Which three defensemen should we protect?

[Wabit]

I'd say Dumba's absolute ceiling is more like PK Subban than anyone else. Dumba is better now than I ever remember Zidlicky being.

I'd agree with the absolute ceiling of PK, but I don't see him reaching that. I see him as a lesser John Klingberg currently.

 

[NotYou]

Suter spurgeon and brodin. Sweeten the pot with haula+ whatever else is needed to have Vegas take scandella. I think dumba gets way too much crap for his defense around here, I don't want to lose him.

If a MacKinnon like forward can be had after the draft for a forward and a defenseman, do it. Trading before the xdraft is a bad idea though.

 

[Dickie Dunn]

Suter, Spurgeon, Brodin for me and it's an easy choice. But I haven't bought into the Dumba hype.

 

[ThatGuy22]

He got WAY more pp time than he ever should have. He was an absolute liability on the PP in the 2nd half.

Fun fact. Brodin played less 5v5 minutes than Dumba, but had more 5v5 points.

 

[nickschultzfan]

Fun fact. Brodin played less 5v5 minutes than Dumba, but had more 5v5 points.

I felt a great disturbance in the Dumba Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[Slow clap]

 

[Eye Floater]

We need to keep our best players.

Our three best defensemen are Suter, Spurgeon, and Brodin.

A d-man's job, first and foremost, is to keep the puck out of their own net. Those three are the best at it. Offense from D (Dumba) is a bonus, not a necessity.

 

[nickschultzfan]

I'd say Dumba's absolute ceiling is more like PK Subban than anyone else. Dumba is better now than I ever remember Zidlicky being.

Subban was arguably the Habs best playoff performer in his rookie season after he only played 2 regular season games. Yes, he had a few up-and-down early seasons, but he was dynamic and often dominate from the very beginning. He could rush the puck and had a bomb, but he was also rangy, could shield the puck, and was generally calm under high pressure.

I just have never seen that from Dumba.

I am not being that tongue-and-cheek with the Zidlicky comparison. That guy was an established #4 Dman for many years while putting up multiple 40+ point seasons and being a RHS trigger man on the 1st PP. He was a superstar in Europe when he was younger, was at times feisty, and could handle big minutes. However, he had a ceiling on his defensive game, his size limited his effectiveness in both range and handling bigger forwards, and he made some really bad decisions under pressure.

Dumba has been in the NHL for 4 seasons and has never put in more than 34 points, nor taken over a game like Subban, Burns, and Karlsson did. I haven't seen anything that suggests he is a slightly more physical version of Zidlicky rather than the very lofty comparisons that are thrown around here.

 

[Goose312]

Spurgeons size is a con and any GM who doesn't look at the the pros and cons of the players he chooses isn't doing his job.

Gaudreau's small too, but who gives a ****? It matters at the draft, doesn't matter once you know whether their size limits them in the NHL.

 

[Digitalbooya]

Fun fact. Brodin played less 5v5 minutes than Dumba, but had more 5v5 points.

Also a fun fact: Dumba had more even strength points than Brodin.

More fun 5v5 facts: GF60 (goals scored when player is on the ice):
Dumba: 2.98 (1st on Wild)
Brodin: 2.56 (5th/4th excluding Reilly)

GA60 (goals scored against while player is on the ice)
Dumba: 2.27 (5th)
Brodin: 2.16 (4th)

Difference(GF%)
Dumba: +.71 (56.8%)
Brodin: +.40 (54.2%)

2015-2016 differences:
Dumba: +.39 (54%)
Brodin: -.15 (47.7%)

2014-2015 differences:
Dumba: +1.15 (60.6%)
Brodin: +.85 (60.2%)

Kinda funny when you look at overall team play when select players are on the ice.

Didn't mean to bring facts into this though #biased

 

[Goose312]

Another fun fact for those two: Over that 3 year span of the 115 defenders that have played 3000+ minutes at 5v5 Dumba has had the 6th highest rate of offensive zone starts. Brodin had the 98th highest.

 

[Digitalbooya]

Subban was arguably the Habs best playoff performer in his rookie season after he only played 2 regular season games. Yes, he had a few up-and-down early seasons, but he was dynamic and often dominate from the very beginning. He could rush the puck and had a bomb, but he was also rangy, could shield the puck, and was generally calm under high pressure.

I just have never seen that from Dumba.

I am not being that tongue-and-cheek with the Zidlicky comparison. That guy was an established #4 Dman for many years while putting up multiple 40+ point seasons and being a RHS trigger man on the 1st PP. He was a superstar in Europe when he was younger, was at times feisty, and could handle big minutes. However, he had a ceiling on his defensive game, his size limited his effectiveness in both range and handling bigger forwards, and he made some really bad decisions under pressure.

