Colorado Avalanche: Optional Skate and Fancy Stats

The Colorado Avalanche held an optional skate with mostly AHLers and role players. Also, I did an in-depth look at two players’ stats.

The Colorado Avalanche held what appeared to be an optional practice today. It started out by being primarily Colorado Eagles players skating:

Dominic Toninato
Logan O’Connor
AJ Greer (though I think he might still be a call-up)
Anton Lindholm

Healthy scratches Ryan Graves, Patrik Nemeth, and Mark Barberio were also in attendance, as was the now-healthy (and likely to be scratched) Vladislav Kamenev. I believe Spencer Martin was in net to start. They were soon joined by role players such as Sven Andrighetto and Gabriel Bourque.

About the time I concluded it was all AHLers and role players, I noticed Erik Johnson, Mikko Rantanen, and Nikita Zadorov take the ice. Tyson Jost was out there, too, and I guess you’d have to decide where in that continuum he is. (More on that later.) Alexander Kerfoot was present, too.

Also Semyon Varlamov took the full practice, but we all know where in the continuum he is.

That’s the thing — I guess it wasn’t a full practice. Players seemed to come and go as they pleased. The practice was supposed to start at 12:00, but it wasn’t even until 12:30 that any drills started taking place. And by then, Johnson, Rantanen, and Zadorov were gone.

I got the feeling that players had had discussions with the coaching staff about areas they needed to address. Players like Johnson, Rantanen, and Zadorov maybe just skated through what they wanted to quickly while others stayed for the informal drills.

Anyway, while the drills were drawn up, they were fairly relaxed. They focused on skating and shooting. I hope that means Colorado intends to bring more of a speed game to the ice tomorrow. But, like I said, it was mostly AHLers and role players participating in the drills.

If the players were skating through some issues that needed to be addressed, I’m surprised not to have seen Derick Brassard and Ian Cole out there. But then, how do you conduct drills for not taking bad penalties?

Anyway, before I went to practice, I entertained myself by looking over some stats. I’m not a stats person, but I wanted to see some numbers.

Playoff Stats

For these statistics I referred to Natural Stat Trick.

Tyson Jost (yes, I’m on that horse again) earned his first playoff point, an assist, in the Game 1 loss against the San Jose Sharks. When he earned that point, I realized he had tied roommate Alexander Kerfoot. Kerfoot also has one point in the playoffs.

More from Stanley Cup Playoffs

Those players are a tale of two playoffs. Alexander Kerfoot has been given everything. He’s started all eight games on the top line with captain Gabriel Landeskog and superstar Nathan MacKinnon. He doesn’t always skate with them — sometimes their usual linemate, Mikko Rantanen, replaces him.

Nonetheless, Kerfoot sees on average 15 minutes a night, all with those lethal weapons by his side. He’s also part of the second power play unit.

On the other end of the spectrum is Tyson Jost. He’s started all eight games on the fourth line and pretty much stayed there. He had his few seconds of power play time taken away when star rookie Cale Makar joined the team.

So, Jost sees an average of 9 minutes a night, all with the likes of Gabriel Bourque, Sven Andrighetto, or Derick Brassard by his side. No shade to those role players, but they’re just that — role players. Nathan MacKinnon they ain’t.

Kerfoot has played a total 110:22 so far. Jost is just over half that, 64:16. Yet they have the same result — a single assist.

The comparison doesn’t stop there. One of those players has more than double the shots the other. You might realize by my coy phrasing that it’s Jost — 13 to Kerfoot’s 6.

Let’s look at some of the more advanced stats.

iCF is individual Corsi For, which is any shot attempt (goals, shots on net, misses and blocks) by the player. They’re almost identical — 20 for Kerfoot, 18 for Jost. (The highest is 44, both MacKinnon and Tyson Barrie. The lowest is 6, Brassard).

iFF, which is unblocked shot attempts, favors Jost — 15-13. They’re dead even at rush attempts with 1 each.

The iSCF stat does get skewed in Kerfoot’s favor. iSCF is any scoring chance by a player. Alexander has 15 to Jost’s 9. However, the iHDCF, or high danger scoring chance, brings their numbers closer — 5 for Kerfoot, 2 for Jost.

Going back to some more normal stats, Kerfoot has 2 penalties to Jost’s 0. They have the same amount of giveaways — 1 each — but Jost has more takeaways — 5 to Kerfoot’s 2. Tyson also has 8 hits to Alexander’s 7.

I’m not trying to throw Kerfoot under the bus here. He was pretty ok in the Calgary series, but his smallish size and shy demeanor are getting exploited by the big, mean Sharks.

Conversely, Jost has played as well as Kerfoot in far worse circumstances — limited minutes with limited help. Imagine how much better he’d be doing if he was at least on the third line and back on the second power play.

And if Jost was doing better, maybe the Colorado Avalanche would be, too. (In case you’re wondering, Jost far exceeds his linemates in all those categories.)

Well, we’ll see tomorrow how the lineup shifts, if it does at all. The Avalanche are hosting the Sharks for Game 4. Puck drop is 8:00 pm MT.