I have so much to say

I tried to say a bunch of it in a post last week or the week before or something, but I fucked up on trying to include a chart from war-on-ice and somehow I broke the whole entry. No browser can open it to edit it. So, here are a lot of words, is the point.

Yes, Tanner Glass is that bad
I, like all thinking people, am about three million percent sick of "it's just the 4th line, why does it matter?" You only get 12 forward spots, and that is one of them. Yes, the 4th line is traditionally not as good at scoring as the other 3 lines. That does not mean it's a throwaway line where you put people you like who punch well. If that were the case, we could just roll 3 lines and not bother.

The Rangers have the personnel to have one of the better 4th lines in hockey, in Ryan Malone, Dominic Moore, and Lee Stempniak. There have not been a lot of seasons when we've had the opportunity to boast a good enough roster that that could be the 4th line. In many years, some not that far gone, Tanner Glass might legitimately be our best option on that wing. The alternatives might be dinky scrubs like Brandon Mashinter and Kris Newbury. But this is not the case right now. Right now, we are playing Glass, with Derek Stepan injured, having waived Ryan Malone, and with JT Miller and Jesper Fast in Hartford. Through 12 games, Vigneault has been willing to try scratching Miller, Fast, and Malone (ultimately sending Miller and Fast down and waiving Malone), as well as Hayes, Mueller, and Duclair, but has not yet sat Glass.

And yes, he is as bad as you think he looks this season. He hasn't suddenly undergone some resurgence. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you already know how to interpret the following graph because you know what the terms mean. Here's a graph of Fenwick rel-% (how much a player creates opportunities as opposed to giving them up, compared to his teammates) compared to offensive zone start-% (what percentage of a player's starts are in the offensive zone) for all Ranger forwards so far this season. On average, you'd expect a diagonal upward line (the more you start in the offensive zone, the more likely you are to create chances as opposed to giving them up). Being above the diagonal line (anywhere along it) would tend to mean you're doing particularly well; being below it would mean the opposite.



Glass is not just a little worse than every other option, he is significantly worse than every other option. Leaving him in, seemingly by default, not only makes the 4th line worse, it ripples upward and makes the whole lineup worse, because it forces awkward line decisions. If the 4th line is just the "dumping ground," then you find yourself hearing arguments like "well we don't want to waste Stempniak on the 4th line, he's been good" / "but we can't put a guy like Duclair down there." If you are arguing over which one of a few good players has to be saddled with Tanner Glass, the problem is not the good players.

When Derek Stepan returns, which should be very shortly, it now seems like a given that Mueller or Hayes will sit, and that Glass will remain in the "top 12." Not only does this take yet another better forward out of the lineup, it also continues to waste whichever 2 end up skating with Glass by putting them in less of a position to succeed, and it burdens the other 3 lines because it gives us a less reliable 4th line that therefore can't play as many minutes. I'm sure Tanner Glass is a great guy, but continuing to play him hurts the team, and there is no reason for it.

Hey, speaking of the lines...
So, as long as we're playing fantasy-coach: assuming that Malone-Moore-Stempniak is the 4th line (and it fucking well should be - again, imagine how good a team could be if that's its 4th line), how should we construct the other three?

First of all, if you haven't already done so, go read this piece by @AxelFantEldh. The writer breaks the usual stats down into "created" and "suppressed" and makes the argument that for good chemistry, a line should balance creation and suppression. This makes a much sounder argument to me than my usual "put a big guy with a fast guy with a smart guy between them" chemistry plans. Among other things, I learned that Nash's great possession stats tend to come from attempt creation, and that he's actually average at attempt suppression. The lines the writer suggests are somewhat different from mine, but it's required reading. I'll wait here.

Why is it always so funny to me to say that? This is a blog post. I wrote this sentence before you read it. Of course it's going to wait here. Why is that funny to me?

