Alex Edler - Part II

[F A N]

I'm sick of people acting like luck has anything to do with his bad season. IMO, he's been lucky enough to have been playing in front of elite goaltenders and behind elite defensive forwards his entire career. On any other team, he would be compared to Gonchar or Green as a player who is completely useless defensively.

The only difference in the last three years is that the team's offense collectively dried up, and his only positive is gone... Oh yeah, and his back injury turned him into a marshmallow...

I would be except if we managed to put together a system that actually made use of a Gonchar/Green type defenseman lie we had in 2010/11 so we can stop watching this guy founder around like it's Disney on Ice.

Did you watch his entire career? There is a reason why Edler was considered the closest thing we had to a #1 defenseman. I suspect that Edler's back injury has really ruined his game. But he also needs the right partner. Edler was good with Ohlund. Good with Salo. Good with Ehrhoff. But he isn't good on the right side and he wasn't good with Bieksa or Garrison.

Edler was inconsistent but he was certainly not a defensive liability in his early years. I still remember the playoff series we played against the Kings years ago. That was considered Edler's coming out party. Those few games were the most dominant performances I have seen out of a Canucks defender since I don't know when. Unfortunately, Edler couldn't keep up his physical play and then the last few years he's been bothered by brain farts. But to say that Edler has always been bad defensively is simply not true.

 

[Wilch]

I'm still blown away by how Garrison was seen as a useless cap dump while Edler, getting paid more and got outplayed by Garrison in the last two seasons where he was crappy and then dreadful was kept and expected to have a "rebound".

I'm still appalled by Benning's decision.

Unless of course, he's planning to tank.

 

[MS]

Did you watch his entire career? There is a reason why Edler was considered the closest thing we had to a #1 defenseman. I suspect that Edler's back injury has really ruined his game. But he also needs the right partner. Edler was good with Ohlund. Good with Salo. Good with Ehrhoff. But he isn't good on the right side and he wasn't good with Bieksa or Garrison.

Edler was inconsistent but he was certainly not a defensive liability in his early years. I still remember the playoff series we played against the Kings years ago. That was considered Edler's coming out party. Those few games were the most dominant performances I have seen out of a Canucks defender since I don't know when. Unfortunately, Edler couldn't keep up his physical play and then the last few years he's been bothered by brain farts. But to say that Edler has always been bad defensively is simply not true.

Edler hasn't been good playing with anyone or playing against anyone since his 2011 back injury.

I used to be one of his biggest fans, but after three straight years of terrible and declining player, I don't have a lot of hope for him. Most troubling for me last season was his effort/compete level, which was just embarrassing.

 

[F A N]

Edler hasn't been good playing with anyone or playing against anyone since his 2011 back injury.

I used to be one of his biggest fans, but after three straight years of terrible and declining player, I don't have a lot of hope for him. Most troubling for me last season was his effort/compete level, which was just embarrassing.

I am very concerned with Edler too. Interestingly, it's been speculated that Boston had a deal in place for Edler. Given Benning's role in the Bruins' organization, I won't be surprised if Benning is still high on Edler.

 

[Addison Rae]

I'm still blown away by how Garrison was seen as a useless cap dump while Edler, getting paid more and got outplayed by Garrison in the last two seasons where he was crappy and then dreadful was kept and expected to have a "rebound".

I'm still appalled by Benning's decision.

Unless of course, he's planning to tank.

It's terrible asset management to trade a player like Edler after the season he just had. I for one hate the Garrison deal, but trading Edler would have been even more illogical.

 

[Wisp]

I'm still blown away by how Garrison was seen as a useless cap dump while Edler, getting paid more and got outplayed by Garrison in the last two seasons where he was crappy and then dreadful was kept and expected to have a "rebound".

Garrison was a negative possession player last year and didn't much pass the eye test either. Edler was a positive possession player at least on this ****** team, despite the trash production he turned in (thanks in large part unsustainably low shooting percentage and save percentage).

Fair enough - you're a big believer in Garrison, and you can dislike his trade in a vacuum - but lets not pretend things are so cut and dry when you lay Edler and Garrison side by side.

 

[Verviticus]

Luck isn't really quantifiable though.

sure it is. in this case, people are using numbers that are highly random (on ice sh%, sv%, combined to make PDO) to quantify his luck

 

[Verviticus]

Garrison was a negative possession player last year and didn't much pass the eye test either. Edler was a positive possession player at least on this ****** team, despite the trash production he turned in (thanks in large part unsustainably low shooting percentage and save percentage).

