Free agency pitfalls, fanalyst edition

Every year I go into the start of free agency with the goal of not letting it consume my day because for the most part, it’s just teams exchanging depth players with one or two big splashes here and there. Even then, we have an idea of where the more impactful players are going to sign a few days before they’re announces. It always draws me in, though. There’s just something about the constant stream of news & rumors breaking that makes you want to pay attention even if most of it is insignificant at the end of the day.

There was no greater example of that than in 2012, which was my first time “covering” free agency as a blogger. I had all my articles written on Shutdown Line & was prepared for a big day. Then a huge storm happened the night before & knocked out my power for two days. I was so pissed. It was my first time getting to play fake reporter & I was left in the dark on basically everything. Then I opened my computer two days later only to find out that nothing happened. Parise & Suter hadn’t signed yet, the Hurricanes signed Joe Corvo, Sami Salo went to the Lightning, Alexander Semin was still unsigned & that was basically the end of it. I didn’t really learn my lesson the following years, this one included. I was glued my phone or computer for most of the day wanting to fire off the first take about Tyler Pitlick signing with the Coyotes or whatever the latest signing was at the moment.

What always gets me about this day is how much information people like me have to regurgitate & how we have to act like we care about the best interests of every team in the league. I don’t care what the Calgary Flames do 85% of the time, yet I spent at least five minutes staring at their CapFriendly page thinking about what the hell their long-term plan is after signing Jacob Markstrom & Chris Tanev. As analysts, we we’re always the first to question everyone’s team building philosophy and say what could have done better. Hockey is probably the easiest sport to do this in because there are a lot of sub-optimal signings, trades & draft picks made every year. Sometimes I just want to say “not my team, not my problem,” but it doesn’t take much to set off the alarm.

Even with how mundane the signings & trades were this past week, it felt like everything on social media was some dick measuring contest on who could have the most correct take, the prettiest chart or throwing a fit because someone had a slightly incorrect take on a signing. I fell into the trap, as well. You have to pretend you’re an expert on at least 100 players just so you can get a quick word out on Twitter with whatever chart you made with your take added on. I don’t mind it sometimes. Even if you watched the games, it’s hard to throw out a detailed, substantial report out on someone who you last saw in August at the earliest. I know TJ Brodie’s a good puck-mover and a very solid player, but do I really know if he’s a better fit in Toronto than Tyson Barrie?

Defensemen analysis is even trickier for me because I feel like the player’s environment has more of an impact for defenders. Brodie was a mainstay in Calgary for years with Mark Giordano. What’s going to happen when he’s paired with Morgan Rielly? Are the Leafs just getting a less-turnover prone version of Tyson Barrie, or is Brodie good enough to put their team over the top? That’s the only thing that matters for a team like Toronto, right? Going deep in the playoffs? Sometimes I think the old free agency mantra of “acquire good players & sort it out later” isn’t good enough for a team like them who wants to get over the hump.

Same for a team trying to get out of the basement like the New Jersey Devils with bringing in Ryan Murray, who is a top-pairing defender or a third pair guy depending on who you ask. I think Columbus insulates their defensemen to a point (Jack Johnson’s numbers weren’t awful there), while New Jersey seems to be more of a trial by fire type of situation when it comes to fitting defensemen into their system. It’s a venture worth trying for the Devils because they gave up so little & they’re in a position where they can take bets on players like Murray (and Andreas Johnsson) for mid-round picks. I get the argument that they shouldn’t be trying to make the roster better, but I’ve also rooted for teams that have gone this route & got trapped on the eternal rebuild cycle for a decade. The Devils actually won two lotteries and the most lopsided one-for-one trade in recent NHL history and they’re still on this hamster wheel, so I understand being fed up with losing despite doing everything “right” in the off-season.

