I did a post at the end of October about who was riding high on unsustainable luck and who was getting crushed by the hand of fate. I said this about Max Domi then:
Max Domi has no goals at a tiny 0.4 Expected, but his problem is of his own making. He is shooting even less than is normal for him, and from very poor locations even judging by the very low bar you need to set for him. His shooting is normally too poor for the top six, and so far this year, it's about half as effective as usual. That's really not even in the viable NHLer range.
I don't expect Domi to do much with his own shot, but he's been an actual detriment in the sense that he's giving the puck away for such a tiny chance at a goal, he really should keep it and pass it. He has assists, though, so it's going to remain a controversial opinion that he's performing poorly even by his own career norms. His on-ice results are dreadful, which you can't lay entirely at his door, but he's not innocent either. He has had a difficult job of playing wing to Nylander at centre, switching that out and then going to a non-top-six line, but he has played one solid game out of 10 so far.
I was asked recently to do a piece on Domi after the on-air team at TSN talked about how much better his defence is. How he's bought in and is working hard, and it's a big improvement. I said no because at that time, there wasn't enough information to be able to use anything beyond on-ice results. It was a good idea to look into it, of course, not least because TSN is less inclined to reading out the talking points the Leafs want you to hear. They're also less inclined to define defending by goals against and goaltending by goals against.
At that point, this was the Bruins game, Domi was still showing a skew in his Quality of Competition – judged by ice time. This is normal early in the year and eventually it evens out so almost every regular NHLer has the same general amounts of time spent vs opposing players of various sorts. Match up concerns are the home team's edge, and they absolutely get swamped at the season level and should be ignored. One reason Domi's competition was still skewed was because he'd played only about 10 minutes in two games because of penalties. By the end of the Detroit game, his competition looked normal. Evolving Hockey also released their RAPM model results. So okay, now's the time for an early look at his season.
The Caveat
On the television show Supernatural there was an episode about the story of Bloody Mary. Look in a mirror and say her name three times, and she appears behind you. To kill you, naturally.
Domi Domi Domi, say his name even once and someone will pop up to ensure you're expressing exactly the right emotion, are being scrupulously fair (even if they have to dig down to faceoff stats to find something good about him you didn't mention) and generally be a little uptight about how many people don't like the player.
I'm tired of this game. I am, without resorting to Sam and Dean, slaying this beast.
I don't like the man. I don't care for his on-ice play style in most respects. I understand exactly what he can do well, and what he can't, and I tend to be more careful in my analysis about people I dislike – the list is short – so enough is enough. Everyone else gets to think and feel whatever they like and no one needs policing.
The Mitigation
Domi has been the second-line winger, the second-line centre, the third-line centre, the first-line centre, and I'll bet there was some third line wing I've forgotten about. No one has travelled around the lineup like him.
He has 50 minutes with William Nylander and Bobby McMann, 37 minutes with Matt Knies and Mitch Marner and 23 minutes with Nick Robertson and McMann.
For comparison the standard issue Auston Matthews line is at 130 minutes, and the John Tavares line with Nylander and Max Pacioretty had hit 68 minutes before Pacioretty's injury.
For a player to fill all those roles, and recognizing that first-line centre is an emergency short term role, you need someone like Mikael Granlund in his prime, or Elias Lindholm – Boston's problem is he's the full time 1C, not that he is on the team. Shane Pinto can do it in a pinch. Anthony Cirelli springs to mind.
It is necessary to ask if Domi is being asked to do things well beyond him. This happens on any team because of injuries, and sometimes you just have to accept that a player can only do some portion of the job.
The Expectations
I've written more than should be required about what type of player Domi is, what he can and can't do. So this is the short version.
Goals: Domi has scored 20 goals or more two times recently and these were both high Shooting % seasons, not regularly repeated. Expect him to score at .5 to .6 goals per 60 minutes. At 15 minutes a game with second-unit power-play usage, that's 10-12 goals on a season.
Personal Shooting: This is what should be looked at, not goals. His career shooting pattern is very consistent. He shoots (Individual Corsi For) at a rate of 11-13 per 60 minutes, which is about average for forwards this season. Very few top-six players shoot so little. His shot location is routinely poor as well, giving him Expected Goals measures of .5 to .7. His recent high-water mark involved his season on Chicago where he played top line and top power play unit. He hit .7 last year on the Leafs by virtue of a shot rate at the high end of his career numbers.
At .5 to .7 Individual Expected Goals per 60 and 15 minutes per game, he should end up with 10-14 Expected Goals on the year.