Fair enough - you're a big believer in Garrison, and you can dislike his trade in a vacuum - but lets not pretend things are so cut and dry when you lay Edler and Garrison side by side.

i like and appreciate both garrison and edler! they're both good hockey player. cut, dried, ready to eat

 

[Wilch]

Garrison was a negative possession player last year and didn't much pass the eye test either. Edler was a positive possession player at least on this ****** team, despite the trash production he turned in (thanks in large part unsustainably low shooting percentage and save percentage).

Fair enough - you're a big believer in Garrison, and you can dislike his trade in a vacuum - but lets not pretend things are so cut and dry when you lay Edler and Garrison side by side.

Opendoor already addressed this:

Yeah, you give Edler his normal on-ice shooting percentage from recent years and he's still in the -20 to -25 range for last season. His 44% scoring chance F/A ratio also doesn't speak well of his play.

I honestly just don't think he can handle normal top 4 defensive minutes. If they're going to get him back to being useful they're going to have to shelter him a bit more. Which makes swapping Garrison for Sbisa even more odd.

 

[Wisp]

Also if you needed an exhibit A as an examples of the Canucks using analytics's, trading Garrison and keeping Edler seems like a good one. Two players dealing with physical issues (groin and back respectively), one is a negative possession player, the other with a quantifiably unlucky season but posted positive possession numbers.

 

[Verviticus]

other explanations for the trade include

edler is younger
edler has higher value throughout the league that is depressed by a perceived bad season
edler would be harder to convince to trade
TL likes edler from his playing days

i think there are enough reasons there to obfuscate their methods

 

[Wilch]

other explanations for the trade include

edler is younger Not by much
edler has higher value throughout the league that is depressed by a perceived bad season Then they should have kept Garrison, sheltered Edler to pump his value back up
edler would be harder to convince to trade Possibly, but it also seemed like they strong armed Garrison into waiving
TL likes edler from his playing days Yuck. Awful reason, but this is the most likely

i think there are enough reasons there to obfuscate their methods

Check the bolded.

 

[Wisp]

Opendoor already addressed this:

Yeah, and I routinely reject his analysis. He's discounting save percentage as well which makes up the other half of PDO. As well as the positive puck possession stat.

That minus stat I don't think can repeat outside of that extremely dysfunctional hockey environment, skewed by our poor handling of our goaltenders' and Tortorella's backwards chip-it-out-dump-it-in defense.

 

[Wisp]

i like and appreciate both garrison and edler! they're both good hockey player. cut, dried, ready to eat

Yeah I don't mean to imply we should talk sides. Just that those such as Wilch and I guess Jim Benning were predisposed to one or the other.

 

[arsmaster*]

Yeah, and I routinely reject his analysis. He's discounting save percentage as well which makes up the other half of PDO. As well as the positive puck possession stat.

That minus stat I don't think can repeat outside of that extremely dysfunctional hockey environment, skewed by our poor handling of our goaltenders' and Tortorella's backwards chip-it-out-dump-it-in defense.

None of that explains why edler continually chases the play behind his own net leaving his man wide open for a tap in out front.

Nothing to do with possession metrics or luck or shooting percentages (which I think are way too emphasized around these parts).

He's making horrible reads all over the ice and it's been nauseatingly evident for at least two seasons.

Watch a few games from the 11-12 kings series. Just not smart.

Linden being enamoured with edler because he looked toolsy in practice back when he played is scouting 101 from the Ron Delorme school of scouting practices.

 

[Wisp]

this take from mc79hockey was probably already posted before but I think it bears repeating.

I’ve included Edler just because he took a lot of flak this year. A guy who can tread water on a 52% Corsi% team is a guy who can, at the very least, be a second pairing guy on a Stanley Cup contender. Vancouver’s got problems but I’m not sure their defence is really on that list.

I kind of feel like Garrison had the year that people think Alex Edler had. This has to be a bit of a worrying thing for the Canucks and something that they’ll need to fix if they’re to become a playoff team again next year.

And an explanation from him on how the analysis works:

http://www.mc79hockey.com/2014/05/corsirel-and-famous-defenceman-requests/
I wrote about evaluating defencemen using CorsiRel the other day, making an argument that, generally speaking, a defenceman’s 5v5 contribution is equal to his impact on Corsi%. Now, that comes with all sorts of caveats. Not all minutes are created equal – it’s tougher to play against Sidney Crosby than it is against Luke Gazdic. Some guys get harder zone starts than others. Some guys are on better teams than others. There are a lot of knots to unravel in order to get to the point of precisely quantifying this. Theoretically, I’m pretty sure that I’m right in the vast majority of cases though.

