Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Analytics with Augie and now its time to sit in your seat and look at your favorite HOCKEY CHARTS
Friday, October 13th Michigan Tech 1- Alaska 4
Despite leading after the first period, the Nanooks were absolutely running the game through the first two periods. They took their foot off the gas in the third, but weren’t giving the Huskies anything and basically nothing happened on offense for either team in the third. Not a good look, a bit more of surge in xG in the third from Tech if nothing else from the score effects but we didn’t even see that.
Some of you may remember that in the home opener last season, the Huskies also lost the first game by three goals after scoring first and then proceeded to tie 2-2 on Saturday. Those of you who need to talk to therapist paid far too much attention to my articles last season may remember that I didn’t watch that Friday night game against Bemidji, and was instead at an emo concert that I suggested was probably more fun than being in the Mac. Well history might not ever repeat it self, but it sure does rhyme because I was once again spending my Friday night in a mosh pit instead of watching a tough three goal loss in the home opener. Am I saying all this because its interesting or because I don’t want to talk about how the Huskies looked on Friday night? The world may never know.
I can’t paint this in a positive light, but what I will say is it’s a small sample size and we had a very similar weekend to start off last season at home and we ended up having a pretty good season overall. I don’t think the sky is falling, but oof that was not a great game statistically from Tech
Saturday, October 14th Michigan Tech 2- Alaska 2
Better late than never I suppose, the offense finally showed up near the end of the first on Saturday. Huskies continued to run the show for the entire second period despite Alaska scoring getting the only two goals in the second (reminder that this chart only includes even strength and is therefore lacking the second Alaska goal at 12:04 of the second period). Its disappointing to only come away from this game with a tie, but if Tech can control play that much in the future they will likely be in pretty good shape.
Yeah if this game happens again Tech probably wins it 80% of the time. With a goalie the caliber of Blake, its unlikely that you will win the corsi/xG battle and lose the game. That’s hockey for you though, gotta love sports with a lot of randomness.
Campbell had a much tougher week compared to his debut against Duluth, but he still got a bunch of ice time which is a good indication of the trust Joe Shawhan has in the freshman. I’m looking forward to seeing him bounce back against Wisconsin. Another good game from the pairing of Jed and Chase Pietila who were the Huskies best defensemen both nights. Kukkonen struggled to get anything going on Friday but looked much better on Saturday. Williams with over 90% xG share, obviously the best player in the game. Please pay no attention to the small sample size
Bonus content
So life got pretty chaotic for me and I forgot to get my weekly predictions in to JZ before his preview went up last week. I’m making the decision to go off the honor system and run the code for predictions with only the data that was available before last weekend. I sent my personal predictions of a Tech sweep to JZ on discord about 5 minutes into game 1. With all that said, here are my retroactive predictions for the series I’m recapping right now.
Closing Time
I hope you enjoyed taking a look at some nice charts and graphs with me. If you have any questions about the charts, my analysis, or just want to say hello, please leave a comment or reach out to me on the THG discord server (@Augie) and I’d be happy to try and answer your questions.
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