Mike wrote on Mon, 15 May 2023 11:19

Good thing small players are useless in the playoffs, otherwise that Marchessault fella could have been an issue. And what's the deal with Kostin and how sparingly he was played? To my eyes, seemed like almost every time he was out there he was doing good things. Just went over to look at the stats and: 4th on the team in +/- at +2. 3 guys (Ryan, Kulak, Broberg) at +3. Only 6 guys on the team in the black. His hitting - he was crushing everything that moves. I know hits stats are subject to statskeepers' judgement, but still pretty good indicators. Kostin was credited with 38 hits in his limited ice time. That amounts to 24.6 hits/60. Next closest was Bjugstad at 16.6/60, followed by Kane with 13.1/60 Kostin was 4th on the team in Pts/60 all situations (3.232) behind only McDavid, Draisaitl, and Bouchard. Well clear of anyone behind him. And if you only look at ES (since he didn't get any PP time) - 1ST in ES Pts/60!!! By quite a bit. 3.318. Draisaitl is 2nd at 2.688. Nobody else is even close. I understand those numbers don't tell the whole story - but they do add to my question of why did he not even get 8 minutes/night? He did about as much as could be reasonably expected with the sparse time he was given. Not sure what more he could have done to earn more time.

Kostin was getting buried by pretty much every other metric. Corsi, Shots, Scoring chances, Goals, xGoals.

I'm not saying that it was all his fault, but he was even outshot when playing with McDavid and/or Draisaitl (extremely low sample size).

https://www.naturalstattrick.com/game.php?season=20222023&am p;game=30240

Oilers Goal Differential
17/18: 234 GF / 263 GA (-29)
18/19: 232 GF / 274 GA (-42)
19/20 (82 game pace): 257 GF / 254 GA (+3) in 64 games
2021 (82 game pace):269 GF / 235 GA (+34) after 38 games