're lower in value, but it adds up. Meanwhile, the Blues shoot from out wide a lot less than most teams.

Yes the Blues offense is quite a underrated by public models. That’s agreed upon by most people (except people with massive egos like Dom.) Their defense however, was as bad as it looked last year.

So you're saying that the reason there's a discrepancy between the Blues' xG and GA is that they were actually so good at protecting the middle that opponents got the vast majority of their shots from around the point and the boards. But if a team allowed mostly only those kinds of shots, their xG results would look super great. That's the definition of an expected goals model, probability of shots becoming goals based on where the shot happened. If you are saying the Blues are pushing things wide and are actually good at that, but then also acknowledging that they looked bad in xG (and I don't know what model specifically @STLBlues17 is using, I'm looking at Evolving-Hockey where they are 21st in xGA/60), then one of two things is true.

1. The Blues allowed a crazy number of shots, so many more shots that these tiny probabilities for outside chances can outweigh teams that allow a few high danger shots in front of the net. Point shots are commonly worth as little as 0.02 xGs, where rebound chances in front of the net can be worth as much as 0.4 xGs, so this would mean that a conservative estimate is that the Blues would have to allow 15 more shots from the outside to get the same xGA number as a team that allows one high danger rebound chances. This is obviously not true, the Blues were middle-of-the-pack almost exactly in shots allowed last year at 17th and near bottom of the pack in shots blocked at 27th. This is not a team that was allowing tons and tons of shots and keeping them to the outside or blocking them. Allowing the amount of shots you're saying would "add up" to look that bad via the model is basically impossible. The Blues had worse xG numbers than the Ducks, Sharks, Oilers, Sabres and Blackhawks. Things add up, but not that much.

2. The Blues might THINK they are or WANT to be good at protecting the middle (it's a decent defensive philosophy) but last year they simply were not. And this is the truth.. I agree with STLBLues17 that they were better in the playoffs and I agree with you that a lot of their problems were giveaway based.

I'm not trying to make a judgement call on this year's group or say they can't be better, but it's pretty obvious that last year their defense protected right in front of the net and the edges while allowing a lot of medium and higher danger shots from the middle (leading to their bad xG numbers) and their goalies (mostly Husso) bailed them out. Analytics requires context and there's a lot of it to give when you talk about how xG rated the Blues OFFENSE last year but there's not really a lot to figure out why the stats were the way they were on defense.

No, not what I was saying at all. I was basically saying the outsized number of relatively harmless outside shots they were happy enough to give up skews the overall picture of a lot of analytic numbers. Which is a big reason why their GAA and save percentage stats were top 10 in the league while their analytics were middle of the pack 16th-ish kind of range.

I'm not saying the defense never made mistakes, but a good portion of their analytic failings were caused by the forwards and then exaggerated by the system of being content to push shooters wide (much in the same way a big reason the Blues shot such a high percentage and scored lots of goals despite less than stellar offensive data is because they played for high percentage chances). It's also worth noting this was the first season the Blues went with this particular system, which added a more open rush approach to their forecheck foundation. I'd like to think that they'll handle the puck better the second time around, especially now that Leddy's puck movement will be around for the full year.

So yes, the defense needs to continue playing as it did from about February on, all of them can do better at times. Even so, the Blues have a top 10 defense stable when everyone's available. And had Binny not had his extended meltdown, those analytic numbers wouldn't be 16thish anyway. Dad suffering a COVID hangover against his top matchups didn't help, either. There's a lot of reasons they were so low analytically last season that don't simply fall on the Dmen. The whole team has a responsibility to do better.

I'm just trying to make sure I understand what you're suggesting here, because the "outsized number" of outside shots that would be needed to skew the data like you're talking about is an insane number of shots that I don't see any evidence of existing. I'm not even trying to defend expected goals, but the only way for a team that keeps their stuff to the outside to look "poor" due to expected goals relative to everyone else is if there is a sheer number outside shots that it outweighs the high danger stuff other bad teams allow. And as I said, that could be conservatively low double digits of extra outside shots. xG treats outside and tough angle shots like basically nothing. In an expected goal model that ranks point shots as 0.02 xG and rebound attempts as 0.40 xG, the ratio of shots is 20:1 to end up with even expected goals.

