Reasons to be Excited: Michael Grabner

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part Three!!!

The most exciting prospect is having Grabs come out of camp and hit the ground running. It doesn’t seem likely that he will rest on his laurels given his personality and reliance on fan support. It’s hard to be that popular amongst your fan base when you float.
Two things we also see similarly are:
1. I can’t imagine Cappy breaking up the pairing with Nielsen. I see some minor tinkering that will depend on Okposo/Rolston/PAP/Martin placement… but the core forward pairings should be JT+Moulson, Frans-und-Grabs, Comeau+Bailey and Reasoner+Nino. I think each one of those pairings has either historic success, or undenyable logic on their sides.
2. The lose of Zenon Konopka will affect that pair more than most.

forever young

I’m hoping to see a big jump in the amount of breakaway goals grabs puts home this season. Not to say that he didn’t put away more than his fair share last year but that came simply because he had so many oppurtunities. At the same time, he did have alot of missed scoring changes on the breakaway. Additionaly, I’m sure other teams took notice of his ridiculous speed last season so the breakaway opportunities may not come as easily as they did last year. Hopefully he’s concentrated alot on his finishing in the off season so he can capitalize on his speed as much as possible. Either way, I’m pumped for this season.

Why isn’t he in Sweden yet? Is he waiting for a hypothetical NHL call? The SEL starts September 15. New team, bigger ice, different playing style and language. That’s a lot to get used to and still, 3-4 weeks into training camp, he’s not there. Apparently he will report September 9.
I wish him all the best, but that’s a recipe for failure.

How often will Gillies get into games? As much as I’d love having 4 lines that can score, the Isles need to keep their toughness. Personally I’d like to see Haley and Martin/Gillies play more often than not. I don’t think just one enforcer is enough. Especially against the Rags/Pens/Flyers. And since our d-men are not especially big or as tough as I’d like.

But I just realized that in a few years, our third line could be Anders Lee-Brock Nelson-Kirill Petrov.

The thought of that has me strangely excited for the future.

“Grabner has the same questions, but with his play being wildly different from Moulson, it’s hard to see Grabner faltering.’

There is a reason, that didn’t exist with Moulson, that suggests that Grabner will have difficulty even putting up the #s he did last season. That reason is simple: Grabner’s shooting % is so high as to likely be unsustainable.

What does this mean? Well shooting % is driven by a number of factors. One of these factors, a decent sized one, is in fact player skill. However several other factors do have major effects: particularly the fact that there is a lot of luck in goal scoring.

What do I mean by luck? Well, sometimes a player makes an amazing shot but the goalie saves it. Other times a player makes a shot straight at a goalie, but due to a random deflection or just plain horrible goaltending, the puck goes in. These result in goal totals being affected by things OTHER than player skill.

Now over the long run, good and bad luck evens out and shooting % regresses to the level of true talent. But shooting % doesn’t do so always over a single season – it often takes longer for a regression to take place. So what happens is that you have guys with career 10% shooting s suddnely post a 15 shooting % and you think, wow! this guy’s improved drastically! When what’s really happened is that the guy’s numbers are a bit fluky and unlikely to continue.

Just to give some examples:
Trent Hunter 2003-2004 (13.4% SH% was way above true talent)
Jason Blake 2006-2007 (After 3 consecutive years of 9-10 SH%, Blake hit a SH% of 13% way above talent)
Shawn Bates with Boston 2000-2001 (3.4% Shooting Percentage was of course going to get better).

What does this have to do with Grabner? Well he had a shooting percentage of 14.9% last year. That’s really high, and in fact his shooting percentage in 3 AHL Seasons was basically stable around 12%. It’s a good bet that regression will occur and that Grabner’s shooting percentage will DECREASE back to around 12% next year.

Now before you argue with me, there are two caveats here:
First, there is the chance that Grabner has in fact improved his actual talent level, thus getting say more breakaways and higher percentage shots. It’s certainly possible, and to an extent this could or even is likely to be true. However to go from 12 to 15% is a HUGE jump, one which is improbable to describe as simply a function of better talent/teammates.

Second, Grabner’s shooting % may drop next year, but his shot totals are likely to increase as he gets higher usage in the beginning of the season than he does last year. Thus his goal rate may drop, but his overall goals scored will not.

And of course, there’s the fact that Grabner’s defense was terrific. I have no doubt Grabs will be a great player next year. But be warned that there are some red flags there.

.. to stop reading Grabner’s COD and golf tweets and get back to his hockey tweets which made me fall in love with him all the more throughout the season.. Although his Matt Moulson banter is still entertaining in the offseason, I think it picks up in quality with hockey mentions

disgusts me. the hockey news has gone so far downhill that it refuses to follow every team fairly. the isles are clearly a better team than they were before, and their roster is capable of getting a spot in the playoffs. this guy has the nerve to even speculate that JT won’t sign after this season. THN might as well call themselves TSN.

i really do hope for a great season…just so THN and the Toronto sports media can eat a nice fat sh*tburger.