Confirmed with Link: Leafs sign D Simon Benoit (1 year, $775k) Re-signed ( 3 year, $1.35mm)

[hamzarocks]

He was very good last year a legit #5D

He was pretty ass the first 25 games this year a 7/8D who kept taking penalties and making dumb choices

Last 15 games playing like a good bottom pairing D again.

At 1.3M hes still a great 6-7D to have

 

[GoonieFace]

Viewers are generally pretty bad at understanding defensive play. They miss defensive details, overemphasize goal events, misattribute things to defense and goaltending, and focus pretty exclusively on reactionary defensive plays - the flashier the better. Ironically, this leads to some players getting a boost in defensive perception by being worse defensively overall, but being skilled in reactionary defensive actions. There are also some people in this fanbase that will only appreciate one specific type of defenseman. Holl wasn't some bulking hitter, and he had the occasional flashy gaffe, and that made him a lightning rod for a subsection of the fanbase, but he was pretty effective at many of the quieter, less flashy aspects of defensive play.

Yes, Holl had a bad playoff series in 2022-2023, and yes, he made a glaringly bad play from time to time over the years, but he had been an effective complimentary player playing 20+ minutes a night in one of the toughest roles on the team at a really good price point. Benoit had one year as a decent complimentary bottom pairing defenseman. They don't really compare.

Yep, nobody understands what they are watching except you. A.I. has come a long way

 

[ClarkSittler]

Viewers are generally pretty bad at understanding defensive play. They miss defensive details, overemphasize goal events, misattribute things to defense and goaltending, and focus pretty exclusively on reactionary defensive plays - the flashier the better. Ironically, this leads to some players getting a boost in defensive perception by being worse defensively overall, but being skilled in reactionary defensive actions. There are also some people in this fanbase that will only appreciate one specific type of defenseman. Holl wasn't some bulking hitter, and he had the occasional flashy gaffe, and that made him a lightning rod for a subsection of the fanbase, but he was pretty effective at many of the quieter, less flashy aspects of defensive play.

Yes, Holl had a bad playoff series in 2022-2023, and yes, he made a glaringly bad play from time to time over the years, but he had been an effective complimentary player playing 20+ minutes a night in one of the toughest roles on the team at a really good price point. Benoit had one year as a decent complimentary bottom pairing defenseman. They don't really compare.

Yes Holl is so good Detroit put him on waivers this year, nobody claimed him and he's barely holding on to the #6 spot with a team in the bottom 3rd of the league.

 

[IPS]

Viewers are generally pretty bad at understanding defensive play

And none quite as bad as you. We tried telling you for years that Holl is a terrible player but your Dubas blinders just couldn't quite let you see reality. We told you directly that Holl would be exposed the second he played for another team and exactly that happened.

If you knew what was best for you, you'd just take this L and move on.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Yep, nobody understands what they are watching except you.

Lots of people understand what they're watching. That's why our coaches limit Benoit's minutes and role relative to some of our former defensemen, and why he only gets 1.35m coming off a career year, instead of something like say 3.4m. And while some here struggle to understand what they're watching, most understand what they're watching and just don't understand how much there is that they're not watching, and their limitations.

I never said I was immune from this. These things are types of universal mistakes that people make when watching sports in general (and even more so in a fast pace, free flowing game like hockey), and that's why the analytical revolution has been so widespread and dominant across all sports. But when you understand and accept your biases and limitations, you learn the things to look out for, expand what you watch, use tools to assist, and get a more accurate picture. Unfortunately, some choose the path of thinking they're already perfect, and ridiculing the tools and people that try to help them. That tends to lead to a narrow view of what defense means, and they struggle to appreciate different types of defensemen and the positives they provide. The venom against some of our former players is a perfect example.

Yes Holl is so good Detroit put him on waivers this year, nobody claimed him and he's barely holding on to the #6 spot with a team in the bottom 3rd of the league.

What a player is doing now on a mess of a team doesn't change what a player did years ago. Benoit was bad in 2022-2023, got waived last year, and is struggling this year, but that doesn't take away from the good play he brought to the team during most of last year.

 

[ClarkSittler]

Lots of people understand what they're watching. That's why our coaches limit Benoit's minutes and role relative to some of our former defensemen, and why he only gets 1.35m coming off a career year, instead of something like say 3.4m. And while some here struggle to understand what they're watching, most understand what they're watching and just don't understand how much there is that they're not watching, and their limitations.

I never said I was immune from this. These things are types of universal mistakes that people make when watching sports in general (and even more so in a fast pace, free flowing game like hockey), and that's why the analytical revolution has been so widespread and dominant across all sports. But when you understand and accept your biases and limitations, you learn the things to look out for, expand what you watch, use tools to assist, and get a more accurate picture. Unfortunately, some choose the path of thinking they're already perfect, and ridiculing the tools and people that try to help them. That tends to lead to a narrow view of what defense means, and they struggle to appreciate different types of defensemen and the positives they provide. The venom against some of our former players is a perfect example.

What a player is doing now on a mess of a team doesn't change what a player did years ago. Benoit was bad in 2022-2023, got waived last year, and is struggling this year, but that doesn't take away from the good play he brought to the team during most of last year.

