The Leafs Decline In Penalty Kill and Mike Zigomanis

Editor's Note: JippyCorp takes a look at the Leafs' penalty kill and the impact of face-offs. The focus is on Mike Zigomanis but for those wondering how John Mitchell continues to get run out there the post has a hint on at least one aspect.

I was wondering the other day why our penalty kill had gotten so bad recently after starting out so strong.  Our back end hasn't changed much - with the exception of Dion Phaneuf being out, however Schenn for the most part has been the leader in short handed ice team most of this season.  The forwards who play on our penalty kill also haven't changed much, Sjostrom, Brown and Brent are our main stays, Mitchell shows up now that Zigomanis are gone, with the occasional hope for offense from both Grabo and Kessel.  For the most part though our penalty kill has remained the same with the forwards from the beginning of the season with Brown, Sjostrom and Brent... so what has changed?

Zigomanis.

I decided to take a further look into it, how can one player - one quarter of our forward group on the penalty kill make such (if any) of an impact? 

We have to look at his first obvious skill and that is his faceoff ability, and winning a faceoff in the defensive zone while killing a penalty is huge - that win can result in an easy clear which could eat 15-30 seconds off of the clock.  I originally expected Zigomanis to be a beast on faceoffs, especially short handed, and if we take a look at Zigomanis' faceoff ability you can see that he is a very solid faceoff man:

Total Faceoffs: 40
Faceoffs won: 21
Faceoffs lost: 19
Faceoff %: 52.5

Not bad, now let's see how he does short handed:

Total Short handed Faceoffs: 13
Faceoffs won: 7
Faceoffs lost: 6
Faceoff SH %: 53.8

Just above 50% faceoff percentage is not a bad thing to have on the penalty kill, how does this stack up against the rest of the team?

Tyler Bozak
Total Short handed Faceoffs: 8
Faceoffs won: 4
Faceoffs lost: 4
Faceoff SH %: 50

Mikhail Grabovski
Total Short handed Faceoffs: 8
Faceoffs won: 1
Faceoffs lost: 7
Faceoff SH %: 12.5

Tim Brent
Total Short handed Faceoffs: 57
Faceoffs won: 24
Faceoffs lost: 33
Faceoff SH %: 42.1

John Mitchell
Total Short handed Faceoffs: 18
Faceoffs won: 15
Faceoffs lost: 3
Faceoff SH %: 83.3

I think we can see why John Mitchell is playing now, an amazing 83% winning percentage for short handed faceoffs (55.7% total faceoff wins).  This could essentially be the answer to the question as to why Johnny Mitchell is playing on this team instead of the with the Marlies - defensive and short handed faceoffs are important.  However if John Mitchell's faceoff percentage is so high, why isn't he taking more short handed faceoffs?  That will probably require an entirely different post... for now I'll stick with Zigomanis.. moving on!

Let's look further than faceoffs, let's look at what happened in those 8 games that Zigomanis played in at the beginning of the season:

Oct 7 vs MTL, WIN - 3-2
    3 times short handed, 0 goals allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 1:18 SH (Forward Leader -> Sjostrom with 2:54)
    Total TOI: 4:02
    Leafs total PK: 100%
       
Oct 9 vs OTT, WIN - 5-1
    4 times short handed, 0 goals allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 4:32 SH (Forward Leader -> Zigomanis)
    Total TOI: 12:14
    Leafs total PK: 100%
   
Oct 13 vs PIT, WIN - 4-3
    3 times short handed, 1 goal allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 1:32 SH (Forward Leader -> Sjostrom with 1:41)
    Total TOI: 4:41
    Leafs total PK: 90%
   
Oct 15 VS NYR, WIN - 4-3 (OT)
    5 times short handed, 0 goals allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 4:01 SH (Forward Leader -> Zigomanis)
    Total TOI: 7:16
    Leafs total PK: 93.3%
   
