Niedermayer and Pronger, initial icetime results

Two and a half months ago, when the Ducks first acquired Pronger, I put a post together wondering how Carlyle would juggle the Norris blueliners in terms of ice time.

Well, through yesterday we have seen two games thus far where both Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger were dressed, so I thought I'd give the question an early visit.

I’ve been contemplating whether to exclude the last two periods of yesterday’s romp on the first-shot-goes-in Canucks, since the Ducks were already up 3-0 after the 1st period and there were signs that Carlyle was playing the ‘mercy’ card (i.e., a forward combination of Pahlsson, Moen, and Genoway on a 5-on-3 early in the 2nd), but hey, data is data, so I’ll just use the whole 120 minutes from the ANA-SJ and ANA-VAN games. It should be noted that both were home games, thus Carlyle had more control over situational matchups, and the Ducks never trailed in either game.

Situation	Total Minutes	SN Only	CP Only	SN and CP	Neither player
Even Strength	74:14	27:22 36.9%	21:25 28.9%	00:24 0.5%	25:03 33.7%
Power Play	23:49	00:20 1.4%	01:55 8.1%	09:33 40.1%	10:41 50.4%
Penalty Kill	21:57	04:32 20.7%	08:33 38.9%	00:33 2.5%	08:19 37.9%
2 Game Total	120:00	32:14 26.9%	31:53 26.6%	10:30 8.7%	45:23 37.8%

As you can see, Niedermayer and Pronger don't get to see too much of each other, except when they team up to man the points on the power play. As this strategy seems to be working out swell, expect the team to continue this trend once the lineup gets finalized. I will continue to track this, however, to see whether things change should Anaheim find itself trailing in a game.

Incidentally, last night was the first of four straight for the Ducks (last night in Anaheim, tonight in San Jose Fresno, tomorrow in Vancouver, and Monday in Los Angeles). Per message boards, expect a different "B" team to handle the assignments in Fresno and Vancouver, while last night's "A" team is expected to resume its preseason Monday in L.A. How about that for preseason scheduling, eh?


From Wednesday's San Jose game, here's a rare moment with all the veterans on the bench.

Crap. Who's playing defense now?