In this Super Sized Free Agency Podcast Special (with Bonus Laugh Track), the Ladies get an eyeful of Tyler Seguin, discuss the Stars’ Draft, dissect the “interesting” moves of Free Agency, and our readers ask us serious questions?????
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Supplemental Materials
Just yesterday I published a set of charts showing scoring chances relative over time for the forwards, and now I have a similar set for defenders. These charts show Fenwick For % Relative to a player’s team, but show the change over time per salary band.
Why Fenwick? Well, by removing blocked shots from the analysis, we can get a better idea of how good the defender is at shot suppression. If they’re blocking shots (as shown by Corsi) then they’re letting the opposing team get into a shooting lane with the puck, and that’s less than ideal.
The most important thing to know when reading these charts is that a higher Fenwick For % Relative is better, just like a higher Scoring Chance For % Relative is better for forwards. And if your team isn’t positive, you’ll want them to at least be higher than the league average.
Here are the NHL Averages:
And here’s another Salary Band post, comparing Relative Scoring Chances For % over time. Some teams have trends, some you can see have guys from ELCs move into big contracts, etc. Despite the emergence of analytics over the last few years, there hasn’t been much of a change in GM behavior from 2006 to now.
Here is the NHL Average chart:
Alright, I know y’all have been waiting with bated breath for the follow up post and more charts! Everyone loves charts!
Here are the NHL Salary Band Charts for all 30 teams for Defensemen with over 500 minutes. Again, this is historical salary data, not cap hit, from 2006-2015 in all situations, because penalty kill & power play time are important when signing a player. Because it’s an average of every contract a team has touched during this timeframe, usually there is more than one player per band, so it’s intended to be an overarching view of how GMs value Dmen, not a measure of whether a specific player is good or not (though you can pick out a couple players in the higher price bands. Hi, Ryan Suter!).
Unlike the forwards, there is very little consensus across teams on what Dmen should be paid for the kind of work they do, so the usage charts are all over the place.
To kick things off, here are the NHL averages:
NHL Averages
So yesterday I posted a bunch of charts to twitter breaking down salaries, not cap hits, by price ranges, in an effort to help us better evaluate the historical effectiveness of our teams’ GMs.
First, please remember these charts are forwards only. Points per 60 and Primary Points per 60 (Goals+Primary Asissts per 60 minutes played) are not particularly good evaluators of Defensemen, as that’s not the function of that role.
Second, these charts are in all situations played, including penalty kill and power play time. Why not use 5v5? Because players get paid for work on special teams, too.
Last, this includes (hopefully) every single contract that a team has touched within the span of 2006-15. These tools are meant more as a way to evaluate GMs than to call out specific players (though it’s pretty easy to figure out who some of them are. Hi Benn! Hi Seguin!)
To give us a jumping off point, here are a breakdown of the NHL averages.
NHL Averages
