Devils team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - offseason part III

[Tusks Up]

In case some of you have been wondering where I’ve been.

View attachment 580098

Damn Ken really let himself go /s

 

[bossram]

Could be anywhere from Johnsson to DeBrincat in theory.

There's basically 0% chance he is Debrincat.

 

[Tusks Up]

There's basically 0% chance he is Debrincat.

Shouldnt ever count someone out. Way too many stories in sports of nobodies becoming somebodies or even greats, and Gritsyuk is not exactly a throwaway prospect either.

Idk much about him other than how Devils fans feel about him and his stats, but Debrincat is also a steep climb. Lets get him over to North America before we go banishing him to Impel Down.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Jack is the freakin' revolution.

On Gritsyuk, I get that the board is higher on him than Pronman, but it just doesn't seem that egregious. At best, he'd be around #6 in the U23 rankings. And I can see the reservations. I like him, but he is a smallish player who plays "hard" (perhaps opening himself up to injuries) that doesn't have an elite skillset in any area.

Plays against men in a real league and has stats in that league that compare favorably to some real top end NHL talent. Zero chance he should be lower than 5 in our team rankings right now.

Not saying he's a top 6 lock or even an NHL lock, but he's way closer to the NHL than a guy like Casey, and has significantly more upside than guys like Bahl, Okh, Shak, or even Zetterlund, imo.

 

[Triumph]

Plays against men in a real league and has stats in that league that compare favorably to some real top end NHL talent. Zero chance he should be lower than 5 in our team rankings right now.

Not saying he's a top 6 lock or even an NHL lock, but he's way closer to the NHL than a guy like Casey, and has significantly more upside than guys like Bahl, Okh, Shak, or even Zetterlund, imo.

These U23 rankings include NHL players, no way he's above either Hughes brother or Mercer, and can easily be ranked below Holtz and Nemec as well.

 

[MasterofGrond]

These U23 rankings include NHL players, no way he's above either Hughes brother or Mercer, and can easily be ranked below Holtz and Nemec as well.

Right.

6 then, because I can't count.

 

[bossram]

Shouldnt ever count someone out. Way too many stories in sports of nobodies becoming somebodies or even greats, and Gritsyuk is not exactly a throwaway prospect either.

Idk much about him other than how Devils fans feel about him and his stats, but Debrincat is also a steep climb. Lets get him over to North America before we go banishing him to Impel Down.

I mean, projecting anyone but a truly elite prospect to be a 40-goal scorer is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Plays against men in a real league and has stats in that league that compare favorably to some real top end NHL talent. Zero chance he should be lower than 5 in our team rankings right now.

Not saying he's a top 6 lock or even an NHL lock, but he's way closer to the NHL than a guy like Casey, and has significantly more upside than guys like Bahl, Okh, Shak, or even Zetterlund, imo.

Right.

6 then, because I can't count.

Well yeah. I said they could move him from maybe #10 to #6 in the U23 rankings. It's not like an earth-shatteringly different opinion. It's tough to rank a guy who hasn't played a game in NA much higher unless he's really an elite prospect.

 

[My3Sons]

There's basically 0% chance he is Debrincat.

It’s a range thing. Gritsyuk is smallish and moderately skilled and feisty and fearless. At least to my watching him. That’s a pretty good player potentially with a guy like DeBrincat as the best version of that sort of player to me. Of course a guy like Johnsson also fits that profile. We will see where Gritsyuk lands on the spectrum. Of course he’s much more likely to be closer to Johnsson than DeBrincat.

Edit - your comment struck me as dismissive and unnecessarily so. Not sure if that is what you were going for.

 

[Guttersniped]

Not to dredge up a 2-day old conversation, but I don;t hang out here much on the weekends and thought some of this was worth responding to.

I'm pretty ambivalent on both of these. I actually think Oko brings more of what the team is missing than Bahl, but everyone loves a giant guy with giant reach that can skate half decent. I'd love for both to get some decent playing time this season to get more of an idea of the upsides of both.

Yeah, I mentioned multiple times that I'm not too worried about the analytics for a player that played less than 100 minutes.

I think maybe I should have added more nuance to my posts. There is certainly a time and place where shot blocks are valuable (though by nature of the playoffs, of course a d that logs big minutes for the team that wins is going to be high up the ladder of shot blocks). What I meant to say is that most good teams only have 1 or 2 good versions of this player that suppresses scoring chances but doesn't contribute to moving the puck up ice at a high rate. Of course you need someone who can anchor your PK and do the dirty work for your more offensive D. But you prefer those players can contribute to possession in their own right, ala Seigenthaler last year.

