Phaneuf- with the top line vs. without, AKA Thow Bozak under the bus, justifiably

[Cap'n Flavour]

That doesn't really fit with neither eye test or other statistics, so I'll have to read that article before I completely buy that. If for example it's mostly about efficiency, then they could get good zone exit numbers simply due to rushing to open ice after a Gardiner or Rielly skates themselves some space and delivers the pass.

I'll check out the article though.

EDIT:

Took a look.

Kessel and JVR were very effective, but not very frequent. That goes in line with the idea that they were hanging around a lot, waiting for the right opportunity to spring a rush. We all know that if you can give Kessel the puck where he can move, he'll own it and there's no stopping him taking it up the ice. He's absolutely terrific at navigating the ice like that. However, they're not the kind of forward to show themselves just to give options that can lead to working up some time and space for someone to make a zone exit as a result of teamwork.

What do you mean not very frequent? They were near the top for zone exits/60. Kessel was only behind a very limited sample for D'Amigo. Granted, having a lot of exit attempts/60 isn't necessarily a good thing - it could just be a sign of being in your own zone too often - but I don't know how you can spin having a high percentage as being a bad thing or a sign of cheating. What other statistics do those numbers not mesh with?

I am not comfortable with saying they fail the "eye test" since they were literally measured by a guy watching every single zone exit.

I also don't buy the suggestion that this is just because Kessel and JVR were always waiting for the perfect stretch pass to spring a break. That would suggest that stretch passes are high percentage plays, which I find counter-intuitive. Also if they were waiting for a pass outside of the blue line I think that would have been logged as a successful pass exit for whoever passed it to them (probably a defenseman since Bozak rarely ever did anything).

Oh, and there wasn't an awful lot separating Gardiner, Phaneuf and Gunnarsson in their numbers. Rielly was a bit above every other defenseman and Fraser was dreadful as you'd expect.

 

[yubbers]

You think that differential in plus minus might be skewed by empty net goals? Cause that would always include Bozzy and Phaneuf on the ice

 

[4thline]

You think that differential in plus minus might be skewed by empty net goals? Cause that would always include Bozzy and Phaneuf on the ice

That's a good point I hadn't considered that. I had 5v5 selected but possibly the site does not remove 6v5 from that. Even if that was included though I don't know how much skew i would expect as the 3 year comparison was exclusively against the top 25 scorers, only a handful of which are last minute defenders, + empty net goals against per team average out to only about 9 per year (not actually tracked anywhere i could find

 

[PuckMagi]

When Phaneuf wasn't playing with Franson, I think he was playing a lot with Brewer IIRC. That's jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Brewer was absolutely brutal and was a key member of the tank. Anyone on the ice at the same time as Brewer isn't going to have good stats.

Phaneuf has never really played with anyone good since he got here. He's been playing with guys like young Kostka, young Holzer, a developing Gunnar, Franson, etc. When you put him with fringe NHLers or 3rd pairing guys, he's not going to look amazing. Let's see what Phaneuf can do with someone like Gardiner or Rielly as a regular partner.

 

[PuckMagi]

If you'd like to that I'd be extremely interested, Puckalytics Super Wowy generator is really cool. I'd question whether or not that will be the case though, because if Gardiner was on with them chances are it was against secondary matchups and they weren't as exposed.
http://www.puckalytics.com/superwowy.html

That's pretty cool.

So if I'm doing this correctly:

When Gardiner was on the ice with Kessel:

GF60 1.53
GA60 2.76

When Gardiner was on the ice without Kessel:

GF60 1.78
GA60 2.16

Therefore, when Kessel was on the ice, Gardiner was a -1.23 per 60
But when Kessel was not on the ice, Gardiner was a -0.38 per 60

So from Gardiner's perspective, when Kessel game on the ice, the leafs scored fewer goals, and more goals were scored against the leafs.

Just as I had suspected, Kessel and the first line was really dragging guys like Gardiner down and a big reason why Gardiner was a -23 is because of Kessel and the first line.

 

[yubbers]

Just as I suspected

Bahahahaha

Lirl

ROFL

Sorry to burst your bubble but Gardiner is just turrible

 

[yubbers]

Phil and bozak didn't give the pick away for him on the regular in the defensive zone. Unless both Phil and Bozak possess mind control abilities.

