Most Improved - Dragons or Phantoms?

[KC15 340]

With D.C.’s excellent progress from S68 to S69, I decided I’d like to take a closer look at the team and how we are putting this improvement on the ice. What am talking about? In S68, our first season, we won 20 games all season. In S69, we have won 15 games at the exact half-way mark which, of course, puts us on a pace to win 30 games this season – an increase of 50% more wins in just one season’s time.

 

Then a second thought hit me – how does our expansion partner, the Prague Phantoms, stack up against our benchmark of improvement. In S68, Prague won 23 games. At the half-way point they have tallied 13 wins putting them on a pace for 26 wins. It’s fairly identical performance from each team versus the other in both of their franchise’s history with D.C. edging out the Phantoms for amount of progress one year over the other.

 

Similar performance, but each team seems to be getting there with very different methods. Prague has a very balanced approach whereas the Dragons look like Captain Mikko Aaaltonen and his supporting cast.

 

Aaltonen has 23 goals to date – on pace for 46 goals on the season and a praiseworthy performance. D.C.’s output drops dramatically from this lofty plateau. The Dragons’ second leading goal scorer, Graves, has half as many at 12 and D.C.’s third leading goal sniper is Lesieur with 9.

 

On the Prague side of the score sheet, things are much more bunched up with a number of scoring options:

Pearson 13

Draper 12

Miniti 12

Laughton 12

Dredge 9

Gebauer 9

 

The Phantoms have a full two lines’s worth of skaters with 9 or more goals (6 players) whereas D.C. has just one “line” playing at this level.

 

This is born out when one analyzes the teams’ production by line . I’m only looking at the top 2 lines as in the VHL one begins serious double shifting when we move past the top 2.

 

The top line for D.C. (Graves, Washington, Aaltonen) scored nearly half of all of the team’s goals – 45.8%. The second line (Lesieur, Kidd, Hooper) only chipped in 20.5%. On the Phantom side of the equation, the first line scored 34% of the goals vs. the second line’s 31%. This more balanced approach has netted Prague 17 more goals on the season than D.C. (100 vs. 83).

 

Not surprisingly the underlying TPA is directly in line with these findings. Aaltonen dominates the first and second lines of both teams (714 TPA) and Prague’s totals are more closely aligned with each other and tower over D.C.’s second line.

 

                       First Line                        Second Line

D.C.               1564 TPA                        872 TPA

Prague          1155 TPA                         1223 TPA

 

So, the two teams are enjoying nearly identical success, but coming at it in widely divergent ways – D.C. riding a star skater; Prague putting together two very balanced lines. I truly don’t know which is better. It’s great to have a strong skater to build around, but it’s also great to have a nucleus of core players who will all develop at the same pace.

 

I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out for the balance of this year and in the coming 2-3 seasons.

Edited December 2, 2019 by KC15

[diamond_ace 3,106]

It's nice to have the two teams going about this so differently while continuing to produce results - it just goes to show that no matter what methods you use, bringing an expansion team in from nothing is no easy task.