It’s a tough dance. A signing like Craig Smith is probably the easiest to analyze because you have a guy who scores goals & drives play going to a good team with two great centers for not much money on a three-year deal. There’s a less than 10-percent chance that deal is going to end up poorly. Meanwhile, you have his ex-linemate Kyle Turris going to Edmonton on a two-year contract after the Predators bought him out. What does he need to do for that to be a good signing for the Oilers? Put up 40+ points? Drive play as their third line center? The Oilers got virtually nothing offensively from their third & fourth lines last year, so all Turris needs to do is not get destroyed on the shot ledger & provide 10-15 goals for this to work, right? Or is it better to sign a defensive player like Johan Larsson, who will at least keep the puck out of the defensive zone while McDavid & Draisaitl are on the ice? The Oilers are stuck with players on the wings whose value lives & dies by how many goals they score in Neal & Chiasson. Would a player like Larsson help fix this or will the scoring depth that Turris could add help more?

You can ask the same questions about Tyson Barrie & how much better he makes the Oilers because of the concerns about his defensive play and how he didn’t turn the Leafs into a juggernaut last year. What does he have to do for this to be a successful signing for the Oilers? Run their power play? Drive play on their second pair? Be a good fit with Oscar Klefbom after he returns from injury? Most weren’t happy with how he played for the Leafs even if he was still a good puck-mover last year, albeit not an elite one and prone to the big mistake like most defenders of his ilk are. For all we know he might have an identical season & Oilers fans will be happier with it because of the boost in power play production with McDavid or him simply not being Kris Russell. It might not be concern until it comes time to offer him a second contract, though.

Ultimately I want players to get paid well & put into positions to succeed, which is why I kind of hate the free agency hot take barrage that goes on every free agency period even if most front offices make it fun. It’s easy to point out the flaws in a plan when 30/31 teams fail at the end of the season. I have appreciation for fans that just want to see good, entertaining hockey for a few months with some playoff rounds at the end of the year. I also get the “Cup or Bust” mentality because well, that’s the whole point of this. The Taylor Hall signing is a good example of this. Even with him in the fold, I don’t know what the Sabres plan is after this year, but if I’m a fan I am stoked that they just added someone who might end their playoff drought. As opposed to if they did nothing for the rest of the offseason and tried to hype up Cody Eakin as their big acquisition. You never know which you’re competing with is going to fall off the face of the earth (Hi San Jose!).

Other Hockey Thoughts

• Circling back to the defensemen point, I honestly lose track of which ones are good or bad unless we’re talking about the elites or AHL fringe players. With the data we have now, we can get a good idea of what happens when they’re on the ice & make impressions on what their own impact is, but there always seems to be a lot of fluidity or players who don’t have a huge impact one way or another. Your Olli Maattas of the world if you will. They can play 18-20 minutes every night and you won’t remember much about their game except for a few goals scored off point shots or the occasional mistake that leads to a goal against. I don’t know if Ryan Murray falls into that group or not.
  
  There’s certain defensemen who just exist within their system and get you solid results but have a pretty neutral impact in one way or another. Murray was that until this most recent season where he only played 27 games. He’s always been an above-average player with most of the stats I track too, so I’m inclined to say that he should work in New Jersey since the skill is there. I also think it’s wise of Columbus to move on from him when they have to re-sign Pierre-luc Dubois and can graduate guys like Dean Kukan & Vladislav Gavrikov to play his minutes for not as much money. This goes back to what I said earlier about Columbus protecting their defensemen & how they’re better than most teams at integrating talent.
  
  
• I am not in the camp of the Hurricanes needing to overhaul their goaltending, even though it seems like they’re done with the Mrazek/Reimer tandem. If they were able to sign Corey Crawford it would be a different story, but moving one of them to make a trade for someone like Joonas Korpisalo is an expensive way of rearranging deck chairs. Even if they go big game hunting & trade for Frederik Andersen, I still wouldn’t be a huge fan of it. Most of the want for a goalie like Andersen stems from the goalies letting them down in two particular games. It’s very similar to why some Leafs fans want to move on from Andersen, so I don’t get the desire the team has to make this switch.
  
  
• Is this offseason perfect for the Winnipeg Jets or what? There’s so many random depth players & TJ Galiardi clones on the market for them to sign that they must have been having a field day when free agency opened. Add in the random good move in trading for Paul Stastny and it was the most typical Kevin Cheveldayoff summer I can think of. I wonder if they hope that Stastny can help fix whatever happened with Laine’s goal-scoring falling off the map this year, because that’s the one thing that can get them out of bubble team purgatory if they aren’t going to trade him.
   