 

[4thline]

That's pretty cool.

So if I'm doing this correctly:

When Gardiner was on the ice with Kessel:

GF60 1.53
GA60 2.76

When Gardiner was on the ice without Kessel:

GF60 1.78
GA60 2.16

Therefore, when Kessel was on the ice, Gardiner was a -1.23 per 60
But when Kessel was not on the ice, Gardiner was a -0.38 per 60

So from Gardiner's perspective, when Kessel game on the ice, the leafs scored fewer goals, and more goals were scored against the leafs.

Just as I had suspected, Kessel and the first line was really dragging guys like Gardiner down and a big reason why Gardiner was a -23 is because of Kessel and the first line.

Yeah it's pretty neat. Great for digging up little tidbits like the fact that Phaneufs numbers (CF%, GF%) away from the three amigos mirror those of one Mark Giordano.

You'll be happy though Yubbers, it looks like its not on your boy as much as his sidekick

Going back three years
DP with Bozak no Phil 134 minutes 4GF 10GA GF% 28.6 CF% 33.7
DP with Phil no Bozak 262 minutes16GF 12 GA GF%57.1 CF%40.6%

Further more-also three years (no Dion focus)
Three amigos together


Kessel away from Bozak and JVR
370 minutes 20GF 17GA GF%54 CF% 41.6

JVR away from Bozak and Kessel
461 minutes 18GF 24 GA GF% 42.9 CF %40.4

Bozak away from JVR and Kessel
143 Minutes 7GF 10GA GF%41.2 CF% 35.1

God Bozak has been overmatched as a 1C

 

[PuckMagi]

With Bozak though, you have to realize that the times when he was playing away from Kessel was often when he was brought on in a defensive situation. Maybe he was only coming out to take a draw in his own end, and then try to change as soon as the zone is cleared. Or if we were trying to hold down a lead, we might have Bozak on the ice near the end of the game, but we don't have Kessel on the ice.

So I would imagine that Bozak looks bad on paper without Kessel... but that's because he is always thrown into these really bad situations since we had no one else who could be relied upon for important defensive zone faceoffs.

 

[NotSince67*]

I wonder if part of this is because with Kessel, that line is more likely to be matched against the other teams top players versus while playing with the other lines the matchups are more favourable. Someone else alluded to this but I think the point was lost in the sarcasm.

I mean everybody had to know that if you shut down the Kessel line, you beat the Leafs.

 

[Semantics]

No offense, but I think this analysis is pretty flawed, and I hated that top line.

The phenomenon you describe appears to be mostly PDO driven. Phaneuf's PDO without any of JVR+Bozak+Kessel is 102.4 and with all of them it's 96.1. You'll notice that his CF% doesn't differ by that much, and that's the important thing when you're dealing with such a small sample size as 245 minutes. Compare those stats to the 2013-14 season. Phaneuf had 59.0 GF% with them (104.0 PDO) and 55.3% without them (103.2 PDO).

So which is it... did that line help Phaneuf (2013-14), or did it hold him back (2014-15)? The answer to this apparent contradiction is that you're simply looking at a stat that doesn't have much meaning. GF% is basically +/- adjusted for ice time, and it's known that +/- is mostly influenced by factors outside a player's control. Phaneuf's CF% numbers on the other hand have been consistently bad from year to year regardless of who he's played with and I think those numbers and their derivatives are a much better representation of how good a player he is.

I think Phaneuf, Bozak, Kessel, and JVR are all bad defensively all on their own. None of them should get to excuse their poor defensive play on the others.

 

[Semantics]

I wonder if part of this is because with Kessel, that line is more likely to be matched against the other teams top players versus while playing with the other lines the matchups are more favourable. Someone else alluded to this but I think the point was lost in the sarcasm.

I mean everybody had to know that if you shut down the Kessel line, you beat the Leafs.

QoC difference between the top pairing and the bottom pairing isn't particularly big.

Other teams might try to put their best defenders out against Kessel, but the Leafs will counter by trying to put out Kessel against their worst defenders. At the end of the day it tends to balance out to a large extent.

