The Rochester Amerks are riding a three-game winning streak after two more victories last week over the Utica Comets and Syracuse Crunch. The trend that is starting to develop with this team is one that gives up a lot of shots against but does a good job managing shot quality against.

You’ll see this play out as we go through the data with the player’s on-ice numbers.

5v5 Shot Share and Quality

I’ll start with shot share at 5 on 5. The majority of this team is going to have a shot share below 50% because of how many shots they surrender overall as a team.

Now, when we look at shot quality numbers based on what I’m classifying as “high-danger chances”, you’ll see a shift in the numbers.

Takeaways

• You can see in these four charts that the Amerks give up a lot in terms of shot share, but are fine in terms of quality share. It’s not perfect and if they don’t continue to get the quality chances offensively, they’re going to be in trouble because I don’t see them improving shot share.
• Arttu Ruotsalainen continues to pace the team in 5v5 shot quality. He also is one of the few above 50% in shot share on the team.
• The entire defense runs a “high-event” game at this point.
• The main guys such as Bryson, Laaksonen, Samuelsson, and Ruotsalainen all carrying above 50% quality shares is a good sign.

5v5 Primary Shot Contributions

Let’s get a look at some individual offensive impacts in primary shot contributions.

Takeaways

• Fogarty still leads the team in overall shot contributions
• Ruotsalainen and Brett Murray also show well in this data.
• Samuelsson has been better than I expected in terms of getting involved offensively.
• Jack Quinn had five shot attempts in his two games so far.
• Next time I share this chart in an update it’ll shift to a look at rates. It’ll be PSC by games played since the AHL doesn’t share time on ice publicly.

5v5 Transition Defense

Let’s transition to…transition data. I’ll start with the defense.

Takeaways

• This team overall continues to have struggles exiting the zone with consistency. Far too many turnovers are resulting in the opponent getting extended zone time.
• Laaksonen and Samuelsson are the top defenders in terms of exiting the zone with possession.
• Laaksonen also does a great job defending the blue line with his entry defense.
• I’m a little surprised how Samuelsson looks in entry defense. My eyes tell me excels at this, but it may be a case of him closing down plays in the neutral zone or one poor game in a small sample size. I’ll be keeping an eye on this for him.

5v5 Transition Offense

Onto the forwards and the zone entry data.

Takeaways

• Unexpectedly Samuelsson is the top defender on the team in entering the offensive zone with possession. His transition game has been interesting to watch so far this season.
• Ruotsalainen dropped slightly in controlled entries percentage, but he’s easily the best player on the team in generating offense off of the rush. It’s one of the reasons I think that he could help the Sabres if he does get called up at some point.

Photo Credit: Rochester Amerks/Facebook