Quote:
Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois
How many is 'way more'? It'd be interesting if there is an actual number on that. My sense is Russell gives up 2-3 more chances a game because of his size and either losing a battle or thinking he's about to and rushing a clear. To your point that may mean an extra block or two, but I don't think blocks are really the story.
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Fenwick is a measure of unblocked shot attempts (uSAT). Basically if you or a teammate blocked a shot attempt, you won't get punished by Fenwick. If you failed to block a shot attempt, you recorded a Fenwick event against.
Kris Russell's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 44.67
TJ Brodie's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 38.46
Duncan Keith's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 38.54
So, on average, our goalies see 16% more puck (whether it misses, hits them, goes into the net, or hits iron) when Russell is on the ice than with Brodie on the ice.
But there's some context missing to that, and that's the fact that Keith/Brodie are regularily matched up against top lines that are going to "get theirs" no matter what. Smaller guys like Russell generally see middle pair competition. And yeah, they're smaller so they're at a disadvantage. But are they
all at a disadvantage?
Russell = 44.67
Krug = 40.92
Spurgeon = 40.29
Vatanen = 39.12
Stralman = 35.13
Ellis = 32.76
I selected these guys because they're all smaller middle-pair defensemen (Former Flame Anton Stralman plays top pair with Hedman and Spurgeon does too with Suter). You can see that some of them post better stats than even Brodie/Keith but we'll chalk that down to things like deployment/competition. However. Russell. Gets. Killed.
In a stat that's supposed to favor shot blockers. If Russell were a better puck mover with tighter gap control, he would block less shots even at his current size, because he would have the puck more often.