Unfortunately, nobody’s really presenting CorsiRel for more than a few years – Extra Skater has it but stats.hockeyanalysis.com doesn’t. In light of that, I put together a series of graphs of famous defencemen and how they’ve done in terms of CorsiRel since 2007-08. I wanted to mitigate the impact of who guys play against a little bit, so I only included seasons in which a guy played at least 41 games and at least 19 minutes a night. Ideally, I’m capturing top four defencemen. I then went through and graphed a team’s Corsi% when the defenceman in question wasn’t on the ice and when he was. I think it’s kind of illuminating to see this laid out this way.

For technical reasons (ie. to simplify the work), I’ve also ignored seasons in which a guy played for multiple teams. Pay attention to the years at the bottom of each graph. The red line in each graph represents the player’s Corsi; the blue line is the team without the player on the ice.

 

[MS]

It's terrible asset management to trade a player like Edler after the season he just had. I for one hate the Garrison deal, but trading Edler would have been even more illogical.

... unless, after three seasons of poor/declining defensive play, you think Edler is unlikely to be a positive contributor to your team moving forward.

Trading Keith Ballard in 2011 for whatever we could get would have been 'terrible asset management', too, by this principle.

 

[F A N]

Edler clearly had a bad season and was affected by the Sedins' decrease in offensive production. Look at Edler's numbers, he's pretty much been slam dunk to get 10+ goals and 40+ points over 82 games. We don't have a defenseman on the team like that.

 

[Wisp]

Nothing to do with possession metrics or luck or shooting percentages (which I think are way too emphasized around these parts).

I know what you think and I disagree. Every time you want argue against my points against me, you have to attack the evidence (in this case, corsi, s%, pdo) because you don't buy into them. I find myself having to argue in the support of the merits of the metrics in order to support my argument in turn, and instead of talking about the topic in hand we end up having to argue the merits of analytic every time. I'm really not interested in doing that with you anymore if that's all right.

In anycase, I'm not arguing Edler's season was secretly a fantastic unicorn under the hood. It wasn't. It was horse ****. I'm arguing he's better than that; there's signs of hope that we can expect better things.

 

[Wilch]

Edler's failure was mental lapses.

If he can re-focus, sure. He hasn't looked the same for a few seasons, and looks to be in a comfort zone since locking into his new contract.

 

[Wisp]

... unless, after three seasons of poor/declining defensive play, you think Edler is unlikely to be a positive contributor to your team moving forward.

Trading Keith Ballard in 2011 for whatever we could get would have been 'terrible asset management', too, by this principle.

this is false equivalence. Ballard never put up good production or good possession numbers or points in his entire Canuck tenure. corsi for% in this case was predictive, and it certainly seemed they tried the same thing over and over and got the same results.

Edler in comparison had good production as early as last year, and had better possession numbers this year despite the god awful practical contributions.

 

[Wisp]

If he can re-focus, sure. He hasn't looked the same for a few seasons, and looks to be in a comfort zone since locking into his new contract.

I have a hard time believing Tortorella made that season comfortable for him.

 

[Wilch]

this is false equivalence. Ballard never put up good production or good possession numbers or points in his entire Canuck tenure. corsi for% in this case was predictive, and it certainly seemed they tried the same thing over and over and got the same results.

Edler in comparison had good production as early as last year, and had better possession numbers this year despite the god awful practical contributions.

The reason why Edler puts up good possession numbers and crap results is because he'll play 18 minutes of solid hockey and mentally drift to Cancun for the other 3-4 minutes. Every defensemen does this from time to time, but he gets walked by defenders and makes bad pinches from game to game.

 

[leftwinglockdown]

The reason why Edler puts up good possession numbers and crap results is because he'll play 18 minutes of solid hockey and mentally drift to Cancun for the other 3-4 minutes. Every defensemen does this from time to time, but he gets walked by defenders and makes bad pinches from game to game.

That's a poor argument because a defenseman who can give you possession numbers like that for 18 minutes every game is extremely valuable. If he does indeed suffer from loss of focus for the extra 3-4 minutes that he gets then how about toning his overall minutes down. Maybe give him less time on the PK so he remains fresh?

Regardless, that certainly sounds like a more workable situation than the Ballard instance where he never put up good numbers to begin with.

 

[Wilch]

That's a poor argument because a defenseman who can give you possession numbers like that for 18 minutes every game is extremely valuable. If he does indeed suffer from loss of focus for the extra 3-4 minutes that he gets then how about toning his overall minutes down. Maybe give him less time on the PK so he remains fresh?

Regardless, that certainly sounds like a more workable situation than the Ballard instance where he never put up good numbers to begin with.

You're right, if we cut his TOI down and pit him up against 2nd/3rd liners, he might do well.

But remember, he's our highest paid defenseman.

We can't pay $5m a year for him to play 19 minutes a game.