Maple Leafs 2009-10 Point Predictions

Hey Gus,

Good interesting reading as per usual. I’m going to do my own version of same over at http://leafs.hockeyanalysis.com in the next couple of days and I was just curious about your predictions on a few fronts.

I find it interesting that you predict that Grabovski will only score 23 goals, and will only pick up 26 assists, over the course of 76 games. This is for two reasons. Firstly, you predict that Kulemin will net 22 goals. Secondly, that seems to ignore the likelihood that Grabovski’s PP time should increase dramatically this season.

The increase of 7 goals by Kulemin should roughly imply an increase of 3 or 4 assists for Grabovski, since over the last 3/4 of the season they were typically line mates, and Grabovski assisted on half his goals. Last year, Grabovski assisted on 6 of Kulemin’s final 12 scores, while similarly, Kulemin assisted on 6 of Grabovski’s 20 goals.

To me that implies that if Kulemin’s assist and goal totals both go up by 25%, that it stands to reason that Grabovski’s totals should increase proportionally to boot. You only have Grabovski’s totals improving by 1 point. I would argue based on the increase for Kulemin, that Grabovski should improve to roughly 25 goals, and 32 or 33 assists.

If you factor in the fact that last year Grabovski had less time on the PP than Matt Stajan, and that it could reasonably be expected that that situation would be reversed this season, you would have to think Grabovski’s increase would be noticeable on the PP point side of things also. Don’t forget that Antropov played over 200 minutes on the PP for the Leafs last season, and some of those minutes are going to go to Kulemin and Grabovski. If Grabovski is the man stirring the offensive drink for the Leafs this season, I would anticipate his production to be closer to 60+ points than 48 or 49.

I’ll get into more depth on this on my own blog, but good work overall. Thanks for providing the interesting discussion points.