After enduring two rather uninspiring Seattle Kraken games this weekend, I didn’t have it in me to spend the time putting together my typical verbose narrative on the last week of Kraken hockey. To fill the void, I am going to dig into something that has been troubling this team all season: the lack of goal scoring.
The scope of this analysis is limited to aggregated team data and not individual player performance. I will spend some time examining the players’ performances in a future article, but for now, let’s explore to gain a deeper understanding of where this team has seen drops and try to understand why they have happened.
Average goals scored
Just to ensure we are all starting from the same point, let’s note that Seattle has had the largest drop in the NHL for average goals scored per game season over season and has the third-lowest goals scored per game in the league.
The lack of goal scoring was particularly evident in the last three games, where the Kraken only managed to score one goal in each. Sunday marked the 25th game of the season where the Seattle Kraken were held to one goal or less. They had only 15 such games last season, and even in the inaugural season, challenging as it was, they only had 16 games where they scored one goal or less.
Situations
Okay. We all know scoring is down, but where exactly?
The drop in even-strength goals is significant. There are still two more games to play, but the Kraken have seen a 35-percent drop in even-strength goals this season. Two factors could be impacting the scoring: the total volume of shots, shooting percentage, or both. Let’s examine the last two seasons.
The volume of shots on goal seems roughly in line with the league average, but there’s a significant drop from last season. A conservative estimate would still put Seattle with more than a 5-percent drop in shots on goal from last season. However, that’s not the whole story.
The real story of the season is the Kraken’s drop in 5-on-5 shooting percentage. Last season, they had the highest 5-on-5 shooting percentage in the league at 11 percent. While a drop was expected this season, this seems like an overcorrection that is unlikely to persist next season.
The Kraken will end the season with a 5-on-5 shooting percentage around 8.0 percent, compared to the league average of 9.3 percent. If they had shot at a league-average rate, that additional 1.3 percent would have netted them an additional 24 goals this season. Those 24 goals could have gone a long way for a team that lost 24 of their 38 one-goal games (adjusted for empty-net goals).
Quality of shots
The next logical question becomes why their shooting percentage was so low this season. A couple of theories could be related to talent on the ice or a systems issue, but for the scope of this post, I am going to look at the quality of shots that were taken. For this analysis, I will be leveraging the great work from Natural Stat Trick.
The volume of high-danger and medium-danger shots was down season over season, which means the mix of shot quality changed. With low-quality shots comprising a higher percentage of the overall shots, it helps explain why the overall shooting percentage is down.
For completeness, let’s examine the shooting percentage by shot quality.
Not only is the volume of high-danger and medium-danger shots down, but the shooting percentage of those two shot qualities is also down. In essence, it was a double whammy, lower quality-shot volume and lower execution on the quality shots.
Scratching the surface
This analysis covers a lot of ground, but it only scratches the surface. In the coming weeks, we will explore a couple of other areas that could be contributing factors to Seattle’s dearth of scoring. I plan to delve into the roster next week, but if there are other areas you want me to explore, please let me know, and I will see what I can do.
great data and analysis as always. Likely at least some of this is regression, and some due to the complete change in the 4th line (I assume you’ll explore this in the weeks ahead). I wonder if the regression was to the mean, or below it – hard to know, with the changing variables involved.
The natural follow-on question once your analysis is completed is, of course: what is the fix, in the SoH brain trust’s opinion? Personnel, systems, both? Personnel solutions involve either trades, free agent signings (both co$tly and risky), or relying on the kids coming up paying off (cheaper, time-consuming, and % of them ‘hitting’ in the NHL to the level of developing into a real impact scorer is overall historically low).
I imagine GMRF is inclined towards the kids paying off, but that can take years, and I wonder how the fan base will react to this wait (playoff hockey in the second year – a hell of a drug, and maybe it would have been better to swap things around to have the second year look more like this year, and this year like last).
Systems solutions imply Hakstol changing his plans, or GMRF changing coaches – thoughts?
Anyways, fantastic work from JB and the SoH team as usual!
I think the change in personnel is the main contributing factor and who Francis found to replace them. Those players did not impress in their play and they were available because other teams had a better understanding. Tatar and Shore and Yamamoto and play like back up players in case of injuries, instead of team players. Changing coaches NO! A coach coaches the hand he is dealt and the Kraken were competitive all year.
I’m sorry, on what planet were the Kraken competitive all year? They haven’t beaten a team not named the Sharks, Ducks, or Coyotes in a month and a half. They’ve not only been bad. They’ve been completely non-competitive against even semi-decent teams. It’s in the best interest of the team to get a better draft pick, but to pretend they’ve been competitive since February is crazy to me.
