Anyone who’s listened to my podcast over the last few years knows that I haven’t been the biggest believer in Freddy the Goat. When I watched him play, I saw a player who provided limited to no offensive upside, had no puck skills, couldn’t skate, and would never be able to transition the puck up the ice at the NHL level. Then this season happened, and it forced me to re-evaluate my position.
I started looking for answers, and I came across this fantastic Kyle Dubas clip from 2015.
It’s such an interesting quote that I decided to transcribe it.
"He’s a better player [defensively] and that’s kinda the interesting thing. There’s a couple players in this year’s draft that were eligible, and then there’s a guy like Frederik (Gauthier) where people who are ‘pure analytics’ people would say “well you know, he’s not the type of guy you would suggest taking in that spot”, but if you look at the shot attempts and possession parts of it, he’s a guy who charts out extremely well."
So, it’s just an interesting kind of paradox in where we’re at in hockey and advanced statistics. Frederik is a guy who’s a prime example; he’s a polarizing player in that regard … and it’s interesting because baseball’s gone through this already. People who’ve got really strong defensive value — in hockey, how do we measure that? And for us, he charts out very well in that regard."
There’s a lot to unpack here, but it really comes down to one word: defence.
As Dubas mentioned, this is an area that’s been tricky to quantify in other sports (baseball), and hockey’s no exception. It’s much easier to measure a player’s offensive contributions (goals, assists, shots), whereas there are so many team effects impacting the defensive side of the game (the system, your four teammates, whether or not you have to cover for someone who’s blown their assignment, etc.), it makes it really difficult to isolate a player’s defensive contributions.
Bringing this back to Gauthier, he’s a player whose calling card has always been his defensive game. We know he isn’t a very talented offensive player, but if he’s a strong defensive player at the NHL level, how do we go about measuring that? Personally, I’m of the opinion that the best way to measure defence at the player level is by looking at how many shots and chances you allow (after adjusting for usage). This is where a metric like expected goals can come in handy, since it takes shot quantity and shot quality into account.