Dumba has been in the NHL for 4 seasons and has never put in more than 34 points, nor taken over a game like Subban, Burns, and Karlsson did. I haven't seen anything that suggests he is a slightly more physical version of Zidlicky rather than the very lofty comparisons that are thrown around here.

Notice I said absolute ceiling: meaning if everything started clicking he would be most like Subban of all the players mentioned for his ceiling.

Comparing a young career to a guy like Zidlicky, whom played in a much higher scoring time for the majority of his career, is just unfair. Zidlicky was a fairly consistent minus player as well, Dumba was only minus his rookie 13 game season. Zidlicky was a power play specialist. 9/14 seasons over half his points came on the power play. Dumba's only season where that happened was the rookie year where he played 13 games and both his two points came on the power play. I'd say Dumba's defense is already better right now. No numbers, just pure opinion on that one.

You're comparison is like me saying Brodin is a faster, leaner Nick Schultz.

 

[Digitalbooya]

Another fun fact for those two: Over that 3 year span of the 115 defenders that have played 3000+ minutes at 5v5 Dumba has had the 6th highest rate of offensive zone starts. Brodin had the 98th highest.

Another fun fact: this year, even if you average out the faceoffs/game to match Brodin's GP to Dumba's GP, Dumba would still have taken more defensive zone faceoffs than Brodin. Weird.

 

[ThatGuy22]

Also a fun fact: Dumba had more even strength points than Brodin.

More fun 5v5 facts: GF60 (goals scored when player is on the ice):
Dumba: 2.98 (1st on Wild)
Brodin: 2.56 (5th/4th excluding Reilly)

GA60 (goals scored against while player is on the ice)
Dumba: 2.27 (5th)
Brodin: 2.16 (4th)

Difference(GF%)
Dumba: +.71 (56.8%)
Brodin: +.40 (54.2%)

2015-2016 differences:
Dumba: +.39 (54%)
Brodin: -.15 (47.7%)

2014-2015 differences:
Dumba: +1.15 (60.6%)
Brodin: +.85 (60.2%)

Kinda funny when you look at overall team play when select players are on the ice.

Didn't mean to bring facts into this though #biased

Best I can tell if we go even strength, they're tied at 18 even strength points.(Brodin has 18 at 5v5, Dumba 17 at 5v5 and 1 at 3v3). But with Dumba being the supposed offensive dynamo, even if a different site than Corsica.hockey calculates even strength differently (maybe differences in pulled goalie or something) you'd think it would be much higher than Brodin and it's not.


Fancied up +/- without the context of Dumba getting all the zone starts in the world with Brodin at the other end of the spectrum doesn't mean all that much to me. They are deployed much differently.

Brodin is deployed to stop people from scoring, and few do it better. He was #1 in the entire league for defensemen in expected goals against and scoring chances against.

Dumba is deployed to provide offense, and he's good at it (although i'd argue not as good as people here like to portray). But it's not elite level like Brodin's defense is.

 

[ThatGuy22]

Another fun fact: this year, even if you average out the faceoffs/game to match Brodin's GP to Dumba's GP, Dumba would still have taken more defensive zone faceoffs than Brodin. Weird.

I really question where you are getting your numbers from, as every other site has Brodin taking 31% D zone starts, and Dumba at 30% D zone starts.

The big difference is the O zone opportunity where Dumba starts 35% of his shifts and Brodin started 27% of his shifts (Brodin started a lot of shifts in the NZ this year) So if they took the exact same number of faceoffs, Brodin would have started in the D zone slightly more and O zone much less.

 

[Digitalbooya]

NHL.com has Dumba at 21 even strength points.

"Fancied up +/-", team scoring more goals with player x on ice. Call it whatever you want. It's still true the Wild score more than they give up % wise with Dumba on the ice.

I'm not looking at % starts. I'm looking at raw zone starts. Dumba had 343 dzone starts. Brodin had 296. Average that out to the same GP as Dumba and it jumps to 330. Dumba would have taken 13 more draws in the dzone whilst still taking way more draws than Brodin in the ozone. All numbers courtesy of stats.hockeyanalysis.com

 

[BagHead]

Just want to interject with a quick question. Do any of the sites record how many neutral zone face-offs a player was out for? I'm mainly just trying to figure out if Dumba was just placed on the ice for way more draws this season than Brodin was, per game.

 

[Minnesnota]

NHL.com has Dumba at 21 even strength points.

"Fancied up +/-", team scoring more goals with player x on ice. Call it whatever you want. It's still true the Wild score more than they give up % wise with Dumba on the ice.

