Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
Especially over Hamhuis.
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Hamhuis or Vlasic or Bouwmeester, any of them, Subban is clearly better than them. Especially when one of them (currently Hamhuis) is playing 3-5 minutes a night. Do we really not think that PK can add more in 5 minutes than Hamhuis can? Don't get me wrong I've maintained from the start of the tourney that Hamhuis should be one of the top 3 LD-men because of his outlet passing, but if you sat him for PK it'd be at least preferable.
I posted this in the Latvia thread before the game and it remains correct... statistically, here is the comparison between all 7 Canadian D over the past three years.
What those say, in order:
Graph 1: Vlasic, Hamhuis and especially Weber get the toughest defensive assignments in terms of where the coach is starting them. Doughty and Keith get the easiest minutes. PK had one year of very easy minutes, and two years of incredibly tough minutes.
Graph 2: The green bar shows how many shot attempts the other team gets against each defenseman compared to when they're not on the ice, so lower is better. The red bar shows how many shots for a defenseman's team gets when he's on the ice compared to when he's off, so higher is better. Blue is the combined differential. PK basically crushes everyone here, while Keith is surprisingly bad compared to his teammates.
Graph 3: Simply, the number of shot attempts on average surrendered by a d-man's team while he's on the ice. PK's about on par with Doughty, Vlasic, Hamhuis.
Graph 4: The number of shots the opposing team generates while each D-man is on the ice on the penalty kill, compared to the NHL average and the team's average. The only guy better than Subban here is Pietrangelo. Keith is surprisingly awful on the penalty kill, which makes it even more baffling as to why Babcock has him on the FIRST UNIT when they're shorthanded.
There is zero evidence to suggest that PK Subban is "riskier" than his teammates. In fact he's less risky than most of them despite playing on a pretty mediocre Habs team and not getting cushy minutes the way Doughty and Keith do.