• Torey Krug had the most predictable contract of Friday, although I didn’t expect him to have the same cap hit with Justin Faulk given his power play production. I’m not that concerned with him not fitting in with St. Louis even though he’s not the same player Pietrangelo is. I do wonder how Boston will fare without him, though. They always seem to have someone “next in line” to replace whoever is leaving. Krug & Hamilton were there when Seidenberg declined & Boychuk left. Matt Grzelcyk has posted some outstanding numbers on Boston’s third pair for years so logic says that he takes over for Krug on that second pair while they fill the third pair spot from within. I’ve always appreciated his offensive skills and I feel like that will be tough for Boston to replace. Or at least that’s what I thought until I remembered that McAvoy will likely “figure things out” on that power play and the Bruins will remain good for the next decade.
  
  
• How about the Ducks making a great signing for the first time in a few years? They’ve been lurking in the weeds as a rebuilding team since the Carlyle redux fell apart, so the Shattenkirk signing came out of nowhere.
  
  
• I am going to miss having Justin Williams on the Hurricanes. Was the epitome of not needing to be the fastest or the most skilled player on the ice to be successful. He was always in the right spot to receive a pass or deflect in a point shot & always took the quickest routes to loose pucks. He has more history with the Los Angeles Kings than the Hurricanes, but he might be the most popular player in the fanbase despite that. There was just something about him always scoring that big goal or making that one key play when the team needed it the most. Then there’s the antics, can’t forget about those. I just appreciated him because he has all the intangibles that the 200 Hockey Men spew wax poetic about and he’s actually good at the sport.
  
  How many years did he score 20+ goals or have at least 50 points? He was one of the best play-driving wingers in the NHL for over a decade, while he was in his 30’s! This isn’t even getting into how he had most of his best seasons after recovering from two knee surgeries & a torn Achilles. It’s hard to think of a good comparable for him because he’s had such an abnormal timeline & players peak earlier than they ever did before now. You have those rugged, goal-scorers like David Backes & Andrew Ladd who fit the Williams mold while they were in their prime years. Injuries & age sadly took their toll on both of them & they’re both limited in what they can do now. Williams somehow avoided that & didn’t miss a game for the latter part of his career. He’s a unique player in that sense.
  
  With that being said, I am not looking forward to the “the team misses Williams leadership” diatribes that are going to happen when the Canes go on their first losing streak next season. It’s coming, you know it.
  
  
• One of the biggest tropes I fall into every year is the idea that a team “needs” to trade someone because they have to get under the cap. We did this with the Golden Knights last year after they spent most of their cap space & draft capital on Stone & Pacioretty. They had to trade Erik Haula & Colin Miller. The former was moved at the deadline & is still a free agent while the other was replaced by rookie Zach Whitecloud in Vegas. Sure, some teams panic by making a move early, which is why Teuvo Teravainen is in Carolina, but it’s usually one of the more expendable contracts that ends up getting dealt or the team in cap trouble ends up stashing some players on LTIR once the season begins. Hell, the Leafs reacquired David Clarkson’s contract last year to increase their LTIR cushion while they were going through their own cap problems. Point is, teams usually find a way out of it & the moves are a hundred times more boring than you trick yourself into believing.
  
  Although, I do want to see how this works out for Vegas this year since they’re apparently about to trade Nate Schmidt to sign Alex Pietrangelo. Schmidt’s been such an important player to them for years.
  
  
• Some team should sign Erik Gustafsson. Not because he’s important or anything, it’s just that I enjoy watching him play and how he has no regard to where a defenseman is supposed to be on the ice. It makes for very fun hockey games. He didn’t play like this at all when the Flames traded for him & it was very disappointing. If you’re acquiring a player for their offense, it’s my opinion that you should just let them roam and accept the consequences later when you’re giving up a breakaway from the red line in.

Missing Pieces

‘Tis the season of free agency and trades. It’s normally a fun time for me because I spend all day posting snapshots of my All Three Zones data highlighting what certain players do well and how they can help their new clubs. This year, things are a little different. My database has grown exponentially the past two years and it’s so much easier to share my work on programs like Tableau now compared to when I was first starting out. More data is good, but it’s also overwhelming.

