Red Wings Defence (Using the "Minus" Score)

[WordsOfWisdom]

I wanted to examine the Detroit Red Wings using the same stat I used on Toronto and the New York Islanders.

 

 

For those of you who didn't see my thread in the Leafs section, the idea behind this is simple: It's a way to examine the defensive skill of a player using only the core/traditional hockey statistics. In this case, it's called "minus" because it's the minus portion of +/-.  The scores never look pretty, and are usually negative, but higher is better. 

 

The Defence (Minus) stat is calculated as follows:   +/-    -  (PTS - PPG - PPA).

(In other words, we want to find even strength points because those are the points that raise a player's +/-, and they get docked.)

 

So according to the stat, Athanasiou is Detroit's weakest defensive player by a mile. Now, I don't watch the Red Wings... but for people that do.... does that ring true with what you're seeing on the ice?

 

Now obviously some of the highest scorers on the team tend to clump towards the bottom. However, these usually aren't the best defensive players on a team anyway, so it makes sense.   

[SpikeDDS]

@WordsOfWisdom

 

Unfortunately, that stat isn’t too far off, but it could partially be by design.

 

Last year, because we were so short at center, an experiment took place where Athanasiou (AA from now on) was tried at center. There was another purpose behind this too—to try to teach him the defensive responsibilities one must have even as a forward. At first, he was DREADFUL! I’m not sure he had ever been told to take his foot off of the offensive gas pedal before, but now that was what he was being asked to do and it was clear he didn’t know how instinctually. He would have to learn to do that. As the second half of the season, two things happened: 1. He got better defensively. 2. He ALSO got better offensively.

 

But center is not his natural position, and so in the off-season, it was decided that AA would be put back in his natural position at wing and lower line centers would be brought in or up to fill that void at center. The hope was that AA would remember what he learned and still do at least SOME of it while on the wing. He hasn’t. He is right back to playing the way he was before, except now our D is LESS able to make that first pass to break him out up front, so his offense no longer makes up for his defensive lapses. Cherry-picking only works when you have people who are able to send you that puck from out of your own zone. We don’t have that this season, nor will we for the next couple of seasons either. 

 

And so the ridiculous +/- is the result of that. I do think it is skewed at his expense because we are so low in talent on D, but he just can’t seem to adapt his game to be more responsible, and now they are just hoping he can bet a few goals just to try to make tickets a little bit more enticing for fans. On a team with a much stronger D who can activate him, he would be a terror! Dude has speed and skills! But he’s not going to get the kind of help from the back end that he will need to play beat his potential on the Red Wings for at least 3 seasons. And unless he is managed right, and forcefully directed to play a more responsible defensive game, he won’t. 

 

I predict he will eventually at some point be traded for this reason, and some team, who has the talent to feed him, will be the better for it. 

[WordsOfWisdom]

1 hour ago, SpikeDDS said:

But center is not his natural position, and so in the off-season, it was decided that AA would be put back in his natural position at wing and lower line centers would be brought in or up to fill that void at center. The hope was that AA would remember what he learned and still do at least SOME of it while on the wing. He hasn’t. He is right back to playing the way he was before, except now our D is LESS able to make that first pass to break him out up front, so his offense no longer makes up for his defensive lapses.

 

He starts off with the worst +/- score on the team (worst in the league actually) and then his non-powerplay offence gets subtracted from that to give -47  (also worst in the league).  So Detroit's worst "line" (using the defined positions in the list) defensively would be:

• Bertuzzi (LW)
• Athanasiou (C)
• Mantha (RW)
• Hronek (D)
• Cholowski (D)

If those five guys are on the ice, Detroit is in a world of hurt. 

[SpikeDDS]

@WordsOfWisdom

 

It is actually WORSE for AA when you take into consideration that of the people on the list, AA and Cholo are the only two not regularly matched up against top-line opponents.

 

That Cholo was on the list didn’t surprise me one iota. He has been close to dreadful. He is a giveaway machine. And it’s easy to see.

 

AA isn’t as easy to see unless you are paying attention to who is missing assignments. He has fewer bad giveaways in the D zone, but tries to cheat too much and ends up by the red line a lot while his man either scores or assists.

 

And let’s be honest: ANY 5 we out out on the ice right now puts us in a world of hurt!

 

And than heavens for the Christmas break, because Mantha and Adam Erne just went down along with Bernier. This keeps up, we will be calling up kids from Juniors! ;-D 

Edited December 24, 2019 by SpikeDDS