Points: Points are dependent on who someone plays with. He could be anywhere from 30-60 on the year. Expecting the high end is not a reasonable thing to do.
On-Ice Impacts: Domi has a career history of a modest positive impact offensively and a negative defensive impact of a larger amount. He has not been a massive ball of negativity on defence beyond his 22-23 season on Chicago where massive negativity was their team style.
Role: You should expect him to be the worst player on a top-six line, but you would want someone better on line three if he's the centre. He has never shown any power play ability, and should never be on the top unit outside an emergency.
The Results
Goals: he has none, which is totally normal after 16 games for a player that scores very little, and shouldn't be taken to mean anything.
Personal Shooting: he is worse than last year, but within his career norms at a rate of 11.29 in all-situations. His Individual Expected Goals is very poor by the HockeyViz model (which is only five-on-five), but right on the money in all-situations for one of Domi's down years by Evolving Hockey at .5.
Points: Points are dependent on who someone plays with. His points per 60 minutes is a little on the low side, but that's going to regularize to a larger number over the season in all likelihood.
On-Ice Impacts
This is the important thing, and the reason for waiting this deep into the season to even look at this. The first question is, is he better defensively?
The answer is yes and no. I get where Mike Johnson was coming from on TSN. He looks engaged. You don't see the slack-jawed slump on the wrong side of the blueline while the other team scores that featured so prominently in the playoffs last year. However, the Leafs as a team are better, dramatically, at rates of Expected Goals Against. There is, in other words, a lot less dumb shit going on while any forward is on the ice.
Domi's on-ice impacts are very slightly better defensively by HockeyViz's measure and slightly more again by Evolving Hockey's. They tend to give different reads on defending in particular. He is not better when he plays centre as has been said, he just tries very hard, is present, but there isn't much evidence he's helping a team that doesn't actually need all that much help in this department.
His offensive impacts have dried up and blown away. And you can see this in-game. He makes passes that cannot connect, he lobs grenades to players in the corner, he rushes at the net with no shot or pass. He passes when even a bad shooter like him should shoot. His decision making is so obviously bad, it's well, obvious. He is one of the worst players on the team by Evolving Hockey's RAPM measures. He is worse than last season by HockeyViz. Most of the "worse" is coming from his offensive impacts.
The Charts
Note: EH's site can't handle headings for players with a long list of teams so I cut them off.
This is RAPM where the y axis is a z-score or a marker of where the player sits relative to all others. (Follow the explanatory link if you don't understand.) The outstanding GF is mostly from the Leafs last year. The appalling defensive bars are coming from that Chicago season. Both of those were extreme situations – in Chicago on a team that wasn't trying to win, and on the Leafs spending a considerable amount of time passing the puck to Auston Matthews.
This year:
This is the most positive graphical representation of his impacts out there.
Conclusion
Well, he's been appallingly bad is my take. And bad at things he should be good at. I once mentioned he was sabotaging his own skills, and that's what it looks like to me. This is as bad as TJ Brodie last year.
A team needs eight power-play forwards and four penalty kill forwards at minimum. To have any extras, you need some dual-wielders. You can't have players who don't do either, so a player like Domi is always going to get power play minutes. You can't help that any way other than just not having him on the team.
When the even-strength skills don't produce results in line with reasonable expectations, then all the mitigation in the world isn't enough. The Leafs can't have a player underperforming this much playing as the 1C even as an emergency fill-in.
I take that mitigation section seriously, however. Some of this poor performance is absolutely going to be because he's being asked to do things he can't do very well. But his not very well is worse than most of the rest of the team.
To narrativize it a little, I wonder if he's working so hard at trying to defend that he's like a singer struggling to hit high notes they can't reach who does a terrible job of the rest of the song from all that trying.
Is there any hope? Yes, absolutely. Never play him in the top six and get someone on his line not named Nick Robertson or Pontus Holmberg – two of the other forwards performing very poorly. Bobby McMann, a story for another day, is also not really helping with this situation.
The hole in the Leafs lineup is right there between John Tavares and David Kämpf, and Max Domi is not the guy who can fill it. Don't ask him to. But until he can find his offensive game again, I'm not sure why he's being played at all. Well I am, no GM wants a guy they just gave some term to sitting in the press box.
I don't care if he shoots, and I don't care if he cheats high – he should, he's fast and can counter-rush. I do care that he stops offence dead whenever he has the puck.
He's not the only weakness the Leafs have right now, but he might be the most meaningful one.