If there was one thing I loved about CJ Turtoro’s All Three Zones player cards it’s that they were simple and pretty easy to understand. You had three or four stat categories & bars showing how a player ranked compared to the rest of the league. Zone entries, exits & shot contributions are a big part of what drives good results in hockey, so these charts were helpful for providing a quick snapshot of how players performed in terms of transitional play & creating offense. It didn’t capture /everything/ about a player but it wasn’t supposed to. These charts were a huge hit and gave people the first “real” tangible look at my data that wasn’t just Excel columns that I tried spruce up.

The simplicity of the charts were great & why they still have use today, but they were meant to be a supplement to the tested metrics & models we have now rather than a replacement. When I started tracking these stats, the initial goal was to help explain the “why” behind what makes a player a good play-driver and which areas of the game they excel at. Entries, exits & offense are part of that, but obviously not the whole thing. Every year there’s a handful of players whose entry/exit stats don’t line up with the on-ice results, mostly ones by trusted Expected Goals models like Evolving Wild’s and Micah Blake McCurdy’s. One of my favorite follows on Twitter, JFreshHockey, wrote a good article explaining the limitations of this data & why relying on one chart can be misleading, especially when it’s not lining up with their on-ice results.

He brings up the Leafs trading for Tyson Barrie as an example. Barrie’s a player with very spotty on-ice results in terms of Expected Goals, most of which relates to his defensive play. The microstats backed this up to an extent, as he was very poor at defending zone entries but even his offensive impacts were low compared to how many shot assists & zone exits he racked up during his time with the Avalanche. He had a mediocre season in Toronto with his zone exit stats not changing much. What did change was his impact on zone entries, as he didn’t lead many rushes at all and his overall offensive contributions saw a drop as well.

I’ve been skeptical about players from the Avalanche for years because it seems like any player who is a good skater will put up great entry/exit stats there. It’s easy to move the puck up the ice and get into the offensive zone with control when you’re playing with Nathan MacKinnon or Gabriel Landeskog. The Avs play at such a high pace that a defenseman who thinks offense-first like Barrie would thrive on a team like that compared to anywhere else. That said, Toronto is a team that can play a similar style to Colorado, or at least that’s the way it looked on paper.

The Maple Leafs defensemen didn’t enter the zone much at all, the lone exception being Morgan Rielly. Barrie fell in line with the rest of the team and that took away a big part of his game. He also exited the zone at a lower rate (but at a higher percentage) than he did in Colorado, so the two areas he excelled at were mitigated & most of what was highlighted in Toronto was his shoddy defensive zone play and low-percentage offense.

Again, on paper this looked like a trade that could have worked because he filled a need for the Leafs as a right-shot defenseman, but with that one key element of his game taken away his flaws were exposed more. It does beg the question of how valuable a puck-rushing defenseman like Barrie can be if the team he is on is forcing him to stay back. If his defensive play stays what it is, most of his value is going to come from producing chances off the rush & outscoring his problems. If your team isn’t allowing him to do that then, well I don’t know what the point was of acquiring him in the first place.

The Hurricanes faced a similar problem last year when they signed Ryan Dzingel. Needing someone to score goals & help on the rush, he seemed like a good fit on paper and the prevailing thought was that they have enough forwards to insulate his defensive shortcomings. He had an awful season and most of his skill ended up being wasted with him being stuck in the defensive zone for most of his shifts. Carolina is a strong forechecking team that dumps the puck in for most of their entries & Dzingel spent most of the year trying to find his way in a system that he wasn’t a fit for. The Sabres also got burned by this with Marcus Johansson, albeit in a different way because MoJo’s microstats didn’t change much in Buffalo. It’s just that his on-ice impacts have been mediocre despite this for his entire career & he’s always thrived as the second wheel on his line. Whether it’s Evgeny Kuznetsov, Charlie Coyle or Nico Hischier, he played his best when he wasn’t the main driver. Buffalo tried using him as a center and while he was still creating entries & high danger passes, it didn’t help the Sabres improve because they were either not finishing those chances or were just empty calorie plays that didn’t result in anything.