Oct 18 vs NYI, LOSE - 2-1 (OT)
    3 times short handed, 1 goal allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 1:27 SH (Forward Leader - Brent with 1:51)
    Total TOI: 6:06   
    Leafs total PK: 88.8%
  
Oct 21 vs NYR, LOSE - 2-1
    2 times short handed, 0 goals allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 2:04 SH (Forward Leader - Zigomanis)
    Total TOI: 10:19
    Leafs total PK: 90%

Oct 26 vs FLA, WIN, 3-1
    3 times short handed, 1 goal allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 1:00 SH (Forward Leader - Brent with 2:25)
    Total TOI: 5:37
    Leafs total PK: 86.9%

Oct 28 vs BOS, Lose 2-0
    3 times short handed, 1 goal allowed
    Zigomanis on ice for 0:17 SH (Forward Leader - Brown with 2:50)
    Total TOI: 5:13
    Leafs total PK: 84.6%

Now that 84.6% would right now put the Leafs in top 10 for penalty killing, fantastic.  Also, over those 8 games Zigomanis was a +/- 0, 1 assist, 4 PIMs, with 7 shots registered.   While 8 games is a very small sample size if you look closer at the above stats you will see that every time Zigomanis lead the forwards in short handed ice time there was not a single power play goal allowed.  Granted, it only happened 3 times.. but still.

So did Zigomanis make a big difference?  You tell me, here are the stats for the rest of the season so far - including the game on Oct 23rd which he was scratched:

Oct 23 vs PHI, LOSE 5-2
    6 times short handed, 1 goal allowed

Oct 30 vs NYR, LOSE 2-0
    1 time short handed, 0 goals allowed

Nov 2 vs OTT, LOSE 3-2
    4 times short handed, 2 goals allowed

NOV 3 vs WSH, LOSE 5-4 (SO)
    4 times short handed, 2 goals allowed

Nov 6 vs BUF, LOSE 3-2
    3 times short handed, 0 goals allowed

Nov 9 VS TBL, Lose 4-0
    2 times short handed, 1 goal allowed

Nov 10 vs FLA, LOSE 4-1
    5 times short handed, 2 goals allowed

Nov 13 vs VAN, LOSE 5-3
    4 times short handed, 2 goals allowed

Nov 16 vs NSH, WIN 5-4
    2 times short handed, 0 goals allowed

Nov 18 vs NJD, WIN 3-1
    2 times short handed, 0 goals allowed

Nov 20 vs MTL, LOSE 2-0
    1 time short handed, 1 goal allowed

Nov 22 vs DAL, WIN 4-1
    2 times short handed, 0 goals allowed

Nov 26 vs BUF, LOSE 3-1
    4 times short handed, 2 goals allowed

Nov 27 VS Ott, LOSE 3-0
    1 time short handed, 1 goal allowed

With those totals that brings the Leafs penalty killed to a pathetic 73.1%, which places at 29th overall.  What's worse?  Since Zigomanis has been scratched, put on waivers, and sent to the Marlies the Leafs penalty killing has been an abysmal 65.8%.  If it seems like every third penalty the Leafs allowed a goal, you would be correct in that assumption.

Would better penalty killing have made a difference?  It's impossible to really say, you can speculate that killing off a big penalty gives the team energy and we may have scored more goals in those games rather than allowed them.  Some of the games would have been one goal, or even tied games going into the end of the third period.  Would our record overall be better?  Probably, not by much, but it would be better.  In the end the Leafs inability to score goals is what is killing them, however if we can't score more than 2 or 3 goals a game then we definitely need to stop the other team from scoring, especially when the other team are on the power play.  Another big bonus to having a strong penalty kill is that our players won't be afraid of taking penalties, they can play the aggressive, banging style that they want to play without fear of every time they take a penalty will result in a goal against (or currently 1 in 3 times).  This leads to more energy, a stronger forecheck, more turnovers, more... dare I say it... truculence.

So I'm hoping someone out there knows more than I do, specifically why we aren't playing Mike Zigomanis.. or if we ever will bring him back up again?  I for one am hoping to celebrate Zigomania once again.