Zone starts are often thought to have a larger impact than QoC, and Phaneuf got better zone starts with the Kessel line than without.

 

[4thline]

No offense, but I think this analysis is pretty flawed, and I hated that top line.

The phenomenon you describe appears to be mostly PDO driven. Phaneuf's PDO without any of JVR+Bozak+Kessel is 102.4 and with all of them it's 96.1. You'll notice that his CF% doesn't differ by that much, and that's the important thing when you're dealing with such a small sample size as 245 minutes. Compare those stats to the 2013-14 season. Phaneuf had 59.0 GF% with them (104.0 PDO) and 55.3% without them (103.2 PDO).

So which is it... did that line help Phaneuf (2013-14), or did it hold him back (2014-15)? The answer to this apparent contradiction is that you're simply looking at a stat that doesn't have much meaning. GF% is basically +/- adjusted for ice time, and it's known that +/- is mostly influenced by factors outside a player's control. Phaneuf's CF% numbers on the other hand have been consistently bad from year to year regardless of who he's played with and I think those numbers and their derivatives are a much better representation of how good a player he is.

I think Phaneuf, Bozak, Kessel, and JVR are all bad defensively all on their own. None of them should get to excuse their poor defensive play on the others.

No offense taken I welcome the discussion, though I do have a couple of issues. Firstly I have a big problem with the idea that PDO is entirely luck driven, I think that conclusion was lazy on the part of the statistical community. I get that there are a huge amount of confounding factors -namely the constant state of flux that rosters, player usage, and even player ability are in- but we now have ways to control and isolate for that (IF we can find a situation with a big enough sample). I also disagree with the idea that quality of competition levels out. Dion Phaneuf spent fully one third of his even strength iceteam these last three years with atleast one of the top 25 scoring forwards in the league on the ice (3 year running total). That's not gonna balance out. I do think though that because of how static the top end of our roster was over the last three years and how persistent Randy's usage patterns were we can put that idea to the test.

Three years, Dion's even strength ice time against the top 50 scorers of the last three years for GF% GA/60, onice SV% and CF%.
Measured by total time, time with all of JVR,Kessel,and Bozak, Time with none of them, time with Bozak, time without Bozak.

I predict that Bozak, JVR, and Kessel will have a negative effect on the on ice save percentage, and by extension GA/60 and possibly GF%, suggesting -but not proving- that PDO is not entirely luck driven and can be influenced by poor defensive ability.

PM if you want to split up the work, I'd love help on this , going to get to it when I have time.

Teaser (no top 50 scorer control):
Last three years
Dion with all SV% 90.52 GF%45.3 CF%44.1 800 min
Dion with none SV%94.16 GF%56.3 CF% 44 1700 min

 

[Nithoniniel]

What do you mean not very frequent? They were near the top for zone exits/60. Kessel was only behind a very limited sample for D'Amigo. Granted, having a lot of exit attempts/60 isn't necessarily a good thing - it could just be a sign of being in your own zone too often - but I don't know how you can spin having a high percentage as being a bad thing or a sign of cheating. What other statistics do those numbers not mesh with?

I am not comfortable with saying they fail the "eye test" since they were literally measured by a guy watching every single zone exit.

I also don't buy the suggestion that this is just because Kessel and JVR were always waiting for the perfect stretch pass to spring a break. That would suggest that stretch passes are high percentage plays, which I find counter-intuitive. Also if they were waiting for a pass outside of the blue line I think that would have been logged as a successful pass exit for whoever passed it to them (probably a defenseman since Bozak rarely ever did anything).

Oh, and there wasn't an awful lot separating Gardiner, Phaneuf and Gunnarsson in their numbers. Rielly was a bit above every other defenseman and Fraser was dreadful as you'd expect.

They were not frequent in the amount of touches. That is they didn't get involved a lot in breakout attempts. Instead they were pretty inactive, but highly successful when they did get the puck. That's of course not a bad thing, but we already know that Kessel was good at getting the puck up the ice once it was on his stick, didn't we?

