Bourne's notebook: How Connor Hellebuyck responds after a loss

Not all ideas and thoughts are full-column-worthy, which is how my esteemed colleague Elliotte Friedman ends up with 31 useful little tidbits each week. With that in mind, I’ve got a handful of my own taking up mental space on my human hard drive here, so let’s get right to those.

Islanders D corps

Heading into this season most analysts looked at the East Division and proclaimed it loaded, as it wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise if any number of those teams (maybe five?) won it.

Well, on the fringes of that group were the Islanders, who currently lead the East with a .704 points percentage, and sitting two points above the chasing Washington Capitals. That success has come on the backs of their defence (shocker), which has only allowed 2.19 goals-against per game — the second-best mark in the NHL behind Vegas’ 2.17.

How have they done it? Well, by being the only team in the NHL to use just six total defencemen this year. Everyone knows their role and their partner’s habits, which breeds consistency. It looks like this over on Daily Faceoff:

Nobody in this group plays more than 22.5 minutes per game (Ryan Pulock leads at 22:22 per game), and the underrated Noah Dobson plays the least of the group — and still averages roughly 17 minutes per game. (Shoutout to Adam Pelech, who’s also wildly underrated around the league.)

Three teams in the NHL have used a whopping 12 defencemen so far, and on each of those teams (Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Colorado), there are six or more players who average less TOI per game than Dobson. (Nashville is right behind them, having used 11 guys.) That sort of thing is almost always: A) tied to injury luck, and B) a massive disadvantage, having to roll through bodies and mix up pairs every game.

The point is there aren’t any surprises with the Isles, and they leave it up to their opponents to beat them. It’s like “Here’s our system, our lines, and our D-pairs, same as yesterday, we’re mostly going to throw them over the boards in the order they come off the ice, no surprises, see if you can find a way to beat us.”

So far, teams mostly can’t.

How Connor Hellebuyck responds after losses

A common complaint here in Toronto is that Freddy Andersen can be streaky. He has off months at times, followed by torrid runs of hot goaltending that can last just as long. If you read about the team with much regularity, you’ve surely seen his numbers sorted by month at various times over the years, given the regular spikes and drops.

That ain’t the MO of Vezina-winner Connor Hellebuyck, at least not the past couple seasons. After the Habs beat the Jets 7-1, he came back with a stellar effort against the Leafs, which prompted his coach to say “He’s the best goalie I’ve ever had and it’s not particularly close.” Paul Maurice went on to note that Hellebuyck excels at bouncing back from poor performances, saying he’s just wired to move on and focus on what comes next, not what came before. The stats bear that out, too (which is how you end up with a Vezina Trophy in the first place).

Over the past two seasons, here are his numbers following losses. Note the save percentage.

After the game against the Canadiens Mason Appleton noted that when his goalie has an off night “You know what Connor Hellebuyck you’re going to get next game.” He was right. The team knows and trusts this guy, as they’ve been given plenty of reason to.

Jordan Binnington’s deal is at least cause for some concern

There’s no amount of money teams wouldn’t pay to ensure they get good goaltending, as we’ve seen. Carey Price was given huge money and Sergei Bobrovsky was too, as their teams just wanted to lock up the most important position on the rink.

Both those deals look pretty bad at this point.

A guy like Binnington, though, is considerably cheaper than the contracts mentioned above, and I’d bet on him giving the Blues just the same performance those guys are giving, or hopefully better.

Still though, the guy turns 28 this summer and thus far has 102 NHL games under his belt. His save percentage in his three years in the league was .927 his first year, .912 last year, and is at .908 this year. If you’re into advanced stuff, by “goals saved above expected” the drop-off looks steeper: +6.6, +0.3, -3.1.

Binnington is an NHL starter. He’s good. I get why both sides wanted to do something for a few years together here.

But why is anyone giving any goalie — and I mean any goalie — a six-year deal? There’s too much uncertainty at the position, it’s hard on the body, and it just seems more likely you’re going to be left asking “what do we do with this deal?” after a few years than you are going to think “Thank goodness we locked him up, or his age 33 season would be worth $10 million!”

Just a guess here, but maybe part of it is that this keeps costs down in the immediate future and as the GM you think “I don’t know if that’s even going to be my issue to deal with if we’re not good in the upcoming years where I’m gonna need cap space more than anything else. If we’re lucky to win enough in the years to come, I’ll be happy to deal with this down the road.”

Engaged Nylander

I’d love to not talk about William Nylander for a week, but sorry, he was Engaged Willy against the Jets on Thursday (as he’s been since his coach rightfully put the reputation he’s earned on the shoulders of the player the week before), and so it’s fun to call attention to the good stuff.

Check out Willy’s shot attempts from that Leafs win. When he’s good, the puck seems to follow him, but watch him in the third clip after he bats the puck off the crossbar. He continues to sniff it out and move his body into the slot, puck-hunting the whole time. That’s what Engaged Nylander looks like – pursuing pucks rather than waiting for them to come to him.

A year of pandemic hockey behind us

A year ago today, March 12th of 2020, there was an article on NHL.com with the headline “NHL to pause season due to coronavirus … Goal is to resume play as soon as it is appropriate and prudent,’ Commissioner Bettman says.”

The next day my 4-year-old’s school shut down indefinitely, and my wife started her maternity leave weeks before our baby girl was born. If you try to change gears that suddenly in most cars the transmission will fall out, which is essentially what happened to not just my life, but the lives of everyone around the globe.

It’s been a hard year, no doubt, and hockey’s done its best to survive. The NHL came back, as you know, and executed a “season” in the bubble. A new season returned again in January, and we’re still playing on (mostly) without fans. It’s easy to be cynical and say this version of NHL hockey is just about keeping the money flowing, and sure, it mostly is. But I don’t really care, as it’s given us a new NHL season with unique challenges, and I’m just really grateful for having had hockey during these months. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of just hockey since the season began (for hours at a time most every day), and I’m not sure what my brain would be doing with that time left to its own devices during those cold, dark stretches of January and February.

To Gary Bettman and the NHL, the players and their union, the families, and everyone involved in putting on the show over the past two months, I just want to say “thank you.” My life is inextricably tied to this maddening game, and I love it, and I’m glad that as so many things have changed in my world, you’ve found a way for it to persevere and entertain this winter.

We’re not quite through this winter yet, and we’re certainly not past COVID, but this NHL season is at the halfway point, the clocks spring forward this weekend, vaccines are steadily rolling out, and it just feels like better days are ahead. Maybe there’s no cure for your favourite team’s terrible power play, but at least those things have been there to distract us long enough to bring us through the worst of it.

Today I’m just grateful for it all.

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