Treble Trouble – Trocheck Out ‘Week-to-Week’

Tuesday night against Toronto marked the second game in a row that Vincent Trocheck went down after blocking a shot. This time, however, Trocheck is staying down. The red-hot center is now deemed ‘week-to-week’ with a fractured bone in his foot, with the hope that he will return for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in mid-April.

To call this a blow would be very accurate, an understatement if you will. The unit of Vincent Trocheck, Reilly Smith, and Jussi Jokinen (or as I like to call them, the Divisible By Three Line™) has easily been the Panthers best unit over the last month plus. The trio had individually combined for 27 goals and 46 assists, good for 73 points. 56 of those points were of the primary variety (goals + primary assists).

Furthermore, their underlying numbers on the season are very strong. Their CF% of 58.1 is the best of any Panthers forward line having played more than 60 minutes together at 5 on 5. That rating is good for 7th in the entire league among lines with 300 minutes players. The unit is a shot suppression dynamo to boot, giving up just 43.4 CA/60, 4th best in the NHL, and they have played nearly 130 minutes or more than each of the three groups ahead of them. In fact, only seven lines in the league (including Huberdeau-Barkov-Jagr) have played more minutes together than the Divisible By Three Line™.

So yeah, losing the full strength of this line hurts. So, now what?

Enter Nick Bjugstad.

It was Big Nick going down earlier in the season that afforded Trocheck the opportunity to rise. Now, Bjugstad has been afforded the opportunity to find himself just prior to the postseason. It is a fitting give-and-take.

A quick glance at the underlying numbers does not inspire much confidence. The Jokinen-Bjugstad-Smith unit has a CF% of just 48.1. The primary problem here is shot generation. They have given up a fairly low 46.0 CA/60 when together, but were generating a paltry 42.6 CF/60. However, given that many of these minutes are likely scattered over the earlier part of this season (when the team as a whole struggled mightily to generate shots), that does not mean this will continue to be the case. There’s also the caveat that this unit has played just over 31 minutes together. It would be fool’s errand to make concrete judgments based on stats from this sample.

One thing to watch for is how Bjugstad interacts with Jokinen and Smith. Per data from Ryan Stimson’s passing project, it appears Bjugstad may have a decided shooting bias compared to his new linemates. On shot attempts preceded by a pass, Jokinen made a pass on 73.6% of the plays he was involved in, while Smith made a pass on 67.5%. Bjugstad made a pass on just 58.3% of his plays. For reference, Trocheck has made passes on 70.6% of his plays. This is based on a 17 game sample of data, so there might be some limitations to this data.

However, if Bjugstad’s individual shooting performance is any indication, saying Big Nick has a shooting bias appears to be appropriate:

Bjugstad Shooting 2

Data Courtesy of Corsica.Hockey

Maybe that increased shooting rate will help smooth over any issues that may have been apparent earlier in the season? We can only hope.

While it is a bummer that Trocheck will miss the balance of the regular season, hopefully he can come back in quick fashion. Erik Gudbranson and Derek MacKenzie suffered similar injuries a couple weeks ago, and are nearly ready to return now, so that is encouraging. This does cast a pall over the Panthers hunt for first place. The loss Tuesday slid the Panthers back into 2nd place, and now they will need to make up ground without their best line at full strength. While Trocheck recovers though, hopefully this will be the impetus to Nick Bjugstad finding himself again.

About AJ Bruhn

AJ is the Managing Editor of The Sunshine Skate, and can be reached on Twitter below.

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