Is Canada really that much better than World Cup foes? (Trending Topics)

The World Cup of Hockey is eight days away, and we’re starting to get a look at how these games will go during the exhibition schedule.

Russia has a deadly power play, Finland and Sweden are really good at both ends of the ice. The kids are talented, but the Czechs are not. No real surprises there, to be honest. And part of the reason for that is you can look at the rosters every team put together and make a pretty clear determination about where everyone’s going to land.

Because the quality Canada brings to the table at this point is just so overwhelming, a lot of the consideration here goes toward who’s going to finish second-best. Based on the quality of defense and goaltending, most would probably put Sweden second.

After that it’s a bit of a crapshoot. You can make arguments that Russia, the United States, Finland or even the North American 23-U team is third-best, and people would have to at least consider them.

With all this in mind, I started thinking about how much these teams “should” score. For instance, Canada should be the best-scoring team in the tournament by far, and Sweden should probably be the best at defending. But things get a little dicey on Canada’s blue line (it’s still hard to get over the whole “Jay Bouwmeester” thing).

Up front, Sweden’s depth just don’t hold as much water as you’d hope.

These things are borne out somewhat when you look at things statistically, as you might expect. I really like Corsica’s “expected goals” stat, because it tells you how many goals a team “should” score and allow with a player on the ice, based on a number of factors including where the attempt came from, the shot type, and other details.

As we’ve discussed before, there are some players who are going to routinely over- or under-perform their expected goal totals because those also assume an average skill level in the shooter. We know from watching Alex Ovechkin or Steven Stamkos shoot the puck that not all shooting talent is created equal; if they took 100 shots from the top of the left circle, and then, say, Zac Rinaldo did the same, you’re going to get very different results.

And because the people being added to World Cup rosters are generally going to be above-average players at their positions (to say the least), it’s worth noting that the expected-goals numbers being produced when you tally everyone up are probably a little low for most of the teams in the tournament.

For teams with non-NHL players in the tournament, I replaced their numbers with the league averages for NHL players at their positions. In some cases I think that’s probably a little generous (shout out to KHL players), and in others it might be a little unfair (Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine). Nonetheless, if you look at each team’s average player’s adjusted numbers, you mostly get a pretty clear picture of how things go in terms of team quality:

I separated Canada out because they are clearly the best team in the tournament, scoring the most expected goals by far, and allowing the third-fewest. One assumes that if everyone had stayed healthy, they’d be in even better shape in both departments.

And sure enough, Sweden comes in at No. 2 with a middling offense but the best defense in the tournament. No surprise. The US has the second-best offense, which is a bit of a surprise, but a low-end defense, which checks out logically. Everything else feels just about right, especially the North American numbers: Lots of offensive talent (third in the tournament), very little reliability on the back end (most goals against per 60).

Of course, you’d have probably bet a lot of money the Czech team would have been the worst on-paper roster in the tournament. After all, they’re using five(!) players from outside the NHL, including guys like Roman Cervenka, who washed out of the league so hard Jay Feaster’s contract-offering hand still hasn’t recovered. But having five average NHLers on the roster probably buoys them more than they deserve. And hell, it’s not like they’re any good anyway. Likewise, the European team not being all that good at all is, like, the opposite of a surprise.

I also had a look at what individual players did when it came to both creating and preventing expected goals, and the results were a little surprising. (On this chart you want to be as far to the right and close to the bottom as possible.)

Look at Connor McDavid way, way out there by himself when it comes to creating goals all the way on the right. He’s way ahead of Brandon Dubinsky and Ales Hemsky as the No. 1 player in the tournament (as an aside: Hemsky and Dubinsky?!?). And look at those two Canadians dominating the group in terms of allowing goals against. That’s “look what playing for San Jose will do for you” material from Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Logan Couture, who are likely to see a lot of time in shutdown roles, or at least should do.

And woof, look at Esa Lindell, Finland’s probable No. 7 defenseman way, way up there in terms of goals against. He pretty much screws up the upper limits of the chart, so far is he outside what normal tournament participants produced. Of course, that number is based on just a little more than 53 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time for Dallas this year, but he was also pretty rotten in Finland’s exhibition game against that strong Sweden team, so the odds he gets into too many games in the actual tournament seem quite low.

But here, too, you get a pretty good picture of how Canada is just incrementally better, more or less throughout the lineup, than everyone else. A lot of the red-and-white dots are in the proper quadrants in terms of “prolific” offensively and “stingy” defensively. And a lot of the blue-and-green European and light-blue-and-white Finnish dots are in the exact wrong quadrants.

This isn’t necessarily stuff we didn’t already know fundamentally, but it’s interesting to see just how and why teams are individually dominant. However, most likely wouldn’t have guessed the US team would be more defensively porous than Russia, or indeed that its offense would be so good.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise stated.