After these three games the Rampage are officially in the “Very Bad Team” category as they are under 46% Corsi for the games I’ve been to.  While they have a better season long est Corsi  Close of 48.8%, that isn’t a good number either.  This team is definitely trending down very quickly.

Goalies

The goalies have both been truly excellent when I’ve been tracking them.

01/19 Tucson (2-1 OTL)

01/20 Tucson (2-1 OTL)

01/22 San Jose (5-1 Loss)

These are the stats for the 1st two periods.

I have no idea how Petryk had a 14+/-1 game when the Rampage were dominated like that.

Kostin’s eTOI is obviously wrong since he was injured.  It shows the flaws in just using % of Corsi times 60 mins.  High event players like him will get overestimated.  However, until the AHL makes TOI public, it’s the best I can do.

Goalie Stats (Based only on home games, which is why there is nothing for Husso)

Martin stopped 16/17 at 5 on 5 and all 3 shots while the Rampage were on the PK.

They really were very lucky to get a point on Friday.

12/17 Tucson (Tracked by Nate!!!)

Thanks a lot to Nate for tracking this game.  Naturally I miss the game that they dominate – I’m clearly a curse.

Season Summary

Now that the team is healthy I expect the 47.6 CorsiFor% to start rising.

Goalies

Separating out save percentage by situation makes Jeremy Smith look a lot better.  Smith has been just as good as Spencer Martin at 5 on 5(and better on the Penalty Kill.  His save percentage is getting crushed by shorties and allowing 1 goal on two 4 on 4 shots.  That is encouraging as it means we are getting the Jeremy Smith we expected – his numbers just look bad because he’s been screwed by the Power Play giving up breakaways.

@CreaseGiants Goalie Stats

12/04 San Jose

Season Summary

@CreaseGiants Goalie Stats

This was probably the Rampage’s best game at even strength this season.  They’ve also become the greatest shot blocking team of all time as only 7/32 Stars Even Strength Corsi ended up being shots.  However, the Power Play, oh boy, that Power Play.

Season Summary

@CreaseGiants Goalie Stats

5 on 5 Shots is a better indicator of performance than Corsi for this game.  The Rampage did an excellent job (in both games) of keeping the Checkers to the outside and blocking shots.

11/19 Charlotte

The Rampage started out the Saturday night game in dominant fashion (I believe the shots were 8-0 at one point.  They were really great early on, but that didn’t last very long.  After they took a 2-0 lead, they were out attempted 61-30.  After it became 2-1 it was 32-13.  I’m not sure if that was a choice to shell, fatigue or the Checkers being that much better than the Rampage.  However, I do know that they were very lucky to win Saturday – but I’ll take it.

Season Summary

Goalie Stats

Spencer Martin has been absolutely insane at home this year.

Note: The AHL does not publicly release ES/PP/SH, these are counted by me at the games I attend.  Therefore, the goalie stats only include the home games (i.e. Martin’s full season would be better than this).

Goalie Stats by @CreaseGiants

Points/60

I know these can be very hard to read, so I’m going to point out a few high-level observations.

Nantel the perfect 4th Line Center

Earl from Mile High asked me last week if the 4th line’s collapse showed that Nantel was a possession driver.  There is a lot of evidence for that in the WOWYs.  Everyone is better with Nantel except for Grimaldi (only one shift) and Henley (they are 55.9% together).  Therefore, I’m willing to say “Yes, Nantel is driving possession for the Rampage”.  On a personal note, I’m falling in love with Nantel’s game.  Dominc Moore has always been to me, the perfect 4th line center.  Moore is good at faceoffs, has decent speed, is very smart, plays good defense and drives possession.  Nantel is very Dominic Moore-ish.

I don’t know what to make of the defense

For starters, the defense has been very good overall defensively.  The Rampage are allowing the 5th fewest shots per game in the AHL, which is fantastic and they deserve a lot of praise for that. The scary thing about the defense is that combined they have only 1 primary point at 5on5 this year.  You can’t win in modern hockey without your defense chipping in at all.

Jardine is above 50% Corsi in the tracked games, however, that is entirely due to the time paired with Boikov (32.4% without).  Have I mentioned that I really don’t get why Boikov is in the ECHL?