That the Devils specifically failed with a defense built this way does not inherently mean it is wrong. This is far too results-oriented when considering something as interdependent on other variables as this in the context of a game where results can often be, frankly, random.

This is the point of my argument. I love a D that can get in front of a shot when they need to (and I love a forward that does this even more), but very often the leaders in this category are someone who is there because they were giving the opponent more opportunities to shoot.

I did quick math here so please forgive me if someone double checks me and finds I'm wrong, but by my count there were 33 defensemen last season that played at least 500 minutes even strength and have 5+ blocks/60 minutes. Of those, only 6 had a scoring chances for % over 50%, the average was 46.9%. Those same players averaged 47.6% in xGF%, again, only 8 of those 33 had an xGF% on 50% or better.

There were 27 D that played at least 500 minutes even strength and averaged 8+ hits/60, of those, only 7 averaged 50% or higher for scoring chances, and the overall average was 48.5%. Only 7 of those had an xGF% of 50% or higher and the average xGF% was 48.0.

If you take all D that played 500 minutes and averaged %+ shot blocks and hits/60, you're left with 21 players with an average SCF% of 46.1% and and average xGF% of 46.5%. There are exactly two such players with positives in both of these categories, and coincidentally enough they both play for Vegas, Zach Whitecloud and Brayden McNabb.

This is by no means a perfect statistical analysis, but it paints the picture of how uncommon it is that the D that are high in both hits and shot blocks are leading to more scoring opportunities for their team than for their opponent.


I won't claim to know hockey better than you because I know that is not true. Just a couple of points here I wanted to respond to.

For one, I am no fan of players like Gostisbehere and DeAngelo. Despite the fact that they can score a bunch of points, they're about as useless to me as the defender spending all their time blocking shots because their team doesn't have the puck.

I've tried to make it clear that I value what Seigenthaler does very highly and I absolutely think that is a critical component of a successful team. My only point with regard to Okhotiuk is that I want these players to contribute to possession at even strength, and I'm not sold on his ability to do that yet. If he can, then he will be a valuable player for us given his strengths with skating and positional play.

I know I'm asking for a lot here as you can't just choose to have a perfect team in a salary cap league. As you said, you have to utilize players that are not perfect in roles that will help them excel and result in a balanced team as a whole. I've said here that hockey is random, and what I mean by that is that the same shot can be saved most of the time and score some times, and it's typically nothing to do with what any single player did differently and everything to do with luck. You can have the same pattern of play with the same 5 skaters on offense and defense and the same goalie run 100 times and you will almost certainly not get 100/0 or 50/50 or anything close to either. This is a tiny puck on ice that bounces unpredictably. The randomness is far greater than many other sports we could discuss. Because of that (and the rules of the game), no it is not possible for a team to maintain possession for 65%+ like it is in soccer. That's why I value every % a player can add so highly, because the difference between 48 and 52 can be meaningless in one game, but it can be massive when extrapolated across 82 games.

I'm asking for a unicorn, a player that can skate well, pass well, has size, sound positionally, and can still do the dirty work when it is actually necessary. There aren't a lot of players like this which is why you lock them up when you think you've found one, like we did with Seigenthaler. It's a very high bar to clear and obvious every team can't fill their roster with them, but that's what I'm hoping for from a player like Okhotiuk.

I think this argument often gets presented as offense vs. defense, when what I'm saying is that traits that are traditionally thought of as offensive traits make you more difficult to score on, and traits traditionally thought of as defensive traits aren't necessarily doing that. I'm not trying to say every defenseman should be an offensive defenseman, but I do think your team is better when every defenseman can consistently make an outlet pass and spend more time with the puck than without it. That's the only concern I have for Okohtiuk ( and Bahl) right now.

Interesting tidbit I noticed while checking these numbers which isn't necessarily related to this topic: Ty Smith is the only Devils defenseman to play 500+ minutes this year and have an xGF% under 51% (48.44%). We all know Ty Smith is not a good defensive player in the shot blocking or possession since, but the xGF% and SCF% in 480 minutes played with Subban are 54.05% and 52.05% respectively. This is a pro PK tweet more than a pro Smith tweet.

Subban played with Smith on a much more sheltered 3rd pairing, which helped PK’s cause. When Smith and Severson came back and Ty got bigger minutes at first with both Damon and Hamilton.

I don’t think Smith is necessarily a lost cause but just knowing I’ll never see Dougie & Ty together is truly a blessing. The Detroit game in December still haunts my dreams (Geertsen/Bahl was the bottom pair, so, yeah.)