Since March 6th:
Against Sharks, Ducks, Coyotes: 5-1-1.
Against everyone else: 0-11-1.
Pathetically non-competitive.
I would be really surprised if the Kraken didn’t at least try to make a splash in free agency or figure out a willing trade partner. I don’t think ownership is going to be willing to see season ticket members drop due to non-competitiveness, especially when we’re in a good place cap wise.
Carolina’s biggest complaint about RF was that he let interest in the team decline as he built up a solid foundation. It’s possible he didn’t learn his lesson, but I’d put odds on the Kraken making a move or two.
I always hate the notion of making decisions based on retaining season ticket holders, but I do understand that is a realistic contributor of making decisions. If I was a Hurricanes fan, I would be more than happy with the current state of the team right now and part of that needs to realize the past decisions were good for the long-term health of the organization. I know that’s easy to say now but could the Kraken be headed on the same trajectory?
I would hope the kraken are heading on the same trajectory as Carolina – but as a current STH (upper bowl 4 life) I can say that there is a very slight but palpable hint of concern I’m sensing from emails trying to get people to sign on to an new season ticket plan. I think this is a very salient issue for the organization and would have to be on GMRFs mind as well.
I think the reality is the lower bowl is way too expensive, and getting people to pay 200-400 per ticket per game for 41 games is going to necessitate a more competitive team, or a significant price reduction.
I know there’s a lot of concern about season ticket renewals and some people I know are not renewing. It really seems it’s the cost more than the product, and I totally get it… it’s expensive.
I’m on a full season plan and I’m in for life. I really like my seats and there are only a couple spots in CPA that I’d trade into. I did, however, go to last weeks “Select-A-Seat” at CPA just to get a look. I was in the first time slot on the first day and I really just wanted to get an idea of just how many seats were available. They had signs on the available seats and so I did a quick count… there were around 400 total, maybe a little less.
They were pretty scattered, however, it seemed like there were a lot less in the uppermost section.
Now, this could have just been a “representative sample” of what was available and I don’t know if these are before or after new STH plans have been sold… but it was a lot less than I expected to see.
First, thanks for reading. You are jumping to the next set of questions which I appreciate. I think the personnel analysis will reveal a little bit more to determine some possible answers to your questions. It is also important to realize it can and probably is, a combination of things. The system changes might have been made because of the offseason moves. “adding scoring” is the easy answer to a lot of this but the tougher question is at what cost? Could the Kraken consider adding Sam Reinhart? Sure but there is a tradeoff and who is to say he would even want to come here. We will definitely dig into these over the next couple weeks….and months.
Are we sure we can’t rely on the kids coming up?
Maybe we already have an “elite” goal scorer.
Auston Matthews leads the league* in goals per 60 at 2.5… but Shane Wright is third at 2.22!
If Shane had the minutes Matthews has, he’d be at 61 goals!
By the way, Juraj Slafkovsky is 219th at 0.8/60.
*among skaters with 100+ minutes, all situations. Don’t ya just love stats.
I would be more worried about Hasktol if this team had a ton of top tier talent like Vancouver. Where Travis Green failed and Rick Tochett thrived with a bevy of AHL players that learned to play as a team. The kids are having success in the NHL just like Shane did. This Kraken team is short on talent.
The Kraken play a style I like to call Ring around the Goalie. They do this in order to get a clear open shot. This is a problem because we have no snipers that can hit the net let alone find a top corner. If you watch Shane Wrights style, he goes to the net and goes for dirty goals. The Kraken want clean goals but goalies are too good now. We do not have the the size to goonn it up in front of the net and fight for goals. I think this may be a coaching issue, even though I love Haskol, but I think he also recognizes this fault and tries to play a safe puck possession game.. Someone can tell Turbo that he can deak on breakaways as an example of missed opportunities. Max Mccormick in Coachella Valley, plays that style and that is why he is never used. Someone needs to tell Burkovski that he need to look for a pass instead of skatinto 3 defenders and losing the puck. He did it 8 times last game and if players do not skate to an open lane to accept a pass then that has to change as well
We have no size. We have small fast skakers and this needs to change. Yani needs to go the net and make space and create havoc as another example.
Short but sweet article…
For me it looks like a system change from last year or that the coach hasn’t been able to get his players playing the system correctly, hard to say for sure but both fingers are pointing at H. To be perfectly honest the game we are seemingly trying to play is just flat out boring and uninteresting, if we’re going to lose games at least keep the game entertaining.