That’s kind of a long tangent, but you get the idea. There’s always more layers to player analysis rather than him just being good at one particular stat. Just ask the Buffalo Sabres. It also gets complicated because there’s different ways to look at zone exit stats. A player could have a high Possession Exit percentage, but it might be with a small workload (see Victor Mete) or mixed in with a lot of turnover (see Oliver Ekman-Larsson & Patrik Laine). At the other end, you have players like Josh Morrissey & Niklas Hjalmarsson who don’t have a lot of clean exits, but don’t turn the puck over either. The same comparison can be made about players who are weak on entries, but strong xG players because they’re great forecheckers. That or they play on a team that places more emphasis on the forecheck instead of attacking off the rush & are just more of a fit stylistically. Think about Tampa Bay this year. They became more of a forechecking compared to previous years & players like Ondrej Palat & Yanni Gourde saw their microstats change as they fit into the new system. What happens if/when they get traded?

The data I track isn’t as detailed as the stuff Sportlogiq or Stathletes puts out, but it’s still a lot to manage. I have nine tabs on my latest Tableau that look at everything from entries, exits, pass types, forechecking & special teams. All of it is displayed in a team-wide view for reasons mentioned above. At some point that gets overwhelming to sort through when there’s 10-20 signings and trades happening in a day. Building a viz with all of this stuff factored in is also a daunting task because if I’m overwhelmed with the amount of variables in front of me I can’t imagine how someone seeing these stats for the first time must think. Especially when I feel like there’s two or three new stats derived from my data coming out on a daily basis that I don’t have much control over. The most I can do is highlight some key points & maybe build on them later because you’re not going to catch everything on social media or with a single dataviz.

Yesterday’s Max Domi-Josh Anderson trade is a good example of this. Domi excels in most categories pertaining to offense (passes, high danger plays, controlled entries, etc.) while struggling defensively. He is also prone to turnovers more than almost any other forward in the league. His skillset might be more valued than that of Josh Anderson, who is more of a straight-line player who was one of Columbus’ best forecheckers the last two seasons. He’s also two years removed from a 27-goal season. Some might look at how the Lightning won and argue that you need players like him down your lineup to win. A counter-point is that there are 20 other teams who have Josh Andersons throughout their lineup and the main reason Tampa won is because of their high-end skill, which is what Domi brings to the table.

I think it’s easy for teams to be happy with a player like Anderson because he’s not going to do a lot to hurt you even if he goes into a shooting slump. He kills penalties, forechecks & is usually on the positive side of the ledger in terms of territorial play. Then you have Domi, whose value is tied into how many points he ends up with at the end of the season. Columbus’ best passer last year finished the season on the Anaheim Ducks & their most dangerous offensive player outside of Pierre-luc Dubois is one of Seth Jones or Zach Werenski. So, it’s easy to see how Domi can help.

A player like him is harder to find, but also tougher to deal with in bad shooting years if their defensive play remains poor. Fans don’t care how many zone entries or high danger passes you’re creating if they’re not resulting in goals. Granted, some of that is out of the player’s control, which is where most of the disagreement is with microstats & stats like Expected Goals.

The most a tracker like me can do is record the events a player is responsible for, so things like defensive zone coverage, shot velocity and other factors that might go into a goal being scored can get lost. It’s just one of five players on the ice, after all. I have my limitations as a tracker, so the data will have its limitations at being able to capture everything. I can’t control how people use it, but the most I can say is to recognize that we’re measuring results & we’re looking for patterns in certain players. Max Domi has shown to be a good passer over four years of data, which is good! Is it good enough to make up for his defensive shortcomings? That’s up to your discretion. Marcus Johansson was also a good passer & a skilled player on zone entries over four years of data. Is that enough to make up for his mediocre stats elsewhere? That’s tougher to say, because Boston & Washington were able to make use of his skillset. Buffalo struggled to do so and now he finds himself on a skeleton of a roster in Minnesota. Jack Hughes is an “elite transition player” because he has been very good at carrying the puck into the zone & making a pass afterward. It hasn’t translated to anything yet, but he was only 18 years old last season so there’s more to work on with him than a player like Pavel Zacha, who has been in the league for years with a pattern of empty calorie plays.

Again, interpret the results for what they are but recognize the limitations, the sample size & the amount of nuance that goes into analyzing a large dataset like this.