Player Discussion Jay Beagle

[Jimbo57]

How so? You haven't provided any explanation yourself. Show how "intelligent" you are then.

Here's the bottom-line: Many defensively oriented players put up vastly better results than Beagle. Therefore, using his deployment as an excuse for why he gets poor results is a bad argument, as having tough deployment does not preclude the ability to still put up strong results.

I'm always fascinated by the "fancy stats are dumb" crowd who provide no logical explanation or counter-argument of their own.

This is a decently written article that puts things in perspective. Basically the author states Beagle is over utilised in a defensive role(arguably more than any other player in the league at the time) and that the coach should ease up on him. Written in January of this year, but still relevant.

Jay Beagle’s workload is not okay

Excerpts:

"Those are among the lowest percentages for any forward in the league, but that broad kind of context isn’t useful when considering Beagle, who might have the toughest job in the NHL this season. He’s got unproven linemates, lots of penalty killing work, and tons and tons and tons of shifts starting in the defensive zone. Literally no one takes a bigger share of his team’s defensive zone starts than Jay Beagle. More than half of Beagle’s shifts (excluding on-the-fly changes) begin near his own net. Nearly 40 percent (39.2) of the Capitals’ total defensive faceoffs during 5-on-5 see Beagle on the ice. He’s far and away the league’s number-one defensive specialist forward.
The implication there is trust. Barry Trotz trusts Jay Beagle to win faceoffs and make smart, reliable plays to get the team back on attack. And while Beagle is certainly winning faceoffs this year, the team is rarely on attack. There’s a cost to all that trust, and it’s high."

"Here’s a scatter plot of the league’s 144 most defensively utilized forwards with at least 400 minutes played. The y-axis means how many of their shifts start in the defensive zone (higher means more defensive usage). The x-axis means how many shot attempts belong to the team while that player is on the ice (right means more offense).

Beagle is the extreme top-left corner. He’s used defensively more than any other forward in the league, and his shot share is worse than any other forward in the league aside from Minnesota’s 41-year-old Matt Cullen, whose 38.2 percent of shot attempts with just 33.0 percent defensive-zone starts is literally off the chart – to the bottom left."

"But that linemate analysis leaves us no convenient scapegoats for Beagle’s deterioration. There’s no apparent bad chemistry driving his drop-off, which leaves us with two options:

1. Beagle’s duties are so defensive that it is hurting him and the team.
2. Beagle’s skill has diminished such that his play in any context would be worse.

I doubt number two – or, at least I doubt it’s the primary factor. When Karl Alzner‘s play dropped off last season, it was readily apparent to casual observers (right after bright analysts like Pat Holden noticed it). Alzner had lost a step and could not enforce the gap control that had served him so well. I have not seen the same with Jay Beagle. He seems, anecdotally, to be the same quality player he always has been. A quantitative look at Beagle’s on-the-fly shifts (independent of his defensive-zone deployments) might help us validate that idea – but I don’t have the resources for that kind of study these days.
But instead, there’s a simple way the team could find out if Beagle’s drop-off is being caused by the overwhelmingly defensive deployments his coach gives him: Stop it.
This doesn’t have to be an experiment. This isn’t, I wonder, what if…?
It could just be a reasonable course correction: It’s abundantly and painfully obvious that Jay Beagle and the fourth line are not succeeding in their current workload, which is the most overwhelmingly defensive workload in the entire league, so I, as head coach of the Capitals, will share that burden more evenly with the top nine.
It might not work, but it would be a modest and rational reaction to a glaring problem. Plus, it would give Beags the opportunity to do more stuff like this.

 

[CanaFan]

Unfortunately all of that analysis is undone with the following admission:

2. Beagle’s skill has diminished such that his play in any context would be worse.

I doubt number two – or, at least I doubt it’s the primary factor.

He goes on to dismiss this as a possibility because ... he’d be able to tell if he was actually worse??

Seems like an advocacy piece more than an unbiased analysis.

