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Things are pretty quiet in terms of Wild news right now, but I'm gonna keep breaking down some numbers from the past season. I've got a couple of big projects planned between now and the draft so keep an eye out for them. Today's piece is pretty short and sweet.
I wanted to see which defencemen were buried the most in terms of zone starts at even strength this season and who was able to put up good possession and scoring numbers in spite of that tough usage.
I set the criteria as: defencemen who had played at least 75% of games in the regular season, and chose the 20 with the toughest ZS% Rel (Zone Start%: OZ Starts/ [OZ Starts+DZ Starts] Relative to team).
-Here are the 20 defencemen along with the raw data:
Player |
Team(s) |
ZS% rel |
QoC |
Corsi Rel |
|
1 |
TJ Brodie |
-11.00% |
1.28 |
17.1 |
|
2 |
Niklas Hjalmarsson |
-10.20% |
0.948 |
-8.4 |
|
3 |
Marco Scandella |
Wild |
-9.60% |
1.28 |
2.6 |
4 |
Johnny Oduya |
Blackhawks |
-9.50% |
0.808 |
-9.9 |
5 |
Zdeno Chara |
-9.40% |
-0.346 |
3.6 |
|
6 |
Dan Girardi |
-9.20% |
0.777 |
-9.2 |
|
7 |
Andy Greene |
-9.00% |
0.096 |
4.2 |
|
8 |
Jan Hejda |
-8.90% |
2.043 |
-7.4 |
|
9 |
Chris Butler |
Flames |
-8.90% |
0.887 |
-13.5 |
10 |
Brett Bellemore |
-8.90% |
0.728 |
-3.2 |
|
11 |
Mark Giordano |
Flames |
-8.70% |
1.908 |
22.8 |
12 |
Nicklas Grossmann |
-8.10% |
0.218 |
-10.6 |
|
13 |
Ryan McDonagh |
Rangers |
-7.70% |
0.918 |
-4 |
14 |
Erik Johnson |
Avalanche |
-7.60% |
1.688 |
2.4 |
15 |
Roman Polak |
-7.60% |
-0.296 |
-12.5 |
|
16 |
Mark Fayne |
Devils |
-7.40% |
0.306 |
1.6 |
17 |
Justin Braun |
-6.90% |
0.134 |
1.6 |
|
18 |
Shea Weber |
-6.70% |
1.908 |
-1.9 |
|
19 |
Chris Phillips |
-6.70% |
-0.716 |
-3.6 |
|
20 |
Jack Johnson |
-6.60% |
0.372 |
-7 |
In the following chart, a blue circle means positive Corsi rel, a red circle means negative. The size of the bubble indicates the amount. The X-Axis represents ZS% Rel while the Y-Axis represents Quality Of Competition. Players towards the top left of the chart had tougher minutes while the players towards the bottom right had it easier.
(You might want to open that image in a new tab so you can see it full size.)
- Brodie, Hjalmarsson and Scandella are got the toughest zone starts.
- Hejda, Giordano, Erik Johnson and Weber saw the toughest competition.
- Most of the players here have negative Corsi rel, which isn't surprising given that they played a shutdown role on their respective teams. There is a handful of players with positive Corsi rel, but not by much.
- The two that stand out are T.J Brodie and Mark Giordano who clearly both made a massive difference to the Flames possession game every time they were on the ice. Those numbers are probably a little bit inflated by how terrible the rest of the Flames are, but that doesn't make it any less impressive.
- Hjalmarssson had the most impressive raw Corsi but benefited from extremely high QoT.
- Brodie and Giordano both managed to post positive Corsi with low QoT.
- Scandella's Corsi was negative, but not by much considering his tough zone starts and low QoT.
- Hejda had slightly tougher usage than Scandella but much much worse results.
-Here's how each of those d-men scored at even strength and where they ranked in EV P/60 among regular d-men on their respective teams:
Player |
Pos. |
Team(s) |
EV P/60 |
Team D Rank |
|
1 |
Mark Giordano |
D |
Flames |
1.21 |
1st |
2 |
Niklas Hjalmarsson |
D |
Blackhawks |
0.86 |
4th |
3 |
Marco Scandella |
D |
Wild |
0.82 |
2nd |
4 |
TJ Brodie |
D |
Flames |
0.74 |
4th |
5 |
Jan Hejda |
D |
Avalanche |
0.65 |
6th |
- Besides putting up great possession numbers in trying circumstances, Giordano was also the best d-men on the Flames in terms of P/60 and easily the best of this group.
- Hjalmarsson scored at a slightly faster rate than Scandella, but Scandella ranked higher among Wild d-men than Hjalmarsson did on the Hawks.
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Thanks to Extra Skater, Hockey Analysis, Hockey Abstract and SomeKindOfNinja for all the data.
For a quick advanced stats 101, read this. For more in-depth stuff, read this.