What the player did years ago was sub par which is why he is no longer here.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Rough night for Benoit. 21.6 xGF%, and on for 2 goals against (one of which he put in himself) in just 13 minutes. Actually, this is the 5th game in a row that he's been below 35%. Might need to sit a game to reset.

What the player did years ago was sub par which is why he is no longer here.

Depth players come and go all the time. He is no longer here because what he did made him too expensive. Hopefully, one day, Benoit can put up the kind of results that make him too expensive.

 

[ClarkSittler]

Rough night for Benoit. 21.6 xGF%, and on for 2 goals against (one of which he put in himself) in just 13 minutes. Actually, this is the 5th game in a row that he's been below 35%. Might need to sit a game to reset.

Depth players come and go all the time. He is no longer here because what he did made him too expensive. Hopefully, one day, Benoit can put up the kind of results that make him too expensive.

xGF% is a laughable stat to measure a defensive defenceman who has the third most starts in his own zone and doesn't get Powerplay time. These stats in general are almost useless, they don't take into account who you are playing with and who you are playing against. Also these stats are often compiled using faulty criteria and entered by people without in depth hockey knowledge. Who exactly is determining shot quality which is the basis for this particular stat? A former NHL coach or some University student who's never even laced up a pair of skates?

Advanced stats have a lot of value in a static game like Baseball, for a fast game in constant motion like hockey, their value is limited.

As for Holl's being expensive, he could have the same contract as Benoit and would still be overpaid, he's a player who lacks physicality and doesn't have the skating or puck handling skills to compensate for it.

 

[Cap'n Flavour]

Who exactly is determining shot quality which is the basis for this particular stat? A former NHL coach or some University student who's never even laced up a pair of skates?

lol what? You think people are manually assigning xG values to every single scoring chance in every game? Are you serious?

Shot locations get input by someone, yes, and sometimes have errors. Each website with a stat has different methods of computing xG but they pretty much all use the same shot locations provided by the league and assign a goal probability from the location. Some models - not sure about public models - supposedly use other variables like time since the last shot to identify rebounds, and in principle you can get skater speed and location and track passes and so on, but I don't think the public websites do that.

And anyway, all of that is mostly irrelevant. Benoit has a 42.5% CF% and 44.6% FF% 5v5, by far the worst of any regular D. His actual GF% is 52.6% because he has a very high on-ice sv% of 93.8%, second only to Timmins (who he plays with more often than not). Actually you can look at stats for defensive pairs and see that Benoit has poor possession stats with everyone he plays for save for 30 minutes with Myers. If you only care about goals then I suppose you can conclude that the Benoit-Timmins pairing should be broken up because they both do better with other partners (the difference being that Timmins has even better CF% with other partners while Benoit has much worse).

As for context, I don't know how that helps. Benoit doesn't get the toughest matchups, McCabe & Tanev do. It's also not inevitable that defensive defensemen have poor possession stats - Tanev's are fine and McCabe's are the best on the team. Of course they're both much better players than Benoit, so no surprise, but it's possible for 3rd pair D to break even. And yeah, Benoit gets more D-zone starts than not because... he's not any good in the o-zone. The comment about PP time is irrelevant; we're only talking 5v5 here.

 

[Cap'n Flavour]

Anyway, what I've noticed is Benoit was getting kudos for showing some straight-line speed the last few days, mostly through the neutral zone. That's good, sure, but I don't see it really leading to anything - I mean if he can get to center before dumping it in and avoid an icing, sure, fine, but otherwise it's ironically Holl-like. He's not actually good at carrying the puck, and hardly anything good happens when he gets the puck in the o-zone.

The other thing I notice with Benoit-Timmins particularly and the team as a whole is a lot of defensemen switching sides (when it's a L-R pair) and I'm not really sure why. Timmins doesn't handle the puck well on the left side. Despite the odd burst of speed from Benoit, neither of them are really good enough skaters to chase down puck carriers. Timmins is if anything the slower of the two but he's still often doing the chasing when there's chasing to be done. I've never paid enough attention to divine what Berube's d-zone coverage system is (or is supposed to be) but it's definitely different from Keefe's, anyway.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

The other thing I notice with Benoit-Timmins particularly and the team as a whole is a lot of defensemen switching sides (when it's a L-R pair) and I'm not really sure why.

Setting up for the one timer.

It's better to switch sides because then the shooter has a better angle on his off side.

 

[PanniniClaus]

Benoit seems to serve the purpose Berube wants. Toughness in our zone and around the net.

Berube does not use D much for offense and you can see how teams have been playing us for over a month. Make sure you have layers everywhere, limit rush chances and make us fight through people. Our team hates it and the roster is not built for it. When we get the puck in zone you can collapse or swarm us as there won't be much movement from the D.

I guess we will see if Berube's mission to win 2-1 playoff games with a terrible powerplay, works. Everything was great when our goaltending tandem was tops in the league. You don't need 4, 10 million dollar players when you play this way..

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Guys you're better off just ignoring DubasBot9000 because you can't reason with AI. It's only as good as the data it gets trained with.