Quote:
Originally Posted by jayswin
I admittedly purposely watch hockey without a significant analytics understanding. All I will say is that by the eye test Brodie looked to have a huge turn around after being paired with Stone and Stone himself seemed to calm our defensive core down. You could just see when you were watching the games.
I don't know, I guess if the cold, calculated side of hockey "watching" says the opposite I'll defer to that, but geez it's hard to see it that way simply from physically watching the games.
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Brodie-Stone had what were probably average shot attempt numbers for their role (defensive skew, playing with younger forward lines). They weren't necessarily a "great" pair (like Giordano-Hamilton or Ekholm-Subban) but they weren't a poor one either
for their role. Their role-adjusted close-score shot attempt percentage of 47.9% wasn't great, but understable and acceptable. But any time you're under 50%, it still means the other team is getting more opportunities to score. Not scoring chances, but shot attempts. And yes, I know the difference and yes I watched the games with my eyes just like you but let's pause and think about it for a second:
What they did have, and what you and I saw - were solid scoring chance numbers as they kept the play to the outside, but even over a full season, scoring chance numbers don't build up to be as sustainable as shot attempt numbers, which have more predictive value for future goals - especially goals against (skill forwards like Laine, Stamkos or Monahan can influence shooting percentages through sheer skill, and vice versa for stone hands fourth liners).
It often happens that teams have high scoring chance numbers over a small sample size despite poor shot attempt numbers, but eventually little details like rebounds and simply preparation/video analysis by opponents cause those scoring chance numbers to eventually follow the shot attempt numbers. If a goalie, like Brian Elliott in February is hot, he's probably on-point with his rebound control which makes perimeter shots just perimeter shots. But what happens when the same goalie is even off his game, which is going to happen at unpredictable points throughout the year?
Bad things. The best thing you can do as a defenseman over a season is limit the opportunities for something like the above to happen.
Even playing seemingly solid defense away from the puck means nothing if the team still gets a puck through to the net - so many dirty goals are scored off deflections and rebounds - at both ends - that a defenseman who might not pass the "eye test" at all, like Jake Gardiner, can be so good at preventing goals.
That's probably why there is not much real evidence to support that defensemen actually influence SV% from year-to-year.
So basically, yes, Brodie and Stone played "well" together, but no, they didn't play
well enough together that we could expect consistently strong results.
A comparable pairing might have been Washington's Alzner-Carlson second pair. Even though Carlson is an elite defenseman, that is a pairing that is simply a bad pairing especially in close score situations, where they only score 51.6% of the goals. Wait, more than half of the goals is a good thing - what am I talking about? I am talking about the fact that a pairing featuring John Carlson (easily a top 30, probably top 20 defenseman), that spends most of its time with
Braden Holtby/Philip Grubauer, Alexander Ovechkin, Nick Backstrom, TJ Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Justin Williams only scored 52% of the goals. Why? Because they only had the puck less than half the time (44.6% of the shot attempts).
All things considered Brodie-Stone were a better pairing than Alzner-Carlson. But neither of these pairings is getting the most out of the good defenseman on the pairing (Brodie / Carlson). Both were pairings that were beneficiaries of shooting-percentage driving forwards (Monahan/Gaudreau/Backstrom/Ovechkin/Oshie), as well as elite goaltending (February Elliott, Holtby).
So yes, Brodie-Stone probably did pass the eye test and you're not wrong to have your opinion that they fit well together. But that doesn't mean the eye test is telling you the right things about the events on the ice.
Hamonic should be an upgrade on Stone, naturally, but I'll reserve judgement to see if he can regain his form from 2014-15. The Travis Hamonic from last year is not much of an upgrade on Stone. But injuries and personal issues may well be to blame. I can't say.