Quoting: jnowariak
As opposed to the 20% Hartman and Foligno are shooting for the first time in their lives at the back end of their 20s? Minnesota is actually way above their xG this year, extreme luck. The best way to be competitive on a limited budget when you have limited star players is to play a system that tilts the ice in your favor. That’s fancy stats in a nutshell.
If/when depth in star power comes, I’ll care more about the regular +/-. But until then, I’d rather my team understands their personnel and puts them in a position to succeed. Ala fancy stats.
That's the problem. Spurgeon is part of the reason there is a tight budget. He's a $7.5m cap hit playing the least amount of 5v5 time of any of the regular d-men on the team (even before the 3 min game where he was injured).
If they were really putting the best team on the ice every night Rask would not be in the pressbox at all. It would be Bjugstad.
Hartman is at 15.5 s%. It's high, but he did have an 11.2% in CHI when he got time as a skill player, not just a grinder. He's also shooting the puck a lot more than normal.
Foligno is actually down from his s% from last year. He doesn't take a lot of shots, but when he does they all seem to come from very high danger areas.
The Pitlick and Fiala s% are the completely unsustainable ones.
Last year Fiala, Foligno and Hartman had a 13.8 s% combined. So far this year they have a combined 12.6 s%; which is about what should be expected for that trio. Fiala will heat up and the other 2 cool off, but the overall s% from then should stay about the same for the season.