Flyers-Devils Preview

It's the Thursday before Christmas. The office is very slow. Most of the people at work are gone for vacation already, and my boss just left the office for the day.

So.. Flyers preview! I'm going to pull most of this, as usual, from HockeyViz and Corsica. You should already know both sites, but you should also subscribe to HockeyViz because it's an amazing website.

Devils Forwards

Let's start up top. The top five Devils in terms of ice time are (in order) Taylor Hall, Mike Cammalleri, Travis Zajac, Kyle Palmieri, and Adam Henrique. Here are the 5v5 metrics for those five guys:

Player	TOI/G	CF%	FF%	SF%	xGF%	SCF%	GF%
TAYLOR.HALL	15.74	49.93	50.65	50.49	53.84	60.24	41.38
MIKE.CAMMALLERI	14.10	47.34	45.25	46.22	44.07	45.56	55.88
TRAVIS.ZAJAC	13.79	50.7	50	51.09	47.76	47.66	50
KYLE.PALMIERI	12.51	44.44	42.49	42.62	41.19	43.33	55.17
ADAM.HENRIQUE	12.19	46.04	46.13	46.06	45.66	45.69	44.12

It's not all that impressive. Hall is the "All-Star winger" that was the target of the largest trade in Devils history, but he's way below breakeven in terms of on-ice goals. He creates chances, though, but obviously New Jersey anticipated more team success with Hall on the ice. 

SB Nation says that the top five in ice time will fill out the top two lines tonight (which makes sense), and Devils coach John Hynes will have the ability to match either (or neither) of these lines against the Claude Giroux-Jake Voracek-Michael Raffl line. 

But it shouldn't matter. The Flyers shouldn't have an issue generating chances against Corey Schneider tonight. They generally win the Corsi-Fenwick-Shots battle, and they could win those battles in a landslide in this game. The big question is going to be that final column, Goals. Schneider is a beast, and the Flyers will have to generate high-quality chances to beat him. 

Devils Defensemen

Same chart for the blueliners, 5v5 only:

Player	TOI/G	CF%	FF%	SF%	xGF%	SCF%	GF%
DAMON.SEVERSON	16.79	49.57	48.95	48.29	47.55	49.62	37.5
ANDY.GREENE	16.32	48.15	47.75	47.64	47.65	53.49	41.46
BEN.LOVEJOY	15.66	44.8	45.2	46.09	45.26	44.95	39.29
KYLE.QUINCEY	14.92	47.34	47.7	47.34	46.37	49.12	45.83
JOHN.MOORE	14.88	44.64	44.34	43.04	42.97	47.01	37.21

So, that's not great. The only player above 50% in ANYTHING is Andy Greene's scoring chances. And he's still below 48% in Expected Goals and below 42% in Actual Goals. Yikes. Yikes yikes yikes yikes. 

Devils Goalie

Corey Schneider is going to steal this one, isn't he?