I'm not looking at % starts. I'm looking at raw zone starts. Dumba had 343 dzone starts. Brodin had 296. Average that out to the same GP as Dumba and it jumps to 330. Dumba would have taken 13 more draws in the dzone whilst still taking way more draws than Brodin in the ozone. All numbers courtesy of stats.hockeyanalysis.com

This is just flawed logic.

I don't know if you're blatantly ignoring the fact that Brodin missed an entire month of hockey (thus, more workload in all situations for other d-men) or you just don't understand the principle of causation.

You can't just increase Brodin's workload and not reduce Dumba's.

 

[Digitalbooya]

Ozone
Brodin: 264
Dumba: 381

Neutral zone
Brodin: 394
Dumba: 396

Dzone
Brodin: 296
Dumba: 343

 

[Digitalbooya]

This is just flawed logic.

I don't know if you're blatantly ignoring the fact that Brodin missed an entire month of hockey (thus, more workload in all situations for other d-men) or you just don't understand the principle of causation.

You can't just increase Brodin's workload and not reduce Dumba's.

Actually don't think Brodin's ice time had any effect on Dumba's. I mean one played the left side and the other played the right side. So if anything, Brodin out added to the work load of Suter/Scandella/Olofsson/Reilly.

Logically speaking, of course.

 

[Uberdachen]

Dumba isn't a giant liability.

Gotta love when other team's fanbases get reamed for saying Brodin a black hole offensively and then Wild fans say Dumba is a liabilty. Talk about not being able to shake a false narrative.

Look, I love Dumba. He's fun, and he laid out Patrick Kane in open ice. Brodin wouldn't do that even if he had a Patrick Kane Laying Out Machine set to Open Ice and Patrick Kane was diving into it like it owed him change. I'd like him to stay forever, and want that spot on the ice memorialized with a little plaque that ruins skates when people go over it. But if the seemingly half of those hits he airballs while the gang goes on by, and the bunch of late-game penalties he recently took in close games, and his rec league pooch-ups like jumping out of a defensive play to get a new stick all constitute a false narrative, then the dude should probably quit publishing such noteworthy fiction.

 

[Digitalbooya]

Do you have actual examples from specific games? I mean I can pick out specific plays that Brodin played horribly as well. Tarasenko's goal in game 5 where he walks Brodin like he doesn't exist comes to mind.

 

[Goose312]

NHL.com has Dumba at 21 even strength points.

"Fancied up +/-", team scoring more goals with player x on ice. Call it whatever you want. It's still true the Wild score more than they give up % wise with Dumba on the ice.

I'm not looking at % starts. I'm looking at raw zone starts. Dumba had 343 dzone starts. Brodin had 296. Average that out to the same GP as Dumba and it jumps to 330. Dumba would have taken 13 more draws in the dzone whilst still taking way more draws than Brodin in the ozone. All numbers courtesy of stats.hockeyanalysis.com

NHL.com only has even strength, which includes 3v3 and 4v4, and they also include empty net points as even strength.

 

[Digitalbooya]

NHL.com only has even strength, which includes 3v3 and 4v4, and they also include empty net points as even strength.

Which is what I said. I didn't say 5v5, I said even strength.

 

[Minnesnota]

Actually don't think Brodin's ice time had any effect on Dumba's. I mean one played the left side and the other played the right side. So if anything, Brodin out added to the work load of Suter/Scandella/Olofsson/Reilly.

Logically speaking, of course.

Do you have any actual evidence to support your "logic"?

Do you have actual examples from specific games? I mean I can pick out specific plays that Brodin played horribly as well. Tarasenko's goal in game 5 where he walks Brodin like he doesn't exist comes to mind.

Walked Brodin? At best Brodin should have taken the body to disrupt the play. At worst, it was an unfortunate bounce as the puck deflected off Brodin's legs back into Tarasenko's skates, where he was able to kick it to his stick and score. Zucker didn't offer much help either.

But, let's ignore the unfortunate sequence of events and use your [mod] logic for a second.

Brodin got burned by a Top 3 RW'er in the league. If that happens once per 7 game series, I'll take it as a win.

 

[Digitalbooya]

That's the nitpicking level mistake that Dumba never gets the benefit of the doubt on here on these boards. Creating the false narrative that he is horrible defensively. If you look in depth at Brodin he's not as perfect as people think.

You want logic? How about Dumba getting over 4 minutes more 5v5 time on ice in the playoffs. Order went Suter(LHD), Scandella (LHD), Spurgeon (RHD), Dumba (RHD), Brodin (LHD), and Folin (RHD).