Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe
There was a bit of arguments back and forth on the "Flames Exploring Trade Options" thread that was a bit off-topic there, and feel this post is better suited here.
Some advanced stats comparing Colborne with Backlund - so people who roll their eyes and hate this, just skip this post please
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But it's important to realize how heavily the stats have been skewed simply because of the start of the season. Backlund had played roughly half of his 246 total minutes of even strength ice-time in the first 8 games.
7 of those games were when Stajan was out of the line up and the center depth was Backlund and 3 rookies, Monahan, Street and Colborne. So during that stretch he was getting 20 minutes of ice time and did have the hardest competition pretty much by default as the veteran player. As the season went on Monahan and Colborne were given more responsibilities in the form of ice-time and Street was sent down in favour of a healthy Stajan. So those stats in terms of quality of competition and defensive zone starts would probably change quite heavily if you looked at them once the team "normalized" in maybe the last month or 10 games or so. Some are still pretty nice stats to have in any context, like his offensive zone finishes - offensive zone starts but it's not all that different from Galiardi (which makes sense since they've played the most together).
And when it comes down to it, Colborne and Backlund have had near identical linemates throughout the season on ES. Backlund has played ~50% of his time with Galiardi, so has Colborne. Backlund and Colborne (within a percent or two) have played nearly the same amount with McGrattan, Jackman, Bouma and Jones. The only noticeable difference between the two is that Backlund had played a lot with Hudler while Colborne has played a lot with Cammalleri. And yet when Colborne is on the ice his teammates generate (pro-rated over 60 minutes) nearly a goal more than when Backlund is on the ice
and get scored on less. A big part of that surely has to be because of the difference in offensive zone starts, but there is room to say that Colborne has a greater positive effect on his teammates than Backlund based on that data.
Of course we're still at the point where one or two good games for either player could change the stats quite a bit.