 

[CanaFan]

Beg to differ. Every shot is both a scoring chance and a turnover chance, and the shot-based metrics fail to account for this. You can play a perfect defensive game and still get outshot, or you can be a guy with questionable hockey IQ like Jake Virtanen who shoots too often and ends up with a good Corsi.

Ya in theory but actual hockey games don’t work that way. Over hundreds of minutes if you’re being outshot heavily then those shots will include a fairly constant dose of quality shot attempts. Shots come from possession and extended possession improves shot quality. I suppose if Jay Beagle played 100% his minutes against a Corsi anomaly like Virtanen it could happen the way you are describing but as a shut down forward Beagle would never play against a 10 goal scorer like Virtanen. He’d play against offensively gifted players who regularly create quality chances as all shut down lines do.

 

[Verviticus]

Lol what’s with the Beagle hate? Washington sure seemed to like him as well as the other ten teams that pithed offers. His contracts sucks but he is still a quality NHL player

no he isn’t. he f***ing sucks

 

[krutovsdonut]

And bringing him on in an effort to "teach" defense to Petterson is extremely foolish rationale.

i am perfectly willing to accept the idea beagle may be on the decline from a peak season two years ago based on his relative stats over the years in roughly similar usage, and as such he may be a bad signing in general. i do not like the 4 year term.

but here are two thoughts that can co-exist

1. beagle will help pettersson simply by being a skilled veteran centre he can watch and learn from.

2. beagle helping pettersson is not a reason to sign beagle.

this to me is where this place goes binary. i simply said that beagle would help pettersson in response to someone saying he would not help him. i said nothing about that as a rationale to sign him. but now it's extrapolated that i am justifying the signing simply because i say something not critical. multiple posters then have to take a ridiculous crap on beagle to argue, ludicrously, that beagle in the line up cannot help pettersson and to go further and argue beagle is complete junk.

my response to that crapping on beagle, is that beagle's corsi is meaningless and the attempt to hold him to the mendoza line is dumb. he's not tanner glass and you know it.

let's start with this: beagle's corsi is worse than any of his regular 4th line mates, and all of them have bad corsi, especially for a championship team. that to me yields two possibilities.

1. beagle is worse than his line mates like alex chiasson et al. and he is a terrible 4th line centre and a sub-replacement level nhl guy who dragged down his line mates corsi and should be out of the league. thus the capitals went out in the playoffs in the first line because they were a 3 line team with a bad 4th line centre.

2. his linemates and deployment significantly explains his corsi, and he was great not only as a shut down centre in key situations but also in propping up a weak 4th line so that the caps managed to play a solid 4 line game and win the cup.

what i see here are people giving lip service to the obvious reality of (2) while advancing (1) based on selective stat picking. to me that is simply dumb and reflects the agenda of posters who want to hate and disparage this guy because they don't like the term of his contract or the guy who signed him or whatever. it is not an honest assessment.

i mean to call him "tanner glass bad"? really? was tanner glass ever out when his line mates were not? was he taking defensive faceoffs for other lines while defending leads in circumstances where he is statistically bound to see more shots against and less shots for, even ignoring the fact he is taking a defensive faceoff? there is a huge gap between the value of a 4th line role playing winger, and a 4th liner shutdown centre who is propping up that line and also deployed defensively up the line up in key situations.

here's a reality, the caps bottom of the lineup was weak. there are 3 forwards last year who played over 60 regular season games and averaged over 10 minutes and under beagle's 12:30 minutes. those players (chiasson, stevenson, and dsp) played 203 games between them so with beagle they actually form a chunk of the third as well as the fourth line. except for stevenson they all had a corsi under 45. stevenson was a giddy 45.4.

compare that to malhotra's 2011 season being held up against beagle, where malhotra had a 46 corsi but actually played third line minutes, over 16 minutes a game. now tanner glass played 8 minutes a game so malhotra was obviously not playing with him all the time. everyone else he played with regularly has a much higher corsi. guys who played less minutes than malhotra include raymond, higgins, hansen, tambellini, and torres. torres at 48.7 has the worse corsi among them. tambollini somehow managed a 54 corsi, higgins 57.

if you look at the corsi gap between beagle and his line mates and malhotra and his line mates, it begs the question to me of how you could use the same statistical gap to criticize beagle but not malhotra.

