Player Discussion Sens sign free wallet defenseman Nikolas Matinpalo

[HSF]

I would keep him as the number 6 D. He obvi has experience. Hamonic can be the extra and JBD no idea. Maybe trade him for some help upfront. Or keep two extra D

 

[branch]

I like his game. Nice and quiet. Good at boxing guys out.

 

[bicboi64]

Loving him stepping up as a 6D, makes JBD being out long term easier to handle.

 

[Xspyrit]

If you're going to compare defensive metrics, you need to control for variables. Hamonic played a lot slotted too high, in much tougher deployment than JBD or Matinpalo, he also played a lot of that when the goaltending was not doing well, unlike Matinpalo who's come in with Levi playing great.

If you want to try and control for that, one way to go might be looking at how each of them played while paired with Kleven,

[td]
With Kleven

[/td]
[td]
TOI With

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[td]
xGF/60

[/td]
[td]
xGA/60

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[td]
xGF% With

[/td]
[td]
Travis Hamonic

[/td]​

[td]
124.10

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[td]
1.49

[/td]
[td]
1.90

[/td]
[td]
43.93

[/td]​

[td]
Nikolas Matinpalo

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[td]
85.75

[/td]
[td]
1.71

[/td]
[td]
2.26

[/td]
[td]
43.08

[/td]​

[td]
Jacob Bernard-Docker

[/td]​

[td]
259.28

[/td]
[td]
1.70

[/td]
[td]
2.37

[/td]
[td]
41.75

[/td]​

Kleven has also grown as a player over the year, so there's probably a bit of that impacting the numbers, no comparison is going to control for all the variables, but I do think we you apply a bit of control to the analysis, there's a strong argument to be made that Hamonic has been better than JBD.

Matinpalo has looked solid so far, small sample though, so tough to judge, I don't think our depth on D is actually all that bad, we have 4 guys in Hamonic, Sebrango, JBD and Matinpalo that can all play at this level. The issue imo is only Kleven is at a level where I'm comfortable with him moving up the lineup into the top 4.

The numbers are still hard to read. I'm comfortable with the Top-6 as it is right now. JBD, Sebrango and Hamonic as replacements, all good for me.

 

[ReginKarlssonLehner]

Loving him stepping up as a 6D, makes JBD being out long term easier to handle.

Lowkey better than JBD in everyway lool.

 

[Micklebot]

The numbers are still hard to read. I'm comfortable with the Top-6 as it is right now. JBD, Sebrango and Hamonic as replacements, all good for me.

I fixed the table (sort of). It seems the update killed copying tables in from spreadsheets...

 

[bicboi64]

Lowkey better than JBD in everyway lool.

100% agree. If Matinpalo keeps this up, we're set for RD until Yak breaks into the line up