The post suggests the following 4 lines:

Nash-Brassard-Zuccarello
Hagelin-Stepan-St. Louis
Kreider-Hayes-Duclair
Malone-Moore-Stempniak

I like these lines a lot. They are a lot better than the nonsense we've been using lately. My instincts, prior to reading that article, had been to structure things slightly differently:

Nash-Stepan-Duclair
Hagelin-Hayes-St. Louis
Kreider-Brassard-Zuccarello
Malone-Moore-Stempniak

This makes only two shifts from what @AxelFantEldh suggested: it swaps Kreider and Nash, and it swaps Hayes and Stepan. After reading the article, I think I'm sticking by my story. Beyond Nash, Kreider makes the most sense with Brass and Zucc - his chart looks similar to, if less impressive than, Nash's: he's a generator, not a suppressor. Meanwhile, we give Nash the chance to play with the team's best playmaking center (such as he is). The article made a good point about Stepan and Hagelin both being well above-average in all categories and therefore good balancing forces. I'd like to see them split up, therefore, and have Step balancing out Nash while Hags balances out St. Louis. Of course, there are no charts for Hayes and Duclair, because they're still afflicted with SSSS (Small Sample Size Syndrome), but I'd like to keep their inexperience on separate lines for now as well.

With Stepan out for the time being, I'd be working toward these lines nonetheless, putting Mueller in for Stepan and leaving everything else as is until Step's return. But, of course, Vigneault is doing nothing remotely similar tonight, with these the most likely lines (and Ryan Malone, having cleared waivers, in the press box):

Nash-Brassard-St. Louis
Kreider-Hayes-Zuccarello
Hagelin-Moore-Duclair
Glass-Mueller-Stempniak

Incidentally, did you know that basically no one on this damn team shoots righty? Of the 9 wingers we've mentioned here (the 8 that should play, plus Glass), only Lee Stempniak shoots righty. Even St. Louis and Zucc, the other two natural right wings on the team, shoot lefty. That is absurd. (Source: wikipedia, probably completely unreliable.)

What about the defense?
Everything is fine. Sort of. I mean, as fine as it can be? Look, John Moore isn't doing himself any favors by elbowing unsuspecting opposition in the head (his suspension was just and probably would have been longer if the league didn't fear 5+-game suspensions 'cause they're appealable), but the fact is that he was kinda shitty even before he did that, and Hunwick has made a reasonable case that Moore should be the one in the press box when Boyle comes back. I hope that, and wouldn't be totally surprised if, AV and Ulfie feel the same way. Despite some very obvious errors in a terrible start to his preseason and a terrible start to his regular season, Mike Kostka has not been otherwise terrible, and I don't hate him competing with Moore for that 7-spot. Along with Conor Allen, of course. In fact, if Moore is the guy who's head-hunting, let's try to trade him while he might have some value and let Allen and Kostka compete for the 7-spot. That's not too far from what we are doing, I guess, which is why I say everything is fine. Klein returns tonight, and McIlrath sits for him, obviously.

Did you hear the one about the porn star and the hockey player?
I'll give you a hint: the porn star is, unsurprisingly, the classy one.

And as long as we're having fun...
I know what they say about people in Glass houses (see what I did there? I made that joke on Twitter last week and it was, and will be, the great pun of my life. I am so great), but check out this really dumb thing the Penguins did today. See? We're not the only team in our shitty division with the roster to be really good that sometimes makes really terrible personnel decisions for no reason! Hooray, kind of!

(I won't use this space to defend the obvious notion that Marc-Andre Fleury is below average, because this is not a Pens blog. Here is a pretty straightforward thing that my friends over at Free Tank Carter wrote, and here are a couple of pretty straightforward graphs that one of them made, which will do a pretty good job of that, if you're into that sort of thing.)

I rarely have any idea how to end one of these entries, but I also feel like I can't just stop talking as soon as I've run out of things to say. Like I need to conclude grandly or something. It's a problem.