The "skewing" factor that expected goals can be susceptible to seems to apply much more to someone like Brady Tkachuk, who is jamming shots under a goalie's pads at a rate untouched by anyone else in the league and are considered "high danger" because they're close to the net but don't really have that good of a chance of going in because of goalie positioning, which expected goals doesn't take into account. But the reason that you're putting an asterisk on their xGA numbers doesn't make any sense to me. In order for outside shots to have a meaningful skew on a team's xGA numbers, they would need to have a ton more shots than everyone else in the league, because outside shots are rated so ridiculously low compared to anything closer. And the Blues didn't allow more shots last year than most of the league. So what is it that is telling you the Blues' outside shots are meaningfully skewing their xGA numbers? Because to me it seems basically negligible. The rush offense sometimes leading to rushes back the other way and the lack of puck movement from our zone seems to be the much more important as to why they look bad in xG.



Yes they would have. Of course they would have! xG has nothing to do with quality of goaltending. Binnington could save or let in every single shot and the xGA number wouldn't change. The whole purpose of xGA is to try and evaluate a team's defense separate of goaltending. We can argue whether or not it does that, but goaltending has no impact on that number.

Blues offense is super underrated by XG though. Nobody really moves the puck around the zone like they can + lots of breakaways.

1 - I'll try to find the shot data I'm referring to. The Blues do allow a ton of outside shots compared to most teams, and like I said it adds up to pad the xG count. And with any shot based analytic, which is a whole lot of them, stuff like that has an effect. And really, last season was a tale of two phases as far as shots allowed; up until February, they were near the bottom of the league in shots allowed per game. From February on, their average dropped to the point where they ended up I think exactly middle of the pack. Let's face it, almost everyone on the team was too crap in and around our zone until mid winter. Their were too many shots outside, too many on the doorstep, too many all over. Aside from Binny, most got their act largely together, and their xGAs smoothed out a good bit. In both of these eras, they were close to leading the league in outside lane shots against. They can certainly play better, but shot based analytics do them no favors.

2 - Fully agree on the rush thing. We need to tidy up our breakouts.

3 - Heh. Goaltending doesn't directly tally into xG precisely for the reasons you mentioned. It does, however, have a decent effect when the goalie is serving up those fat .40 rebounds you spoke of. It has lesser but still evident effects from things like getting the D scrambling because an easy shot caroms off your glove instead of being caught and failing to cover a puck in the slot because you lost it.

Long story short: shot based analytics didn't really explain the Blues very well last season. And yes, they did themselves no favors a lot of times, especially from November to the start of February.

all i did was put out a roster and yall are writing essays bro chill lol

If we aren't here to discuss teams, what are we doing here?

I guess we have to distinguish what we're talking about here, I'm basically breaking xG up into two components, xGF and xGA, and I'm focusing on xGA.

1000% it skewed the offense (xGF), a team that doesn't take many shots but gets the majority of their chances in high danger areas is going to look mediocre by xGF (which is going to want you to take more shots) but they're going to score a ton (because their shots are always dangerous), which the Blues did. It's the opposite of what Carolina is doing, which is taking tons and tons of shots from everywhere but not converting on any, so it looks like their xG is really good but ultimately they're just never going to score like they "should", unless they get a ton of guys who are really good at shooting. The difference is Carolina is always covered the other way, where the Blues (by definition of how a rush offense works) aren't. And I do prefer the Blues' style, if nothing else because the games are much more exciting. But ultimately, the xGF component of xG is absolutely meaningfully skewed against the Blues.

When it comes to their xGA, I'm not convinced that it's being unfair to the Blues. Offense can definitely impact defense and a rush offense is likely going to lead to a drafty defense, unless you have tons of speedy defenders who are really good at gap control, and I don't think they had this for the majority of last year (though it's something they're clearly hoping a Leddy-Parayko pairing will be). But I think ultimately that's why their xGA numbers looks bad. It was a product of their offense naturally risking odd man breaks and their relative inability to transition out of their zone if they retrieved the puck.

Yep, we’re on the same page.