An Athletic article from Feb 10, 2022 looked at all defensemen’s match-ups last season using PuckIQ’s data.

The intro of the article:

Player deployment, on the other hand, is enormously revealing — it’s where the quiet part is said out loud. Most coaches meticulously plan matchups and are very intentional about the situations they expose every player. By analyzing this deployment, you get a portal into a coach’s true thoughts on his players and just how much he trusts each one, in addition to a bit of the strategy behind how coaches optimize deployment to maximize results.

I was very fascinated two years ago when former colleague Tyler Dellow dug into how coaches match NHL defenders against different forward lines, so I decided to replicate the concept for the 2021-22 season.

How Puck IQ works:

Elite forwards are defined as players who play first-line minutes (top 25 percent of NHL forwards), score points at a top-end rate (greater than 2.21 points per 60 minutes in all situations) and own at least competent two-way play-driving numbers (40th percentile or better). This makes intuitive sense — players who get a ton of ice-time, score a lot of points and generate at least decent two-way results are household names we recognize as star talents. There are roughly 60 elite forwards by this database’s criteria.

There were nearly 400 forwards in the middle tier. And then there’s a smaller pool of below-average bottom-six talent that represents the “gritensity” tier.

Then with matchup data, we look at how coaches use their defencemen — do they want them out more often against elite, middle or bottom tier forwards?

Let’s check in on each NHL team to see what trends emerge. For context, the league average defender played 29.2 percent of his five-on-five minutes against “elite” forward competition. The highest defender played 44.9 percent minutes against elites, but there were only 35 NHL defenders who played 35 percent or more of their minutes against elite competition.

Here’s the graph, sorry it’s so eye bleeding on here.

I’ll add the one for the Penguins because of the trade.

While the Pens got sheltered baby bird Ty Smith, they also traded Matheson to the Habs for Petry.

He even made a list of the “50 defencemen who’ve played the highest percentage of their minutes against elite players” and a list of 25 most sheltered.

19. Siegenthaler 36.7%
20. Hamilton 36.6%
22. Graves 36.0%
25. Severson 35.6%

When the season ended it was (with 150 minute min.)
Siegenthaler 40.4%
70 GP 494.7 minutes vs Elite
(#6 most against Elites)

Severson 38.5%
80 GP 537.2 minutes vs Elite
(#11 most against Elites)

Graves 37.7%
75 GP 494.9 minutes vs Elite
(#19 most against Elites)

Hamilton 36.6%
62 GP 382.1 minutes vs Elite
(#26 most against Elites)

John Marino 32.2%
81 GP 432.3 minutes vs Elite
(#92 most against Elites)

24. Smith 21.3%

End of the Season:
Rank: (with 50 minute min.) [with 150 min.]

Subban 26.7%
77 GP 333.0 minutes vs Elite
(#87 most sheltered) [#62]

Smith 22.6%
66 GP 229.9 minutes vs Elite
(#47 most sheltered) [#28]

Brendan Smith 16.2%
45 GP 93.0 minutes vs Elite
(#6 most sheltered) [N/A]

I added the new, other, still very confusing to me, Smith in there at the end.

This is more than I wanted to spend on this article lol but showing who’s sheltered and who’s in an shutdown role is something that Quality of Competition data does well.


This is the Devils eye sight destroying graph from Ty Dellow’s March 2019 article btw:

Which NHL defencemen have (and haven’t) earned their coach’s trust? Analyzing matchup data from all 32 teams

Dellow: Matchup data for defencemen from all 31 teams to find out who has earned their coach’s trust

How defencemen are being matched up against opposing forwards gives us a good snippet of how coaches view those players.

theathletic.com

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

if i calculated correctly, bastian recorded 210 hits in 856.8 minutes.


you should convert into an islanders fan. (someone has to say it).

Would have seen a lot more competitive hockey over the last decade.

 

[Eggtimer]

Very cool info @Guttersniped , thanks for sharing.
I like that the Pens had confidence enough and deployed Marino like they did. Shows that they relied on him for the hardest matchups, more than any other of their D.
With Ty Smith replaced by Marino , we “should” have some good depth that can play solid defence.
Hamilton , Seigenthaler , Graves , Severson all used quite a lot against hard competition . It doesmt show how effective they were lol , but it shows that the coaching staff has confidence putting those 4 out against other teams best players. That or that Ty Smith and Subban were so terrible that they need to be sheltered and were dog shit.
At the very least , I am glad that it appears Marino can be a good shut down guy ? He was deployed more often than not vs. elite opposition instead of being sheltered so that is a good sign.

