Tuesday's FTB: Marc Savard is gone

One day last year, sometime in the early part of the season, I actually said Marc Savard should be fired. I don't say those things lightly, and I don't like how easily everyone else does. I don't like treating the NHL like a spectacle where we're not just allowed, but encouraged to think of the teams and management and coaches as non-human characters we can wish killed off from a TV show.

But I'd had enough. Actually, I'd had enough before he was hired.

Let's turn back the clock a little. If you like PP% to measure quality of the power play, you go for it. I like shot rate and shot quality. Because goals come randomly at a rate determined by luck/skill of the shooter over the course of the run of shots. That means more shots are better and better shots are better still. Why that's controversial is the job of a social scientist to explain, cuz I don't know.

This is the Leafs in their modern incarnation of trying to be good on the power play:

Season	GP	TOI	GF/60	xGF/60	Sh%
16-17	81	396.87	9.08	8.67	15.22
17-18	81	350.97	9.5	9.85	14.42
18-19	78	353.9	7.77	9.39	12.47
19-20	67	314.28	8.18	6.86	15.46
20-21	55	250.13	8.01	8.83	13
21-22	80	352.18	10.34	9.43	15.66
22-23	81	399.5	9.39	9.83	15.35
23-24	80	371.92	9.49	10.57	15.03
24-25	81	345.3	9.18	9.76	17.19
25-26	34	157.63	4	9.14	7.92

This is not the big ah-ha you might have been expecting. If anything there's a little bit of a case for the defense of Marc Savard in those numbers.

Don't be distracted by the Goals For rate usually being lower than the Expected Rate, that turns out to be fairly normal in the NHL with a very few teams shooting way over expected, and most not doing that at all.

It's very easy, and people do this all the time, to decide Shooting % is either skill, and then they get mad if you say it's not a repeatable skill, or luck, and then get mad if you dispute that. It's both. Which is why it's not repeatable – for individuals, it fluctuates quite a bit year-over-year. But also why it's skill – for individuals, it settles on a career mean that varies from player to player quite a bit.

Last year, when there was a lot of complaints about how the power play seemed, it turned out okay overall. But up to the end of January, the Expected Goals amount was 8.36, which counts as awful, and the goal rate was 7.97. The Corsi rate of shots was really poor, reflecting the inability to get set up. It all got better, and I thought I was wrong about Savard. But the goals took longer to appear, the complaining heated up, and it was very hard to convince anyone the power play was good. The prior year was an even more exciting version of this phenomenon.

Ah, the word good. You get to make up in your head what that means, so to be clear, by the end of the year, the Leafs power play was fourth by expected goals and eighth by actual goal rate. I think you could argue the Leafs should be better than that, but they were right in range of the Oilers and the Panthers.

So this season so far, with a terrible PP%, which is all anyone working in television talks about, is Marc Savard the victim of change for the sake of change because of an oddball Shooting % that will regress (as in, get better)?

A little. But the only time their shot rate (all shots or Corsi) on the power play has been this low is the Covid-shortened season of 19-20.

The only time the Expected Goals rate has been this low is that year, the following North Division season and 16-17, the first year out of the gate with Auston Matthews on the team. And that Expected Goals rate right now is 17th in the NHL.

So while Savard may have been entitled to the benefit of the doubt last year, and I think the change was down to the players not him, he's not really due much consideration this year. He is not the only one on the coaching staff. If I were his defence lawyer, I'd be saying, uh, the Expected Goals Against? The PK? Because those two things have genuinely and seriously harmed the team's ability to win games.

But why was he ever hired? I have what is, honestly, an outsized and slightly irrational dislike of the guy's work because he had no track record that said he should coach the Leafs.

This was my entire take on the guy when he was hired:

Savard is widely seen as a power play specialist, and while the Leafs had a very good regular season power play by advanced shot-based measures, it failed to score down the stretch. In the playoffs, facing Jeremy Swayman, it really failed to score even when the shot rate was high at first. Eventually the wheels fell off completely.

However, is Savard a power play guy, and is he good? And how can you tell looking at Calgary last season when they were struggling in many ways.

Their Expected Goals For on the power play went from 8.33 to 9.05 from the prior year to this season under Savard. That's good enough to have the Flames in 13th place in the NHL. The Leafs were fourth behind the Wild, Panthers and Oilers.

To succeed on the power play, you need skill as well as a system, and it's plausible to allow that Calgary lacked that. It's also plausible to just call Savard the bro they both [Berube and Treliving] know.

The proof will be in the playing this coming season.

Welcome to Toronto, Marc, start counting the days to your first #firesavard hashtag on Twitter or your first moment as a hero when that PP% pleases people.

The Leafs had had some issues immediately last year, which was, in my opinion, largely "shit happens" randomness manifesting in ways that had people searching for a cause. And he seemed, eventually better. The firing came, as it does for everyone, because that's part of the show of the NHL.

So what about that Shooting % this year? Is that just "shit happens"?

First of all yes, but also no. This is the eternal trouble with measuring skill by goals. It's both.

Player	TOI	G	Points	Sh%
John Tavares	102.82	2	4	11.11
William Nylander	95.83	1	6	6.67
Matthew Knies	95.82	2	2	11.11
Auston Matthews	90.32	3	4	14.29
Morgan Rielly	85.88	0	3	0
Oliver Ekman-Larsson	65.67	0	3	0
Max Domi	51.23	0	3	0
Easton Cowan	47.22	0	0	0
Nicholas Robertson	37.53	1	1	20
Matias MacCelli	35.83	0	0	0
Nicolas Roy	31.28	1	1	9.09
Bobby McMann	26.53	1	2	25

So here we have the perpetrators of the power play, which is last in the NHL in goal rate. Auston Matthews shot 14% last year on the power play while playing through injury, and 26% the year before while scoring a lot of goals. He's not really the problem, but his issues don't help.

William Nylander shot 26% last year, a number you can hope get's repeated, but you shouldn't expect, but it's partly why last year looked good and this year does not. Matt Knies shot 21% last year. Max Domi was 0%, Morgan Rielly was 7%, John Tavares was 19%.

So last year, the big boys scored, the second unit didn't and the second unit did not get played much. This year, the big boys went cold, the second unit got played a lot, and lo, they weren't suddenly good.

Marc Savard is getting fired (first) because the Leafs chose defensive-minded players for their peripheral forwards – not something I'm complaining about – but then Savard used them way too much. Domi, to use the obvious example of a guy who is there because he's there, played 89 minutes last year, and he's already at 51.

One other glaring issue is that Bobby McMann played a lot of power play last year, barely does this year, and yet, he sorta seems good at it. His Shooting % last year was over 20 as well, making me think his career norm is one that gets you goals.

I don't know how the Leafs decide how to set up and then deploy the power play. I don't know what was Savard and what was other voices.

Guilty or not guilty? Was I too quick to judge Savard on how things seemed?

Maybe a little, but not wholly. And yes, you should not ever be mediocre on the power play with that list of available forwards. That's the thing there is no excuse for. The goal rate is the big thing everyone will shout about, but after the shouting's over, this was the right call.