As for the eye test, what I meant was that watching them gave the impression that they were on the whole not very good at supporting the breakout. I don't see how that has anything to do with how the data was collected. Of course it's by watching the games. But measuring data and trying to take in and analyze things as a whole is not necessarily the same thing.

You are right about the stretch passes. I didn't quite mean it like that. I meant more than Kessel and JVR don't get involved a lot (few touches), but are focused in their positioning and support (lack thereof) to get the puck in a place where they can use creativity and skating to move the puck up the ice. Since they'll do almost all zone exits because of this, they get high zone exits/60. Since they are damn good at it, they get high success rate.

That Rielly is terrific at zone exits isn't exactly news though. It's one of his greatest qualities. One could theorize that he wouldn't get as many if he played with the top line more though, as that shifts the roles around.

Phaneuf has decent (top-end 2nd pair) offensive numbers, but is one of the worst defencemen in the game today defensively, and in controlling the play.

Without Franson, he was completely exposed, and was one of the principal reasons the Leafs dropped off
so badly. Horachek didn't stand a chance icing Dion against top-9 attackers.

See how awful possession was after Franson was traded:

Everyone knows Randy Carlyle was an awful coach. Horachek actually had them up to breaking even on possession. Then, they traded Franson, Dion is exposed, and they are never able to advance the flow of play.

I agree with most that a shakeup needed to occur, but they traded the wrong guy. Kessel at $8m doesn't really hurt you for what he provides, but Phaneuf at $7m has negative value. They should have taken anything at all for Phaneuf.

I don't completely agree, and I touch on this at the first page, which started this whole discussion on breakouts. I feel that our forwards and system left our D-men with only one way to facilitate a breakout, and that was by skating yourself out of trouble. Where I feel the PPP article misses on this discussion is that breakouts are often about working up time and space for someone on your team to break the forecheck. It's not all about who carried it out, or who made the pass out. That guy could be the least important guy to the breakout.

The normal way is to move the puck along the board or to supporting center so that the forecheck can't keep up, and then the guy who find himself some space and time move it to a winger, or to the center, who then take it out. I think our support from forwards were so bad that most of our D-men were just throwing the puck away along the boards hoping for the best, as there were no alternatives. The only way to control the flow of events for the D-man is to use their skating, cause separation and give themselves that time and space. Gardiner can do this, and I think it's one of the reasons his defensive metrics are so terrific. Phaneuf can't, and I think it's one of the reasons his are so horrific.

That's more damning of the team and system than it is for the individual D-men in my opinion.

Just as I suspected

Bahahahaha

Lirl

ROFL

Sorry to burst your bubble but Gardiner is just turrible

Well argued as always, Yubbers.

No offense taken I welcome the discussion, though I do have a couple of issues. Firstly I have a big problem with the idea that PDO is entirely luck driven, I think that conclusion was lazy on the part of the statistical community. I get that there are a huge amount of confounding factors -namely the constant state of flux that rosters, player usage, and even player ability are in- but we now have ways to control and isolate for that (IF we can find a situation with a big enough sample). I also disagree with the idea that quality of competition levels out. Dion Phaneuf spent fully one third of his even strength iceteam these last three years with atleast one of the top 25 scoring forwards in the league on the ice (3 year running total). That's not gonna balance out. I do think though that because of how static the top end of our roster was over the last three years and how persistent Randy's usage patterns were we can put that idea to the test.

Three years, Dion's even strength ice time against the top 50 scorers of the last three years for GF% GA/60, onice SV% and CF%.
Measured by total time, time with all of JVR,Kessel,and Bozak, Time with none of them, time with Bozak, time without Bozak.

I predict that Bozak, JVR, and Kessel will have a negative effect on the on ice save percentage, and by extension GA/60 and possibly GF%, suggesting -but not proving- that PDO is not entirely luck driven and can be influenced by poor defensive ability.

PM if you want to split up the work, I'd love help on this , going to get to it when I have time.

Teaser (no top 50 scorer control):
Last three years
Dion with all SV% 90.52 GF%45.3 CF%44.1 800 min
Dion with none SV%94.16 GF%56.3 CF% 44 1700 min

I think everybody is open to the idea that there's an effect on quality, but the numbers are just not there. I have a statistical database that includes PDO numbers by year and for career, and it is rather enlightening. Over the course of their careers, PDO barely differ between D-men, and the trainwreck of a physical D-man on the bottom pairing might very well end up beating the two-way stalwart in career PDO as well.