 

[My3Sons]

Subban played with Smith on a much more sheltered 3rd pairing, which helped PK’s cause. When Smith and Severson came back and Ty got bigger minutes at first with both Damon and Hamilton.

I don’t think Smith is necessarily a lost cause but just knowing I’ll never see Dougie & Ty together is truly a blessing. The Detroit game in December still haunts my dreams (Geertsen/Bahl was the bottom pair, so, yeah.)

An Athletic article from Feb 10, 2022 looked at all defensemen’s match-ups last season using PuckIQ’s data.

The intro of the article:



How Puck IQ works:





Here’s the graph, sorry it’s so eye bleeding on here.

View attachment 580157

I’ll add the one for the Penguins because of the trade.

View attachment 580155

While the Pens got sheltered baby bird Ty Smith, they also traded Matheson to the Habs for Petry.

View attachment 580156

He even made a list of the “50 defencemen who’ve played the highest percentage of their minutes against elite players” and a list of 25 most sheltered.

View attachment 580141
View attachment 580142
View attachment 580143
View attachment 580142

19. Siegenthaler 36.7%
20. Hamilton 36.6%
22. Graves 36.0%
25. Severson 35.6%

When the season ended it was (with 150 minute min.)
Siegenthaler 40.4%
70 GP 494.7 minutes vs Elite
(#6 most against Elites)

Severson 38.5%
80 GP 537.2 minutes vs Elite
(#11 most against Elites)

Graves 37.7%
75 GP 494.9 minutes vs Elite
(#19 most against Elites)

Hamilton 36.6%
62 GP 382.1 minutes vs Elite
(#26 most against Elites)

John Marino 32.2%
81 GP 432.3 minutes vs Elite
(#92 most against Elites)


View attachment 580144
View attachment 580145

24. Smith 21.3%

End of the Season:
Rank: (with 50 minute min.) [with 150 min.]

Subban 26.7%
77 GP 333.0 minutes vs Elite
(#87 most sheltered) [#62]

Smith 22.6%
66 GP 229.9 minutes vs Elite
(#47 most sheltered) [#28]

Brendan Smith 16.2%
45 GP 93.0 minutes vs Elite
(#6 most sheltered) [N/A]

I added the new, other, still very confusing to me, Smith in there at the end.

This is more than I wanted to spend on this article lol but showing who’s sheltered and who’s in an shutdown role is something that Quality of Competition data does well.


This is the Devils eye sight destroying graph from Ty Dellow’s March 2019 article btw:

View attachment 580167


Which NHL defencemen have (and haven’t) earned their coach’s trust? Analyzing matchup data from all 32 teams

Dellow: Matchup data for defencemen from all 31 teams to find out who has earned their coach’s trust

How defencemen are being matched up against opposing forwards gives us a good snippet of how coaches view those players.

theathletic.com

Thanks for sharing that. It’s interesting and speaks well for Marino in some sense even if it means new Smith has a lot to prove.

 

[bossram]

It’s a range thing. Gritsyuk is smallish and moderately skilled and feisty and fearless. At least to my watching him. That’s a pretty good player potentially with a guy like DeBrincat as the best version of that sort of player to me. Of course a guy like Johnsson also fits that profile. We will see where Gritsyuk lands on the spectrum. Of course he’s much more likely to be closer to Johnsson than DeBrincat.

Edit - your comment struck me as dismissive and unnecessarily so. Not sure if that is what you were going for.

Text can sound terse sometimes - and I often write like that.

I just don't think it's a realistic range. If Gritsyuk has a 0.5% chance of turning into a Debrincat-calibre player, I would not lump that within his "range". Debrincat is one of the best finishers in the NHL. I don't think there is anyone projecting Gritsyuk with that kind of finishing ability, so it's a rather unrealistic comparable.

 

[My3Sons]

Text can sound terse sometimes - and I often write like that.

I just don't think it's a realistic range. If Gritsyuk has a 0.5% chance of turning into a Debrincat-calibre player, I would not lump that within his "range". Debrincat is one of the best finishers in the NHL. I don't think there is anyone projecting Gritsyuk with that kind of finishing ability, so it's a rather unrealistic comparable.

It’s not a comparable. It’s a range. That’s my view of how they work. Like a bell curve on the ACT. A student has a 1% chance of getting a 36 and maybe a 1.5% chance of getting a 35. The overwhelming majority won’t but in say 8th and 9th grade there are kids that the range might be 31-36 who then refine that as they get older. It doesn’t mean I think it’s likely or realistic. Pick a different player who is feisty and good and smallish. It’s not the top end comparable name that is a big deal.

