Preds/Devils advanced stats demonstrate a continuing trend

Since Marc provided game coverage Saturday night when the New Jersey Devils came to town, one thing left to review is how the game flow played out at even strength, as laid out in our usual post-game advanced statistics table.
So follow after the jump to see how the Preds did…

What we see below is a pretty remarkable cutoff between a top five-man unit of David Legwand, Colin Wilson & Sergei Kostitsyn up front, along with Shea Weber and Ryan Suter on the blueline, who dominated play while they were on the ice, while the rest of the team sank underwater.

It should be noted that in Jerred Smithson’s case, 14 of the 19 faceoffs he took were in the defensive zone, so we should expect his basic Corsi numbers to look bad (a to-do of mine is to incorporate Zone Starts and Adjusted Corsi into these tables). Smithson doesn’t even get the chance to work the offensive end of the ice on many shifts, as he’ll come out to take the faceoff, and as soon as the play heads into the attack zone, he’ll switch out for an offensive threat like Colin Wilson (whose results should then be taken with a grain of salt).

Still, the table below certainly supports my concern from this morning; right now, the Preds’ skaters are being consistently outplayed as a group, and whether it’s through injured stars returning to 100% quickly (don’t get your hopes up) or the youngsters discovering some cohesion, the problem needs to be solved during these opening weeks of the season.