After the Golden Knights failed to score in their final two games and ended the year with a whimper, there were a lot of potential diagnoses for what went wrong against the Edmonton Oilers. One of them was that the combination of Tomas Hertl, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Brandon Saad was unable to stay together due to injuries at different points for all three players.
It’s a concept that has been brought up multiple times since by Kelly McCrimmon, Bruce Cassidy, and the players themselves. When the first choice lineup was rolled out to begin Training Camp, the three players were together on a line and played together in the second preseason game before Dorofeyev exited with a lower-body injury.
When describing the decision-making process in building the new lineup with Mitch Marner in the fold, Cassidy referenced the chemistry of Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev as well as Reilly Smith and William Karlsson. Keeping each of those pairs together allowed for the Hertl, Dorofeyev, and Saad trio to reunite as well.
It’s been a while since they had a true look together, and the sample size with the full group on the ice is fairly small. But, how good was that line, and can they be expected to keep it up moving forward?
In the regular season last year, Hertl, Saad, and Dorofeyev shared the ice at some point in 21 different games. They started 14 games as a trio, including 11 consecutive games between March 2-23 in which the Golden Knights went 7-2-2. In 163 minutes and 12 seconds, they outscored their opponents 10-6, posted a Corsi For of 59.5%, and garnered 62.8% of the expected goal share.
These numbers are strong, especially compared to the rest of the team. The Corsi and goal shares were each up 8% from the overall team numbers, while the xG share was more than 10% better.
There is an important number to consider that skews the numbers heavily in their favor, though. Hertl, Saad, and Dorofeyev took 80 faceoffs in the offensive zone, 51 in the neutral zone, and 41 in the defensive zone. In addition to the 66% offensive start starts, they ended the year with a 1.025 PDO, a big bump from VGK’s overall 1.003.
In the postseason, the sample is even smaller, but the numbers stay just about the same in every category except for one. Corsi, shot share, xG share, and offensive zone starts remain well above the team average, but they scored just two goals in 40:43 while allowing two as well. That led to a PDO of 0.926.
In other words, sometimes the analytic dominance led to goals on the board for the Golden Knights, other times (namely, the most important time), it didn’t.
Finally, the two defenseman that the trio shared the most ice time with, by a significant amount… Alex Pietrangelo and Nic Hague.
There’s no debating that the balance of play favored Hertl, Saad, and Dorofeyev when they were on the ice together. However, they were put in extremely favorable positions to achieve the results.
This year, currently sitting as a 3rd line behind a pair of lines that each have two Selke candidates on the (Eichel+Marner and Karlsson+Stone), the offensive opportunities are going to be ripe for the taking once again. They’ll need to do a little better than +4 over 21 games and +0 in the playoffs, though, if the line is going to stay together and remain as celebrated as it has to this point.
**Stats for this article are sourced from NaturalStatTrick.com**