 

[Guttersniped]

Jack is the freakin' revolution.

On Gritsyuk, I get that the board is higher on him than Pronman, but it just doesn't seem that egregious. At best, he'd be around #6 in the U23 rankings. And I can see the reservations. I like him, but he is a smallish player who plays "hard" (perhaps opening himself up to injuries) that doesn't have an elite skillset in any area.

I can see wanting to see more, he had a breakout season but it was one season. He’s not Kaprizov. He went up the list.

Most people here are just more excited for him, it’s not like a lot are catching KHL games.

@Guadana is mostly trying to keep expectations for Gritsyuk on earth and he’s optimistic about him.

 

[Xirik]

I can see wanting to see more, he had a breakout season but it was one season. He’s not Kaprizov. He went up the list.

Most people here are just more excited for him, it’s not like a lot are catching KHL games.

@Guadana is mostly trying to keep expectations for Gritsyuk on earth and he’s optimistic about him.

or perhaps he is trying to keep the hype low so he can keep Gritsyuk to himself!




(the animated Lord of the Rings movies are such a treasure trove of hilarious animations)

 

[MVP Zacha]

Ex NJ Devils superstar Pavel Zacha will wear No. 18 for the Boston Bruins.

 

[Devils731]

Ex NJ Devils superstar Pavel Zacha will wear No. 18 for the Boston Bruins.View attachment 580195

18th is where they expect him to place in Hart voting at year end.

 

[StevenToddIves]

Johnson is awful and the Avs were good enough to compensate for how bad he is. But yes, you can come up with reasons for anything - Girard was not good against Vegas last season. I don't think him being injured was helpful to Colorado this year, because he was replaced with Johnson, who is terrible. As it stands, both guys had a roughly equivalent playoffs.



They didn't have an advantage in net, which is where that series was actually won - Mike Vernon was atrocious in that series. He gave up 14 goals on 96 shots, an excerable .854 SV%. It's nearly impossible to win when your goalie is giving up goals on one out of every 7 shots. Devils played great D, Vernon was horrible, that's how you get a sweep in a series like this.



You do realize that Brad Marchand's hit on Marcus Johansson came in a season where the Devils made the playoffs, right? Johansson took that elbow on January 26, the Devils lost that game, they were 24-15-8 at that point, and they went 19-14-1 after that. It did not alter their momentum at all. What are you trying to say by mentioning this play? All you're telling me is that you remember a cheap shot a Devils player took and you can spin up an invented narrative around that play.



This is all a bunch of narrative that gets beaten again and again. Ty Smith isn't here anymore because he was a bad player. Will Butcher is also not very good, as it turns out, he sustained some injuries and that was it, he's on a two-way deal now. Luke Schenn played 11 minutes a game for the Lightning, you literally cannot have picked a worse example than a depth defender who barely impacts anything.

You need guys who can defend. But you sit here praising guys like Jack Johnson and Luke Schenn and it's just grasping at straws. These are fringe players who are not important.



Ridiculous on its face, nobody plays the game this way. The Devils can use more guys who are good at keeping plays alive in the offensive zone and I think they've gotten them. What I'm objecting to is that teams can continually get 'the good chances' and deny good chances to other teams in this way, this just isn't how hockey works.



Ryan Graves contributes a lot more to offense than Okhotiuk has to date. They're much, much different players - Graves likes to shoot the puck a lot, Okhotiuk does not get many shots. They're frankly, a terrible comparison for one another and I don't even know why anyone would think to compare them.

You need players like Okhotiuk, it's not clear you need Okhotiuk, I think he and Bahl will both get a chance this year and hopefully they both run with it, but I'm not really seeing it so far from either guy, I like Okhotiuk more, but chances are in 5 years neither guy is in the NHL.



Bobby Orr, the most transformative defenseman the game has ever seen, who played when the league was comprised almost entirely of Canadians? Oh, okay, cool. I do like you extrapolating all this stuff from 7 games though, it's fun to watch. DeAngelo was awful in that series against the Rangers but it very easily could've gone the other way for Carolina. Tampa has a good defense corps, but that's the key - it is Actually Good, it results in good things, Cernak isn't a stiff, McDonagh is fine, there was enough puck skill to get by, we'll see how things go this year without McDonagh.



