Ended up diving deeper into Coleman after seeing so many tantrums between here and HFFlames. Especially seeing lots of people comparing this to Brouwer/Neal.
Whereas those deals were immediately crucified by the analytics community, Coleman is beloved by the analytics community for how incredibly well he drives both offense and defense. Comparing him to those 2 atrocities just goes to show some know absolutely nothing about him. He's MUCH closer to a Michael Frolik then those two plugs.
Coleman was one of, if not my top UFA forward target (minus Landeskog), and here's why:
Coleman is a legitimate top 6 forward who not only produces 5v5 offense at an excellent rate, but is elite defensively. He's a true top 6 two-way forward.
On Tampa Bay at 5v5, Coleman produced, among forwards:
- 0.80 goals per 60 (5th)
- 1.24 assists per 60 (3rd)
- 2.04 points per 60 (4th)
Chance wise, individually, he produced:
- 0.68 ixGF/60 (4th)
- 8.89 iSCF/60 (2nd)
- 3.82 iHDCF/60 (3rd)
He also produced 1.07 drawn penalties per 60 (3rd)
Analytically, he was absolutely dominant:
Offensively (positive is good):
- 5.79 Rel CF/60 (3rd)
- 6.84 Rel FF/60 (2nd)
- 6.7 Rel SF/60 (2nd)
- 0.39 Rel xGF/60 (1st)
- 3.49 Rel SCF/60 (2nd)
- 2.47 Rel HDCF/60 (3rd)
Defensively (negative is good):
- -3.54 Rel CA/60 (2nd)
- -2.89 Rel FA/60 (2nd)
- -2.15 Rel SA/60 (2nd)
- -0.18 Rel xGA/60 (2nd)
- -2.21 Rel SCA/60 (1st)
- -1.01 Rel HDCA/60 (3rd)
Overall (positive is good):
- 4.46 Rel CF% (2nd)
- 5.96 Rel FF% (1st)
- 7.23 Rel SF% (1st)
- 6.44 Rel xGF% (1st)
- 5.30 Rel SCF% (2nd)
- 8.36 Rel HDCF% (2nd)
All despite having the 3rd lowest Offensize Zone Start % (48.76%).
To recap, Coleman was:
- a top 5 Tampa forward in terms of 5v5 offense rates
- a top 4 Tampa forward in terms of individual chance creation
- a top 3 Tampa forward in terms of driving offense
- a top 3 Tampa forward in terms of driving defense
- a top 2 Tampa forward in terms of overall driving ability
On a back-to-back Stanley Cup winning team, Coleman was incredibly effective at 5v5 and one of Tampa Bay's very best 5v5 forwards, both offensively AND defensively.
$4.9M is more than okay for what he brings.
Is the term a year or two longer than I hoped? Yes, but it's very likely that he lives up to his contract (or quite possibly even outperforms it) for the first 3-4 (maybe 5) years.
For those of you that like charts:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1420414672952508416
https://twitter.com/user/status/1420418873535389697
Final verdict: I love me some Blake Coleman