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Red Wings Rank ‘Em Roundup: Games 1-5

You may have noticed we’re doing something a little different in postgames this season. Immediately after each game, we’re posting a Rank ‘Em post for you to vote on which players performed well and which didn’t. So far we’ve collected over 16,000 total votes telling us what you all think of the players (and another several hundred answering the age-old Edison vs. Tesla issue).

After a five-game sample, I want to take a look at the trends and see what we’ve learned.Here’s a total of all the votes for the players so far, ordered by the total vote differential (as of the morning of October 19th). The percent represents the how many of the votes for each player were positive compared to how many total votes he received:

Player Total Diff Total Percent Avg Diff Avg Percent
Dylan Larkin 1145 97.67% 229 96.36%
Henrik Zetterberg 1125 98.12% 225 96.92%
Justin Abdelkader 949 93.49% 189.8 84.32%
Drew Miller 665 90.70% 133 85.72%
Mike Green 555 81.08% 111 79.27%
Gustav Nyquist 550 80.97% 110 77.21%
Luke Glendening 525 85.43% 105 78.46%
Petr Mrazek 515 98.31% 257.5 96.89%
Teemu Pulkkinen 451 76.07% 90.2 62.10%
Jimmy Howard 447 85.76% 149 73.12%
Kyle Quincey 376 75.75% 75.2 65.68%
Niklas Kronwall 264 68.64% 52.8 56.82%
Tomas Tatar 256 67.44% 51.2 62.13%
Jakub Kindl 251 66.89% 50.2 59.42%
Landon Ferraro 250 70.97% 62.5 68.90%
Riley Sheahan 166 62.73% 33.2 63.10%
Johan Franzen 131 70.03% 65.5 73.57%
Danny DeKeyser 80 91.67% 80 91.67%
Brad Richards 72 55.19% 14.4 48.73%
Tomas Jurco 68 61.41% 34 46.90%
Darren Helm 5 53.16% 5 53.16%
Joakim Andersson -59 12.66% -59 12.66%
Brendan Smith -121 41.42% -24.2 38.25%
Jonathan Ericsson -196 36.46% -39.2 32.74%

Game 1 (4-0 W vs. Toronto)
Game 2 (4-3 W at Carolina)
Game 3 (3-1 W vs. Tampa Bay)
Game 4 (5-3 L vs. Carolina)
Game 5 (4-1 L at Montreal)

Standout Players

Dylan Larkin (5gp 2G 4A) – Larkin’s worst game for voting was the loss to Montreal where he scored the Wings’ only goal of the game and came away with a 98-9 thumbs up/down score.

Henrik Zetterberg (5gp 2G 7A) – Hank currently sits tied atop the league leaderboard for points with 9 in 5 games. The center of the only line consistently producing offense, Hank is also the only other player to have a voting differential over 1,000.

The Goalies (5gp 3W 2L) – Howard and Mrazek are a combined +962 in voting after 5 games, despite Howard being -58 in the voting for losing game 4 against Carolina. With how the Wings are getting outshot this season, a lot of credit goes to the goalies for getting them three victories.

Jonathan Ericsson (5gp 0G 0A) – It’s not all rosy, as the resident defensive punching bag hasn’t done nearly enough to start turning his reputation around as being a guy who doesn’t deserve top pairing duties. Riggy actually earned positive rankings twice, but his worst single-game voting was a -85 for their victory against Carolina.

Brendan Smith (4gp 0G 0A) – Smith is another guy that the fans have lost patience with, especially after getting a brand new contract this summer. Smith’s last game drew a -96 thanks to some truly awful play against Carolina. It also drew him the sit-down straw when DeKeyser returned

Working the Averages

Here’s the same data, this time ordered by the average percent of positive votes for each game. This way we’re correcting for a fairly wide variation in votes for each game:

Player Total Diff Total Percent Avg Diff Avg Percent
Henrik Zetterberg 1125 98.12% 225 96.92%
Petr Mrazek 515 98.31% 257.5 96.89%
Dylan Larkin 1145 97.67% 229 96.36%
Danny DeKeyser 80 91.67% 80 91.67%
Drew Miller 665 90.70% 133 85.72%
Justin Abdelkader 949 93.49% 189.8 84.32%
Mike Green 555 81.08% 111 79.27%
Luke Glendening 525 85.43% 105 78.46%
Gustav Nyquist 550 80.97% 110 77.21%
Johan Franzen 131 70.03% 65.5 73.57%
Jimmy Howard 447 85.76% 149 73.12%
Landon Ferraro 250 70.97% 62.5 68.90%
Kyle Quincey 376 75.75% 75.2 65.68%
Riley Sheahan 166 62.73% 33.2 63.10%
Tomas Tatar 256 67.44% 51.2 62.13%
Teemu Pulkkinen 451 76.07% 90.2 62.10%
Jakub Kindl 251 66.89% 50.2 59.42%
Niklas Kronwall 264 68.64% 52.8 56.82%
Darren Helm 5 53.16% 5 53.16%
Brad Richards 72 55.19% 14.4 48.73%
Tomas Jurco 68 61.41% 34 46.90%
Brendan Smith -121 41.42% -24.2 38.25%
Jonathan Ericsson -196 36.46% -39.2 32.74%
Joakim Andersson -59 12.66% -59 12.66%

Observations

Brad Richards may have more positive votes overall, but game-by-game, he’s slightly underwater in terms of impressing the fans so far. Tomas Jurco is the only other forward below 50% here and you can see why we’d want to look at the average per game instead of total voting. He’s an overall +68 thanks to receiving 221 of his 298 total votes in the game 3 win over Tampa. Unfortunately, his negative game against Carolina drew him only a 16.88% rating.

Drew Miller takes a lot of crap for being replaceable, but it’s clear that the fans appreciate his defensive work for the team. He doesn’t have a single game where his rating is negative (Though Ferraro brags that too and Glendening’s worst showing was a -2).

Popularity-wise, I think the voting matches up pretty well for the defense between how well the blueliners have played and how their Rank ‘Em Rankings work out. DeKeyser played solid in his one game and got skewed numbers and Mike Green still has that new car smell, but Kyle Quincey is the next-leading defenseman with a solid start. Kindl has flown generally positive thanks to his success again in sheltered minutes. Kronwall is again struggling with top-pairing responsibilities.

Ranking the Refs

Starting in game 3, we started adding the refs to the voting. I don’t expect they’ll get many games where they come out a positive, but it’s been fun to look at.

Player Total Diff Total Percent Avg Diff Avg Percent
The Refs -233 23.82% -77.67 20.23%

20% approval rating for three games in which Detroit lost two? That sounds about right. Hilariously, more than half of the Refs’ votes came in the game Detroit won against Tampa.

– – –

We’ll see you again after five more games to see how the Rank ‘Em Ratings are going. LGRW

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