No one thought to make a deal for Shayne Gostisbehere because his contract has a year left on it. This is where I get mad at your posts, you continually do not take into account the real-world circumstances of the NHL and just fire off stuff like this without thinking for one second about it. Gostisbehere was traded at a loss by Philadelphia, he didn't all of the sudden become super-valuable, I still think he probably will be dealt at this deadline if he is healthy and productive, but I won't be shocked if he isn't because the league is capped out and most teams have a PP QB they like.

Not sure why my posts trigger you sometimes, I'm not exactly stylistically vitriolic in my analyses.

Quick rebuttal, for safety's sake:

1)Jack Johnson was better in the playoffs this year than Girard was this year or last year. It's not close. Girard cannot win board or crease battles and shrinks as the game gets more physical. He's a good all-offense defenseman if you shelter his minutes during the regular season, but I find him to be a detriment in the playoffs. I am not a Jack Johnson fan, but he was a solid and physical defensive presence for Colorado in the playoffs this year.

2) The Devils did not win their first Stanley Cup series simply because of Mike Vernon. The five best skaters in that series were all New Jersey Devils, and the best two were Stevens and Niedermeyer. I've watched every game multiple times.

3) The Marchand hit on Johansson was endemic of how the Devils have been bullied for the past decade and only won one single playoff game in that span. I'm not spinning a narrative, again that's not my style.

4) Ty Smith and Will Butcher were not good because they could not play defense in their own zone. This is exactly my point. Both were good players in space with the puck on their stick.

5) I'm not saying Okhotyuk is comparable to Graves, just that they can potentially perform similar-type roles. Not sure how that wasn't clear.

6) Mentioning Bobby Orr was somehow upsetting, I'm not sure why. McDonagh and Cernak are not "fine" or "not a stiff" -- these guys are proven NHL warriors who you win with. The entire point of my post is that the Devils need these types of defensemen, not Will Butcher and not Ty Smith.

7) No one traded for Shayne Gostisbehere because he is as bad at playing defense as anyone who has called themselves a defenseman in the past decade of the NHL. His contract had nothing to do with anything.

 

[StevenToddIves]

Not to dredge up a 2-day old conversation, but I don;t hang out here much on the weekends and thought some of this was worth responding to.

I'm pretty ambivalent on both of these. I actually think Oko brings more of what the team is missing than Bahl, but everyone loves a giant guy with giant reach that can skate half decent. I'd love for both to get some decent playing time this season to get more of an idea of the upsides of both.

Yeah, I mentioned multiple times that I'm not too worried about the analytics for a player that played less than 100 minutes.

I think maybe I should have added more nuance to my posts. There is certainly a time and place where shot blocks are valuable (though by nature of the playoffs, of course a d that logs big minutes for the team that wins is going to be high up the ladder of shot blocks). What I meant to say is that most good teams only have 1 or 2 good versions of this player that suppresses scoring chances but doesn't contribute to moving the puck up ice at a high rate. Of course you need someone who can anchor your PK and do the dirty work for your more offensive D. But you prefer those players can contribute to possession in their own right, ala Seigenthaler last year.

That the Devils specifically failed with a defense built this way does not inherently mean it is wrong. This is far too results-oriented when considering something as interdependent on other variables as this in the context of a game where results can often be, frankly, random.

This is the point of my argument. I love a D that can get in front of a shot when they need to (and I love a forward that does this even more), but very often the leaders in this category are someone who is there because they were giving the opponent more opportunities to shoot.

I did quick math here so please forgive me if someone double checks me and finds I'm wrong, but by my count there were 33 defensemen last season that played at least 500 minutes even strength and have 5+ blocks/60 minutes. Of those, only 6 had a scoring chances for % over 50%, the average was 46.9%. Those same players averaged 47.6% in xGF%, again, only 8 of those 33 had an xGF% on 50% or better.

There were 27 D that played at least 500 minutes even strength and averaged 8+ hits/60, of those, only 7 averaged 50% or higher for scoring chances, and the overall average was 48.5%. Only 7 of those had an xGF% of 50% or higher and the average xGF% was 48.0.

If you take all D that played 500 minutes and averaged %+ shot blocks and hits/60, you're left with 21 players with an average SCF% of 46.1% and and average xGF% of 46.5%. There are exactly two such players with positives in both of these categories, and coincidentally enough they both play for Vegas, Zach Whitecloud and Brayden McNabb.

This is by no means a perfect statistical analysis, but it paints the picture of how uncommon it is that the D that are high in both hits and shot blocks are leading to more scoring opportunities for their team than for their opponent.


I won't claim to know hockey better than you because I know that is not true. Just a couple of points here I wanted to respond to.

