Sometimes you have all the ingredients to make a great story. You give it a nice title, you start filming it… And nothing goes according to plan, really. The last two seasons, Davos has seen some craziness on the ice, riding a wild scoring wave (148 goals for 118 expected in 2019-20 and 162 goals for 141 expected in 2020-21). Last season, it was accompanied by a similar level of “what is happening!” goaltending, in a negative way, with 164 goals against for 150 expected.
Performances at both ends of the ice that eventually canceled each others, leaving Davos to deal with the reality of a play system that has been below the 50% bar for puck possession (corsi or expected goals%) in both years at 5v5.
Transitions were also in the second half of the league for how controlled they were, resulting in a lot of loose pucks to chase around. One good thing offensively was the dedication to finding dangerous openings in the slot, through high-danger passes. The talent in the roster was, then, eventually making the difference by overperforming their chances.
Defence was allowing way too many dangerous chances (see the red on the heatmap), and goalies had a very difficult seasons. Finishing 8th in the league was certainly not what was planned for Davos, but some changes were about to make the summer even more agitated.
GM Raeto Raffainer suddenly left for Bern. Assistant coach John Lundskog as well. And all of Samuel Guerra, Benjamin Baumgartner, Teemu Turunen, Fabrice Herzog and Aaron Palushaj left the club. And goaltender Robert Mayer is clearly on the market despite his long term contract.
The Davos Project needed a new start.
Roster for the 2021-22 Season
Remember: Explanation on our Win Shares and projection models is here
Player and goalie ID cards legend is here
The new GM Jan Alston completed a job that his predecessor had already begun. Davos had been looking at bringing some Swiss born prospects in Dominik Egli, Axel Simic, Valentin Nussbaumer or Raphael Prassl. In addition, Simon Knak will stay another year instead of going back to Canadian junior.
Davos signed some solid resumes to complement Magnus Nygren in the import legion with Mathias Bromé, Matej Stransky and Dennis Rasmussen. Finally, they brought home Gilles Senn from the AHL, getting a very solid Swiss goaltender for free. And signed Julian Schmutz. Not bad.
Matej Stransky is projected at 50 pts and the 99th percentile for his 2.8 Win Shares. He has scored the equivalent of 48 and 58 NL points in the Czech Extraliga the past seasons. The Extraliga has been historically a nice source of talent, and all models projecting points comparisons between two leagues have all the Czech league very high in their list, whether it is from Extraliga to the NHl, or Extraliga to NL or even the lower Czech leagues toward France. He had more trouble in the SHL though, only scoring the equivalent of 31 points, so we will see how he adapts to a bigger league.
Enzo Corvi has had a very nice season with 52 points in 44 games. We have him projected at 48 and he stands at the 94th percentile for Win Shares. At the very top of the league offensively, Corvi is one of the very best for Shot assists and ranks in the top 10% for Transition as well.
Mathias Bromé has scored the equivalent of 36, 44 and 46 NL points in Sweden the past seasons. He is only 27 years old and has signed for two years in Davos. We have him projected at 44 points.
Will Andres Ambühl slow down one day? He has had two good seasons under Christian Wohlwend and is still a top offensive player. He is close to the top 10% in Transition, Shot assists and Shot quantity.
Dennis Rasmussen has seen better days with a declining performance in the last seasons in the KHL. With a projection of 39 points, he should still be a good top-6 player.
Behind that group, Marc Wieser is good at Play Building, Raphael Prassl has shown some interesting defensive value, Yannick Frehner is a top 10% Transition player and Valentin Nussbaumer is rather complete but needs to take a big step in his development. Simic is an other interesting one too, being near the top 10% in shot volume and is in the top 10% in Play building. There’s a lot of upsides and that is still good for the 4th best forwards group in the league.
At the blue line
Magnus Nygren finally stayed in Davos and signed till 2024. The Swedish and his slapshot are projected at 32 points and the 97th percentile for his 2.7 Win Shares. He is among the best offensive defencemen in the league and a volume shooter of course. His transition game is not really that impressive, though. He has that long bomb pass and he is trying a lot to launch breakaways a lot but otherwise, there’s not much to report.
Dominik Egli is a very interesting addition to the team. The young defenceman has clearly the potential to become the cornerstone of that defence for years to come. Already at the 89th percentile in the league, he is an offensive dynamo, ranking at the 97th percentile for Play Building, 95th for Shot assists and 91st for shot volume. With a larger squad of talented forwards in front of him that is very intriguing to see.
Thomas Wellinger saw a lot of ice time last season in Lugano as one of the only left handed defenceman available, especially after Elia Riva’s injury. He is a defensive specialist but can join the rush when needed. A nice piece to have in a second pair or a luxury on a third.
Sven Jung is a big body looking for offense mostly. He had a lot of ice time last year with all the injuries Davos suffered but he is really not that active in Transition or Play Building. A bigger implication will be needed to become a true top-4 defenceman.
Then, Paschoud, Zgraggen, Heinen or Stoop can provide a decent depth, making that Defensive squad the 5th best according to our model.
Goalies
But the real question mark will come from the goalies. Both Robert Mayer and Sandro Aeschlimann allowed about 5 goals more than expected last season, Aeschlimann was more consistent and delivered a Quality Start (allowing less goals than expected) 54% of the time, versus 46% for Mayer. Aeschlimann also had a better Save control%, putting the puck out of reach for the opponents on a more regular basis with his saves, particularly against rushes and rebound shots. All of this and the age difference probably pushed the club to chose him over Mayer for the near future, despite the original longer contract signed by the veteran.
But then came Gilles Senn, who wanted to come home after two years in the AHL, including one in Covid time, with the Devils already having a young goaltender ready the NHL in MacKenzie Blackwood. For fun, we tracked Senn’s games in the AHL to get a comparison with the NL. Playing for the worst team in his division, Senn showed up very good for Save control and managed to stay afloat in terms of goals allowed versus expectations. Physically solid, he has a harder time when he has to move but he could be very good for the NL.
Projection for the season
Our model projects all games in the season to get a projected standings. Note that points are given according to game probabilities, meaning if team A gets a low 33% chance of winning a game, they get still 1 expected point (33% of 3pts). That is why, right now, even Ajoie is projected at 63 pts. But what matters is the relative difference between teams as you will see then the standings is revealed.
With their myriad of new players, Davos resembles, on paper, to a team capable of fighting for the top-4, especially if the goalies provide more quality. And that would absolutely match HCD’s ambitions to finish in the top-6, as Jan Alston told us.
That being said, we saw the system played the last two seasons wasn’t really efficient and that Davos was rather dominated on the ice. This would need to change in order to look for bigger ambitions.
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You can also find some more statistics on NL Ice Data here: nlicedata.com