It's most likely not only luck, and it might very well be that players have an effect. We do know that it's not big enough that you can actually see quality differences when the sample sizes get better though. I don't know how to look past that.

The only place where you notice actual differences is in the effect forwards have on on-ice shooting percentage.

Whatever it is that drives differences in on-ice saving percentage, other than the goaltender, it is not something that players can control from what we know.

 

[BrannigansLaw]

I have a massive problem with HERO charts as any kind of conclusive proof. Geat snapshot but not near enough control. So teammates defensive metrics go down when they join dion, might that have something to do with the fact they're joining him against much superior competition?
The fact is that if you want to take the time you can actually isolate a players impact minute by minute, with and without certain teammates, against and not against certain opposion

You say that Phaneuf was the reason for the dropoff, but how can that be when even then-without Franson- he was +4 with 46.5%CF in 240 minutes away from Bozak and the top line and -10 with 45.7CF% in 110 minutes with Bozak and the top line

Phaneuf sucks.

 

[WestCoastLeafs]

DP with Bozak no Phil 134 minutes 4GF 10GA GF% 28.6 CF% 33.7

Bozak away from JVR and Kessel
143 Minutes 7GF 10GA GF%41.2 CF% 35.1

Doesn't mean much if you don't consider the utilization. If Bozak is on the ice and Kessel isn't, it's probably for a d-zone draw, in a shutdown situation.

Even if you correct for zone starts, you're still not getting an accurate picture because Bozak would also often go to the bench if the Leafs cleared the zone.

So you're including scenarios where he can either lose the draw (which happens close to half the time) and probably gets shots against and possibly a goal against, or wins the draw and goes to the bench (with little/no opportunity for SF or GF).

Furthermore, his heavy minutes protecting leads (which the Leafs didn't exactly achieve via puck possession) also hurt his away-from-Kessel minutes.

Bottom line: we'll seee a lower-point-getting Bozak this year, but all his minutes are going to be away-from-Kessel minutes now, and I don't think we're going to see the same numbers as we have in the past. (If he ends up paired with JVR that still has the potential to be a bit of a nightmare though.)

 

[4thline]

Phaneuf sucks.

Such insight.

Doesn't mean much if you don't consider the utilization. If Bozak is on the ice and Kessel isn't, it's probably for a d-zone draw, in a shutdown situation.

Even if you correct for zone starts, you're still not getting an accurate picture because Bozak would also often go to the bench if the Leafs cleared the zone.

So you're including scenarios where he can either lose the draw (which happens close to half the time) and probably gets shots against and possibly a goal against, or wins the draw and goes to the bench (with little/no opportunity for SF or GF).

Furthermore, his heavy minutes protecting leads (which the Leafs didn't exactly achieve via puck possession) also hurt his away-from-Kessel minutes.

Bottom line: we'll seee a lower-point-getting Bozak this year, but all his minutes are going to be away-from-Kessel minutes now, and I don't think we're going to see the same numbers as we have in the past. (If he ends up paired with JVR that still has the potential to be a bit of a nightmare though.)

That's all very true, when I do a more in depth three year analysis I'm going to attempt to control for usage by only comparing all of them vs none of them, and by only counting icetime with atleast one top 50 scoring forward one the ice against them.

 

[4thline]

I think everybody is open to the idea that there's an effect on quality, but the numbers are just not there. I have a statistical database that includes PDO numbers by year and for career, and it is rather enlightening. Over the course of their careers, PDO barely differ between D-men, and the trainwreck of a physical D-man on the bottom pairing might very well end up beating the two-way stalwart in career PDO as well.

It's most likely not only luck, and it might very well be that players have an effect. We do know that it's not big enough that you can actually see quality differences when the sample sizes get better though. I don't know how to look past that.

The only place where you notice actual differences is in the effect forwards have on on-ice shooting percentage.

Whatever it is that drives differences in on-ice saving percentage, other than the goaltender, it is not something that players can control from what we know.