For one, I am no fan of players like Gostisbehere and DeAngelo. Despite the fact that they can score a bunch of points, they're about as useless to me as the defender spending all their time blocking shots because their team doesn't have the puck.

I've tried to make it clear that I value what Seigenthaler does very highly and I absolutely think that is a critical component of a successful team. My only point with regard to Okhotiuk is that I want these players to contribute to possession at even strength, and I'm not sold on his ability to do that yet. If he can, then he will be a valuable player for us given his strengths with skating and positional play.

I know I'm asking for a lot here as you can't just choose to have a perfect team in a salary cap league. As you said, you have to utilize players that are not perfect in roles that will help them excel and result in a balanced team as a whole. I've said here that hockey is random, and what I mean by that is that the same shot can be saved most of the time and score some times, and it's typically nothing to do with what any single player did differently and everything to do with luck. You can have the same pattern of play with the same 5 skaters on offense and defense and the same goalie run 100 times and you will almost certainly not get 100/0 or 50/50 or anything close to either. This is a tiny puck on ice that bounces unpredictably. The randomness is far greater than many other sports we could discuss. Because of that (and the rules of the game), no it is not possible for a team to maintain possession for 65%+ like it is in soccer. That's why I value every % a player can add so highly, because the difference between 48 and 52 can be meaningless in one game, but it can be massive when extrapolated across 82 games.

I'm asking for a unicorn, a player that can skate well, pass well, has size, sound positionally, and can still do the dirty work when it is actually necessary. There aren't a lot of players like this which is why you lock them up when you think you've found one, like we did with Seigenthaler. It's a very high bar to clear and obvious every team can't fill their roster with them, but that's what I'm hoping for from a player like Okhotiuk.

I think this argument often gets presented as offense vs. defense, when what I'm saying is that traits that are traditionally thought of as offensive traits make you more difficult to score on, and traits traditionally thought of as defensive traits aren't necessarily doing that. I'm not trying to say every defenseman should be an offensive defenseman, but I do think your team is better when every defenseman can consistently make an outlet pass and spend more time with the puck than without it. That's the only concern I have for Okohtiuk ( and Bahl) right now.

Interesting tidbit I noticed while checking these numbers which isn't necessarily related to this topic: Ty Smith is the only Devils defenseman to play 500+ minutes this year and have an xGF% under 51% (48.44%). We all know Ty Smith is not a good defensive player in the shot blocking or possession since, but the xGF% and SCF% in 480 minutes played with Subban are 54.05% and 52.05% respectively. This is a pro PK tweet more than a pro Smith tweet.

Great debate, I love your posts. Keep up the good work. I can talk about this stuff forever, but I keep myself busy with other writing projects for most of the off-season.

 

[njdevils1982]

Not sure why my posts trigger you sometimes, I'm not exactly stylistically vitriolic in my analyses.

Quick rebuttal, for safety's sake:

1)Jack Johnson was better in the playoffs this year than Girard was this year or last year. It's not close. Girard cannot win board or crease battles and shrinks as the game gets more physical. He's a good all-offense defenseman if you shelter his minutes during the regular season, but I find him to be a detriment in the playoffs. I am not a Jack Johnson fan, but he was a solid and physical defensive presence for Colorado in the playoffs this year.

2) The Devils did not win their first Stanley Cup series simply because of Mike Vernon. The five best skaters in that series were all New Jersey Devils, and the best two were Stevens and Niedermeyer. I've watched every game multiple times.

3) The Marchand hit on Johansson was endemic of how the Devils have been bullied for the past decade and only won one single playoff game in that span. I'm not spinning a narrative, again that's not my style.

4) Ty Smith and Will Butcher were not good because they could not play defense in their own zone. This is exactly my point. Both were good players in space with the puck on their stick.

5) I'm not saying Okhotyuk is comparable to Graves, just that they can potentially perform similar-type roles. Not sure how that wasn't clear.

6) Mentioning Bobby Orr was somehow upsetting, I'm not sure why. McDonagh and Cernak are not "fine" or "not a stiff" -- these guys are proven NHL warriors who you win with. The entire point of my post is that the Devils need these types of defensemen, not Will Butcher and not Ty Smith.

7) No one traded for Shayne Gostisbehere because he is as bad at playing defense as anyone who has called themselves a defenseman in the past decade of the NHL. His contract had nothing to do with anything.

about butcher's last games with the team when he got into the lineup....wow.

the amount of ineptitude in the d zone was beyond frustrating. but not to diatribe on about it more then that.... it was hard to watch and most annoying

 

[Triumph]

Not sure why my posts trigger you sometimes, I'm not exactly stylistically vitriolic in my analyses.

