That’s bizarre. They’ve actually been generating chances at roughly the same rate they did last season, but the goals have disappeared. They outperformed their expected goals in 2016-2017, but they’ve drastically underperformed them this season. The shooting percentage Gods must have really turned on them this year.
Well, would you look at that, the Leafs’ mysterious drop in PP% coincides with the second unit’s shooting percentage falling off a cliff. Anytime we see a drop this big, it’s a pretty good bet that it’ll regress to the mean over time. That means there’s nothing to worry about with the Matthews-Nylander unit, right?
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Bringing this back to the Leafs, Matthews and Nylander were excellent at generating Royal Road passes last year. It was their bread and butter on the power play, which helps explain why they were able to maintain such a high shooting percentage last season and outperform their expected goals (a metric based on shot locations, not pre-shot movement).
When it comes to the 2017-18 season, I think the Matthews-Nylander unit was much better at generating Royal Road passes earlier in the year. Unfortunately, we don’t have the data to confirm this (Corey Sznajder tried to get it for me, but the samples were just too small), so we’re going to have to rely on the infamous “eye test” for this analysis.
What we’re looking for is something stylistically that changed in the Matthews-Nylander power play around Jan. 1. The unit’s shooting percentage was solid prior to the New Year (12.3 per cent), but it’s been in free fall ever since (4.4 per cent). Although there’s certainly an element of bad luck in there, I can point to one significant change that’s resulted in a more stagnant power play.
It doesn’t get talked about much, but the Leafs moved Matthews and Nylander to their off-side right around that Jan. 1 date I keep bringing up (they’ve recently moved back, but they were playing there for a solid 5-6 weeks).
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The problem with putting Matthews and Nylander on their off-side is that they don’t have a one-timer comparable to shooters like Stamkos, Ovechkin or Laine. Although we’ve seen Nylander blast a couple slap shots past NHL goaltenders, he’s a lot more dangerous with his wrist shot. When it comes to Matthews’ clapper…let’s just say his wrist shot is much better.
These two are excellent at beating goaltenders with wristers from their strong side, but aren’t nearly as good at doing so with a one-timer from the top of the circle on their off-side. With this being the case, I would argue that playing them on their off-side is actually disadvantageous.