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This series wasn't supposed to overlap earl's but I forgot to write it enough times that we bled into this week. Sorry friend. Thanks for reading, thanks for discussing next year with me, it's been a fun summer killer, but we need to get down to the business of preseason really soon everyone WOOO!
Last Season
Last year Gabriel Landeskog came in just shy of 60 points with 59, down from the previous season (and his career high) of 65. So that's fairly decent. And do you guys remember when we all just kind of assumed he didn't have a real lethal shot and should normally be around 20 goals? He shot 10.7% last year and 11.7% the year before. That's fairly decent.
So to capture this season in terms of possession, let's just look at one screengrab real fast. Being further to the right means you generated more shots, and being further to the bottom means you suppressed shots effectively. Players with a deeper shade of red saw more of their shifts start in the defensive zone (nobody was the opposite, which would be shades of blue, among forwards). We're sized as usual by TOI.
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War on Ice doesn't format properly on my laptop, sorry for the junk at the bottom. The bottom right quadrant, aka "Good Offense And Defense," houses the team's best possession guys. Landeskog has been there for a couple of years now. Dude produces points AND is valuable in the possession game.
Ryan shared a HERO chart in the comments of yesterday's T/F, which I will shamelessly repost to drive this point home. It's not just last year: over his whole short career Landeskog has been good.
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(All that without even mentioning his dCorsi numbers. Which are really impressive. For and against both.)
What does it mean for 2015?
More of the same. If the Avalanche aren't catastrophically bad at generating shots in the right direction again this season, Landeskog, who's still developing you'll remember, should have no problem breaking 60 points again. 50 forwards in the whole league managed that last season. Not bad company at all. Now imagine the power play isn't Two Minutes Of Passing Drills. Could this be the year he hits 70?
To be honest, if he plays all season with MacKinnon, that's really possible.