Because you spout off when you write about the NHL, you know what you're talking about when it comes to prospects, but you form these hard opinions about NHLers based on very little. It's a lot of small guy bad, big guy good stuff. A lot of winners win and some guys can't win stuff. Narratives.

Quick rebuttal, for safety's sake:

1)Jack Johnson was better in the playoffs this year than Girard was this year or last year. It's not close. Girard cannot win board or crease battles and shrinks as the game gets more physical. He's a good all-offense defenseman if you shelter his minutes during the regular season, but I find him to be a detriment in the playoffs. I am not a Jack Johnson fan, but he was a solid and physical defensive presence for Colorado in the playoffs this year.

Johnson was so solid that he signed at a minimum price with a team that is tanking. And yeah, Johnson wasn't a complete disaster, but he is always an adventure out there because he just cannot defend space well, he is continually out of position. Please explain how Samuel Girard, a player who has played 21, 23, and 21 minutes/game the last 3 years, is 'sheltered', by PuckIQ's measures he was in no way sheltered this season. He does play a little more when the Avs are trailing, but that appears to be about it.

2) The Devils did not win their first Stanley Cup series simply because of Mike Vernon. The five best skaters in that series were all New Jersey Devils, and the best two were Stevens and Niedermeyer. I've watched every game multiple times.

I never said they did, don't put words in my mouth. The Devils played very well, better than Detroit did. The reason it went 4 games is because Vernon was terrible, the Devils did not outplay the Wings by that sort of margin.

3) The Marchand hit on Johansson was endemic of how the Devils have been bullied for the past decade and only won one single playoff game in that span. I'm not spinning a narrative, again that's not my style.

You are spinning a narrative. What did that hit do to the Devils' psyche? Sure doesn't look to have done a whole lot, the team was the same before and after it that season. Not every hit is reacted to live, that's just the nature of the game, sometimes people don't see what happened or by the time they figure out what happened everyone's skating back to the benches. The fact that it's a hit you can remember is what's important here.

4) Ty Smith and Will Butcher were not good because they could not play defense in their own zone. This is exactly my point. Both were good players in space with the puck on their stick.

They weren't good in part because they didn't maintain their ability with the puck on their stick. I'm skeptical Smith ranked particularly well in successful zone exits last year. If Butcher were as good at zone exits last year as he was in 2017-18, he'd be on a 3rd pairing somewhere on a one-way deal. This is like Okhotiuk's problem - these players, being limited in their ability to defend, have to be near-perfect with the puck on their stick in the D zone, and that's hard to maintain. I think Smith can do it though, as long as he comes to Pittsburgh skating like he did in 2020-21.

5) I'm not saying Okhotyuk is comparable to Graves, just that they can potentially perform similar-type roles. Not sure how that wasn't clear.

It's extremely unlikely that Okhotiuk ever plays 20:30 in an NHL season as Graves did this year. I also have no idea why you'd compare these two players in any way - they both could potentially play PK1, I guess? They bear little to no resemblance to one another otherwise.

6) Mentioning Bobby Orr was somehow upsetting, I'm not sure why. McDonagh and Cernak are not "fine" or "not a stiff" -- these guys are proven NHL warriors who you win with. The entire point of my post is that the Devils need these types of defensemen, not Will Butcher and not Ty Smith.

It was upsetting because Bobby Orr played in an NHL that was 99% Canadian when forwards moved on their wings like guys in bubble hockey.

Cernak's fine, good 2nd pairing D. McDonagh might be near finished, hard to say, he's got a ton of mileage on him. He used to be really good though.

7) No one traded for Shayne Gostisbehere because he is as bad at playing defense as anyone who has called themselves a defenseman in the past decade of the NHL. His contract had nothing to do with anything.

Again, this is why I get upset. If Gostisbehere were bought out and signed to a 1 year $1M deal someone absolutely would've traded for him. His contract has everything to do with it. The contract a player is on is the biggest determinant of value and that player's potential trade market. Gostisbehere being on the deal he is on meant that there was a 0% chance anyone would trade for him at the deadline.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Damn Ken really let himself go /s

 

[SKNJD9]

Stumbled upon this and got immediately sad.

Feels like a lifetime ago.

The unstoppable force that wears #9.... Bobby Butler

 

[MadDevil]

The unstoppable force that wears #9.... Bobby Butler

Please. Bobby boy ain't got nothing on the legend Harri Pesonen, who in 4 total games with the Devils, all in the same season, wore 3 different jersey numbers, including #9.