Generally speaking the problem is that as the sample size gets bigger the noise increases by a lot. Far too much roster and usage flux from year to year, which is why there will never be an identifiable relationship on the macro level.

That's what why I think the Carlyle era has such utility in exploring this. I know for example that Dion has over 1000 of his even strength 3000 minutes over the last three years with at least 1 of the top 25 scorers in hockey. I'm going to expand that to the top 50, maybe beyond, and then see what his numbers are with the three and without.

We can actually see that Dion's on ice save % is consistently 3-5% lower with all three of those forwards on the ice than with none of them over the last three years, in a 1700 minute vs 800minute sample (approx 890 vs 490 shots against). That's not insignificant. He's played 900 minutes more without them than with them, yet only been on the ice for 5 more goals against, with a comparable CF%. On the margin that's pretty damning. The next step IMO is to control for competition. Which I'm gonna start working on.

 

[RyanOhReally]

Do people actually expect Dion's numbers to look good from last year? He was playing with Eric Brewer on the top line against top line players. And that's not 2002 Eric Brewer, that's 2015, slow, fall-down-when-someone-skates-by-you Eric Brewer.

When it comes to Dion, numbers from last year aren't fair to judge him by. Heck, Jay Bouwmeester was awful, wasn't worth his contract until he was sent to St. Louis.

Dion is a top line defenceman, but he needs another top line partner. He's performed well with Kostka, Gunnarsson and Franson; let's see how he does with an Alex Pietrangelo/Drew Doughty, or at least an Erik Johnson

 

[Suntouchable13]

Do people actually expect Dion's numbers to look good from last year? He was playing with Eric Brewer on the top line against top line players. And that's not 2002 Eric Brewer, that's 2015, slow, fall-down-when-someone-skates-by-you Eric Brewer.

When it comes to Dion, numbers from last year aren't fair to judge him by. Heck, Jay Bouwmeester was awful, wasn't worth his contract until he was sent to St. Louis.

Dion is a top line defenceman, but he needs another top line partner. He's performed well with Kostka, Gunnarsson and Franson; let's see how he does with an Alex Pietrangelo/Drew Doughty, or at least an Erik Johnson

That was for what? 10 games or something?

 

[Rants Mulliniks]

Looking at some WOWY's today and something jumped out at me.

Clearly WOWYs means different things to you and me. I was expecting a NSFW thread.....

 

[Nithoniniel]

Generally speaking the problem is that as the sample size gets bigger the noise increases by a lot. Far too much roster and usage flux from year to year, which is why there will never be an identifiable relationship on the macro level.

That's what why I think the Carlyle era has such utility in exploring this. I know for example that Dion has over 1000 of his even strength 3000 minutes over the last three years with at least 1 of the top 25 scorers in hockey. I'm going to expand that to the top 50, maybe beyond, and then see what his numbers are with the three and without.

We can actually see that Dion's on ice save % is consistently 3-5% lower with all three of those forwards on the ice than with none of them over the last three years, in a 1700 minute vs 800minute sample (approx 890 vs 490 shots against). That's not insignificant. He's played 900 minutes more without them than with them, yet only been on the ice for 5 more goals against, with a comparable CF%. On the margin that's pretty damning. The next step IMO is to control for competition. Which I'm gonna start working on.

The problem is that you get the Stepan-problem either way. That is that even if you find a difference that is sustainable over a large enough sample size, you can't know that this is not simply an extreme result of noise either way. Over the whole league and all combinations of players, there is bound to be some with a big difference like the one you describe even with a good sample size.

Don't get me wrong, it would definitely be interesting and worth taking note of if there is such a big difference because of the reasons you mentioned previously, but I don't think it means we know there's an effect hidden deep.

 

[The_Chosen_One]

So Dion plays like a top line d-man when he's not playing against other top lines?

That would make sense if Kessel's line actually took on top lines. It didn't at all. Sure defensive zone starts were lower than Kane but we're not talking about a Toews-line here.

Dion, on the other hand, has always been part of the shut down solution. That role up front generally involved either Kadri, Holland, or Santa's solution.