I’ve noticed a lot of shots taken from positions that are almost never going to go in and without traffic in front of the net, goes in line with what the stats show. H has been very public with his views about putting pucks on net, are they just listening to their coach? Are they listening to Eddie in the booth who is always criticizing not shooting unless the pass works, then he’s talking about what a great play it was.
It’s a very dangerous road to go down trying to improve your goal scoring through free agency, you’re going to have to overpay to get anyone to Seattle both with $$ and term. We’ve seen that Francis hasn’t had great success in the FA market so far and I don’t think it would really help us long to to overpay for someone.
The easiest thing to do is swap coaches and see if that helps, everything else gets very risky. They want to sell tickets and it’s a bad time to struggle with the timing of season ticket renewals. They are going to have to do one of the 4.
1. Overpay for a top tier forward
2. Swap coaches
3. Fire Francis and call it his fault
4. Except two to three more painful years.
I don’t believe ownership will be willing to except the status quo and Francis will at least be given one coaching swap. The best option for the short and long term I feel is trying out a new coaching staff, otherwise we could seriously put our cap space in jeopardy in the future when we will definitely need it more than now.
Nino, I don’t know if they have to overpay for a top tier forward in order to upgrade the offense.
A while back I was looking at next season’s cap and the holes that need filling. I was assuming all we needed was to sign is a seventh defenseman and a “fourth” line. I figured there would be plenty of cap to spend on a “big acquisition”… but I’m rethinking this.
I think this team already has a “fourth” line under contract. I also think it’s too soon for this team to spend big on a UFA, especially any of this year’s crop.
A couple of quality wingers may be all they need to get back to rolling four quality lines. A model Yzerman and DeBoer both lauded.
If they roll three “second” lines with Beniers, Wright, and McCann down the middle and Gourde centering a “third” line, they might be able to apply pressure to teams like they did last season. A Taffoli and a Duclair would easily fit in their budget, even considering a little “overpay”. Sure, Taffoli is 31, but he still scores goals, and Duclair will be just 29 at the beginning of the season and may have a few good years yet.
Djdw00, yes we technically have everything we need moving into next year if we’re bringing rookies up, that’s probably the best option really. Francis has been a little too quick to sign aging vets in my opinion. Yes Taffoli could be a good option as you could potentially get him for a short term and not effect the long term cap too much but then we are following the same path. Duclair could be looking for term that could affect our ability to be competitive in 4/5 years?
This kinda brings me back to my original point, if our goal is to be competitive(contender) in 4 years for example what if in our best interest for next season. I don’t think we should focus on filling out our roster with fringe vets as we have, I don’t think that we should be jeopardizing our ability to retain or get talent in 4 years just to sell tickets today. I really think our best and easiest option is a coaching change. It shows the fans that ownership is committed to winning and gives Francis another year to evaluate his roster and the potential it holds. I mean realistically are we giving up a lot by getting rid of H? The inconsistent play has to fall back to the coaching staff. Another thought, could a new coach get Gru back on track? Probably worth a shot. Yeah you could argue that Gru is back on track now but consistency isn’t something he’s shown yet in Seattle very much like the rest of the team. Even last season when we made the playoffs we were a very inconsistent team with extreme ups and downs….. coaching.
Other than Shane Wright and Ryker Evans, I don’t see them bring anyone else up yet.
I was figuring a fourth line of Gourde, Tolvanen, and Kartye. All three of those guys have positive defensive ratings. A couple of “aging vets” to improve the team in the short term while the internal development continues might be the best option, or at least better than the alternatives.
As far as Hakstol goes – that’s probably going to be conversation No.1 over the off season – right now, I’m not against replacing him, but I also think that’s a entirely different conversation. What Francis does with the roster isn’t dependent on Hakstol returning or a new coach coming in.
I’m gonna save my coaching thoughts for after the season.
I’m actually excited about the off-season and next season.
It is hard for any of us to know for sure, but my sense is that the drop in shot quality and volume is out of necessity rather than a function of Hakstol’s system. The Kraken drafted a bunch of decent players around 30 years old, and they have slowed down over the 3 years. Plus yeah, the 4th line this year was less skilled. And they got even fewer games played from Burakovsky, who is their most skilled player. And as frustrating as Soucy was at times, they miss his skating. The Kraken are not *trying* to take crappier shots from the outside; they were just slower and less skilled this year, so they could not make those extra plays to get to the dangerous areas or create odd-man rushes. The biggest drops in my eyes were in Tanev and — especially — Gourde. Gourde was of their faster, most tenacious and creative playmakers in the first 2 years, but he slowed WAY down this year. You can see he is still trying his absolute hardest, but just can’t quite reach that last gear like he used to. And then he gets more desperate and makes bad plays/turnovers. Eberle and Schwartz are also on the downside, although I think their declines have not been as steep — which is good, because they are on the team 2 more years. That said, Schwartz was one of their top players early in the season, then he ran into his (sadly, typical) injuries, and since middle of the season he has not done much. So hopefully that was just a specific injury that heals in the offseason, and not the beginning of HIS decline.
