It's not a matter of ignoring how he looks in his own zone, it's about what you define as defense. Taking offensive chances away from the other team is still defense even if it doesn't take place in the defensive zone or get categorized in common 'defensive' metrics.
Nobody is arguing he's a Selke candidate. But when you insist on ignoring a major, major element of his defensive game because it doesn't fit your narrative, you're rightly going to get pushback.
Oh come on. It's not ignoring the takeaways to fit a narrative. There are tons of metrics and tons of "eye" tests that confirm he's not good defensively and takeaways aren't enough to overcome that. That's the point. Even Sabres fans comment on it (go read their forum).
It's not a "narrative", it's a conclusion backed by data, information and watching him play. My point is that takeaways don't mean he's good defensively, period.
Here's the basis of my conclusions, beyond the eye test:
- He's been a plus player twice (rookie season and the year he was with Thompson and Tuch).
- As the WAR chart shown a while back, he's 0% on defense for a 3 year average. Let me repeat that. 0%. That's awful.
- Sabres fans complain he dogs it back and is uninvolved on defense. Go look at their forum.
- Per NST, over the past 3 seasons, out of 285 forwards that have > 2000 min. TOI:
1) only 6 have a worse xGA/60 than Skinner
2) only 25 have a worse GA/60 than Skinner
3) only 5 have a worse HDCA/60 than Skinner
4) only 17 have a worse HDGA/60 that Skinner
Yet he's in the top 25% for TKA/60 over that stretch.
- Multiple coaches across both Carolina and Buffalo have demoted him to the 3rd line for stretches because of his defensive deficiencies.
- He's gotten more offensive zone starts 5v5 than any other Sabres forward (68.4% over the past 3 seasons).
- He doesn't face the toughest competition
- Over the past 3 seasons, he had 129 takeaways, but also 131 giveaways.
- He's about to be bought out (which I know his cap hit plays a part in).
So the conclusion is that the takeaways are either (a) not as important to overall defense and thus not improving his numbers or (b) he's so bad in other aspects that it swamps out the benefit from takeaways. Either way, the overall metrics are bad.
There's tons of data and plenty of film that show he's bad defensively, so using takeaways to try to alter that conclusion is indeed pushing a narrative.
This isn't dumping on Skinner. I loved him as a player here. He's one of the most natural goal scorers in the NHL, but I can recognize that he's bad defensively as well.