 

[dimi78]

They were not frequent in the amount of touches. That is they didn't get involved a lot in breakout attempts. Instead they were pretty inactive, but highly successful when they did get the puck. That's of course not a bad thing, but we already know that Kessel was good at getting the puck up the ice once it was on his stick, didn't we?

As for the eye test, what I meant was that watching them gave the impression that they were on the whole not very good at supporting the breakout. I don't see how that has anything to do with how the data was collected. Of course it's by watching the games. But measuring data and trying to take in and analyze things as a whole is not necessarily the same thing.

You are right about the stretch passes. I didn't quite mean it like that. I meant more than Kessel and JVR don't get involved a lot (few touches), but are focused in their positioning and support (lack thereof) to get the puck in a place where they can use creativity and skating to move the puck up the ice. Since they'll do almost all zone exits because of this, they get high zone exits/60. Since they are damn good at it, they get high success rate.

That Rielly is terrific at zone exits isn't exactly news though. It's one of his greatest qualities. One could theorize that he wouldn't get as many if he played with the top line more though, as that shifts the roles around.
.

They were not frequent to get touches because they're wingers not centers... Centers and Dmen especially the PMD variety are the ones that are in position to kick start in getting the puck out of zone preferably with possession wingers are the target of the pass to get out in a breakout scheme.

Bozak's low numbers are in relation to why that line had issues defensively because he was got awful in puck support down low for the D and practically useless in exiting the puck himself do to he played a lot of the times as high as his wingers did instead of making himself available with the stick on the ice for a short pass. That's where the eye ball test has failed so many around here and pencil in Kessel and JVR as these god awful defensive forwards when it's the center position that drives most of what happens through out the ice rather it be defensively, the neutral zone or in the offensive zone. The center position is a high impact position in how games are being played and at which way the pendulum of puck possession ie. momentum on the ice is going during a course of the game. The top lines issues are a direct link to Bozak's play at both ends of the ice more so than both JVR or Kessel. That's the nature and the importance of the position although offensively Carlyle effected a lot in why they sucked at puck possession though so there is still some hope we'll see a different Bozak and stats under Babcock... not holding my breath though

I love to read about analytics but there should be some good old x's & o's hockey IQ in delivering those numbers to make any real world sense of it all other wise they're just numbers. Which leads me to what I bold in your post. Kessel and JVR are wingers not centers. That's the job the center failed mercifully from the top line and dragged everybody on the ice down.

 

[Nithoniniel]

They were not frequent to get touches because they're wingers not centers... Centers and Dmen especially the PMD variety are the ones that are in position to kick start in getting the puck out of zone preferably with possession wingers are the target of the pass to get out in a breakout scheme.

Bozak's low numbers are in relation to why that line had issues defensively because he was got awful in puck support down low for the D and practically useless in exiting the puck himself do to he played a lot of the times as high as his wingers did instead of making himself available with the stick on the ice for a short pass. That's where the eye ball test has failed so many around here and pencil in Kessel and JVR as these god awful defensive forwards when it's the center position that drives most of what happens through out the ice rather it be defensively, the neutral zone or in the offensive zone. The center position is a high impact position in how games are being played and at which way the pendulum of puck possession ie. momentum on the ice is going during a course of the game. The top lines issues are a direct link to Bozak's play at both ends of the ice more so than both JVR or Kessel. That's the nature and the importance of the position although offensively Carlyle effected a lot in why they sucked at puck possession though so there is still some hope we'll see a different Bozak and stats under Babcock... not holding my breath though

I love to read about analytics but there should be some good old x's & o's hockey IQ in delivering those numbers to make any real world sense of it all other wise they're just numbers. Which leads me to what I bold in your post. Kessel and JVR are wingers not centers. That's the job the center failed mercifully from the top line and dragged everybody on the ice down.

The wingers of course have lesser responsibility, but that doesn't excuse Kessel and JVR from having few touches compared to other wingers, so I think my premise stands.

Bozak deserves his criticisms but I don't think that should alleviate any blame towards Kessel and JVR. In my opinion, none of them fulfill their responsibilities in the defensive zone. It's just that Bozak's position is more sensitive, so his flaw has a larger impact.