I’m glad you brought up Gourde. I have been wondering all season if he had some off ice issues impacting his energy. We didn’t see his devilish smiles much this season
Frustration with the system wouldn’t explain why they are converting high and medium danger changes at a lower rate than last year. Most likely, the reason for the drop off in scoring is multiple things – personnel, system, regression, sophomore slumps, etc.
One thing I thought I was seeing this year is completely consistent with what you’re saying here Foist.
Early on, when they were off to their third slow start in three seasons (this is a problem), they looked to me like their puck handling and passing were way off from last season. Terrible. It wasn’t just the new guys on the fourth line, it was the whole team. One way to deal with this would be to shoot sooner, pass less. This is completely unquantified, but it would be in line with what you’re saying.
Great article with just the right amount of stats (for me 🙂 I’d love to see the numbers on how different players produced with different combinations.
I super-disagree with Harpdog about being competitive all season. It seemed like they lost so much it’s hard to remember that they had a 9 game win streak! I had zero confidence in them since November.
I really enjoy these articles, big shout out to those making it happen.
Another great article from the SOH team. Love the deep dives into the stats.
I’d like to see some numbers based on rebound goals scored last year to this and who had the initial shot. Everybody says losing the 4th line was a large contributing factor for the goals they scored but I am curious if the players remaining just aren’t getting as many rebound opportunities. Sprong and Donato are players I like to call free shooters. If the puck gets to their stick they typically find a way to get a shot off whether it goes in or not. The team doesn’t currently have any free shooters that I see.
Just a thought and not even sure the data is there for an analysis.
Can’t wait for the roster-centric analysis.
Yet another TLDR… Sorry.
John… Thanks again, I love Monday Mornings.
I know the last few games have been tough, but as we get closer to the draft I think we should remember these last five games – huge!
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On the offense… previously, I mentioned Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones (ATZ) tracking and the drop off across the board on “zone entries” this season compared to last and the role this may be playing on offense. He definitely has more granular numbers than Natural Stat Trick (NST).
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In addition to entries, he obviously has a bunch of offense/passing stats, not just high, medium, and low-danger. In some of his numbers not everything is down. As a matter of fact, some numbers are up, and I think they are kind of interesting.
His comparison stats use “league average” as a measure, so the season-over-season change is gauged on that. As you mentioned, shots on goal are down and this is consistent on ATZ, but more dramatically, chances are down from moderately above league average to significantly below. Chances are defined as “any shot that comes within the ‘home plate’ area of the offensive zone between the two faceoff circles.” This is also consistent with the drop off in high-danger chances from NST using the War-on-Ice (WOI) model. Another stat that is incorporated into WOI, but not distinct, is Shots with Passes. On ATZ this number was very significantly above average last season and on par with the Oilers. This season it has dropped to slightly below league average. I think it’s pretty well established that getting the goalie moving laterally improves shooting percentages. Rush, cycle, and forecheck offense are all down from significantly above to around league average as well. All of this seems pretty consistent… but here’s the weird one…
Everything is down, but the biggest disparity from season to season on all the tracked offensive numbers is one-timers… and it’s up, a lot, from moderately below to very significantly above. Now “one-timers” are, by nature, a shot with a pass. How is it shots and shots with a pass are down, but one timers are up? It sounds to me like they are NOT moving the puck laterally in the “house” as much as last season and firing pucks from beyond the dots MORE. Another stat that is up is rebounds. They’re taking less shots, but getting more rebounds? Makes sense if you’ve relocated where you’re shooting from. One other stat of interest, this one from MoneyPuck. As bad as they are in shooting percentage and goals scored, they are even worse – as in league worst – in percentage of shots that are blocked.
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When I put all this together, I get a team that dumps the puck in and throws shots at the net as opposed to a team – last season – that carried the puck in, worked the cycle and forecheck, and got to the interior.
As you said, this is just scratching the surface. I’m looking forward to your dive into other contributing factors.
Go Kraken!!!
There has been so many great comments, I don’t have anything to add but to give SOH my appreciation. Great article, looking forward to the next one.