Meanwhile, Lindholm has not continued his strong preseason play and is just a mess right now.  He was at 47.6% possession with Bigras.  I was on team “Break up Lindholm and Bigras.”  However, they are totally a disaster without each other as Lindholm is at 37.1% without Bigras and Bigras is at 33.3% without Lindholm.

JT Compher is the Rampage’s best player

Avs fans are absolutely fawning over AJ Greer right now and he’s been great (especially on the PP).  However, my “eye test” thoughts were that he wasn’t having a big influence on Even Strength play and that Compher and to a lesser extent Grimaldi drove that line.

The WOWYs really spell that out – everyone who has played with Compher this year is better with Compher (except for the 1 shift he shared with Henley) than without Compher.  It’s a mixed bag with Greer.  Compher and Greer have spent around half their tracked time together, so WOWYs are perfect to show their influence on each other.  Compher and Greer are 60% when they are together (21+/14-).  Greer without Compher is a 51.5 CF% player (17+/16-).  Meanwhile, when he isn’t with Greer, Compher is a feverish 64 CF% (32+/18-).  Based on their without numbers, it’s pretty clear to me that Compher is having more of a positive effect on Greer than Greer is having on Compher.

In previous Points/60 articles, I’ve mentioned that secondary assists are not a repeatable skill, so I prefer to use Primary Points.  Compher has the most even strength primary points on the Rampage so far this season.  Based on the Primary Points per 60 metric, Compher is the best Even Strength rate scorer on the Rampage so far this year.  The only pause that I have from this is that Compher is shooting 35.7% which I guarantee will not last, however, the positive points/60 impact of his shooting% is also reflected in Greer’s Assists per 60, so that impacts both players pretty equally.  Even if you take a bit from Compher for that, they are very close in rate scoring.  In baseball, a tie goes to the runner and in my opinion, a tie goes to the Center over the Winger.

Another important factor is penalties taken.  Greer has taken 5 minor penalties in 11 games.  Compher has only taken 1.  That might not seem like a lot, but for a full season, Greer is on pace to give away 35 power plays to only 13 for Compher.

Since he has been the Rampage’s best overall possession player, has had exclusively positive effects on his teammates, doesn’t take penalties and is the team’s best even strength scorer, I feel confident in saying that the Rampage’s best player has been JT Compher.

This was the first time all year that the Rampage were outright bad.  Just burn the film and move on.

Season Summary

Goalie Stats

Note: The AHL does not publicly release ES/PP/SH, these are counted by me at the games I attend.  Therefore, the goalie stats only include the home games (i.e. Martin’s full season would be better than this).

Additional Goalie Stats!!

Below Goalie Stats courtesy of Geremy (@CreaseGiants).  BB is Bounce Back (game after a non-quality start).

Martin has a Goals Saved Above Average of +3.322.  Smith’s is -.978.

After the game, I tweeted that this year’s start is the exact opposite of last year’s start.  Last year’s team was very bad, but started off the year with a great record.  This year’s team is good, but has started off very poorly.  Both of those starts were PDO driven (lucky/unlucky).

Last year, Calvin Pickard had .946 Save% for the month of October.  No wonder they were 5-0-1 when he started!

This year the team has been undone by their shooting percentage.  AHL shooting % is typically around 9.0% each year.  This is last year’s bottom half of the league (I took out Shootout and Empty Net goals):

This year’s Rampage are shooting 4.3%.  That is going to improve. Every single team has a stretch during a season where they run into 4 hot goalies in a row.  This is that stretch for the Rampage.  Even if you think that all of their forwards are garbage (they aren’t), their shooting % should still nearly double.  Every game has been a one goal game (or two with an ENG), so just a tiny shooting% improvement makes them at least 2-2.

The one thing that does concern me so far is that the 1st line (Whitney-O’Brien-Sislo) and top defense pair (Bigras-Lindholm) have both been really awful.  However, that can also be spun as a positive: “Their top players have been awful.  The team seems super disjointed at times.  They still have been over 50% in possession.”

Season Summary (I’ve been to 3 of the 4 games)

(This 4th line is amazing)