 

[Motte and Bailey]

Beagle and Sutter will help Peterson immensely.

As an up and coming young offensive player what could be better than practicing every day against elite defensive centers? Not much. Peterson’s growth and development will be in large part thanks to Beagle and Sutter for that reason. Of course if we could sign some all star hall of fame offensive players to mentor him from the other side of the puck it would help too but how many of those guys are available? Show me another Sundin on the market. There isn’t.

 

[bossram]

This is a decently written article that puts things in perspective. Basically the author states Beagle is over utilised in a defensive role(arguably more than any other player in the league at the time) and that the coach should ease up on him. Written in January of this year, but still relevant.

Jay Beagle’s workload is not okay

Excerpts:

"Those are among the lowest percentages for any forward in the league, but that broad kind of context isn’t useful when considering Beagle, who might have the toughest job in the NHL this season. He’s got unproven linemates, lots of penalty killing work, and tons and tons and tons of shifts starting in the defensive zone. Literally no one takes a bigger share of his team’s defensive zone starts than Jay Beagle. More than half of Beagle’s shifts (excluding on-the-fly changes) begin near his own net. Nearly 40 percent (39.2) of the Capitals’ total defensive faceoffs during 5-on-5 see Beagle on the ice. He’s far and away the league’s number-one defensive specialist forward.
The implication there is trust. Barry Trotz trusts Jay Beagle to win faceoffs and make smart, reliable plays to get the team back on attack. And while Beagle is certainly winning faceoffs this year, the team is rarely on attack. There’s a cost to all that trust, and it’s high."

"But that linemate analysis leaves us no convenient scapegoats for Beagle’s deterioration. There’s no apparent bad chemistry driving his drop-off, which leaves us with two options:

1. 
   
   
   • Beagle’s duties are so defensive that it is hurting him and the team.
   • Beagle’s skill has diminished such that his play in any context would be worse.

I doubt number two – or, at least I doubt it’s the primary factor. When Karl Alzner‘s play dropped off last season, it was readily apparent to casual observers (right after bright analysts like Pat Holden noticed it). Alzner had lost a step and could not enforce the gap control that had served him so well. I have not seen the same with Jay Beagle. He seems, anecdotally, to be the same quality player he always has been. A quantitative look at Beagle’s on-the-fly shifts (independent of his defensive-zone deployments) might help us validate that idea – but I don’t have the resources for that kind of study these days.
But instead, there’s a simple way the team could find out if Beagle’s drop-off is being caused by the overwhelmingly defensive deployments his coach gives him: Stop it.
This doesn’t have to be an experiment. This isn’t, I wonder, what if…?
It could just be a reasonable course correction: It’s abundantly and painfully obvious that Jay Beagle and the fourth line are not succeeding in their current workload, which is the most overwhelmingly defensive workload in the entire league, so I, as head coach of the Capitals, will share that burden more evenly with the top nine.
It might not work, but it would be a modest and rational reaction to a glaring problem. Plus, it would give Beags the opportunity to do more stuff like this.

i am perfectly willing to accept the idea beagle may be on the decline from a peak season two years ago based on his relative stats over the years in roughly similar usage, and as such he may be a bad signing in general. i do not like the 4 year term.

but here are two thoughts that can co-exist

1. beagle will help pettersson simply by being a skilled veteran centre he can watch and learn from.

2. beagle helping pettersson is not a reason to sign beagle.

this to me is where this place goes binary. i simply said that beagle would help pettersson in response to someone saying he would not help him. i said nothing about that as a rationale to sign him. but now it's extrapolated that i am justifying the signing simply because i say something not critical. multiple posters then have to take a ridiculous crap on beagle to argue, ludicrously, that beagle in the line up cannot help pettersson and to go further and argue beagle is complete junk.

my response to that crapping on beagle, is that beagle's corsi is meaningless and the attempt to hold him to the mendoza line is dumb. he's not tanner glass and you know it.

let's start with this: beagle's corsi is worse than any of his regular 4th line mates, and all of them have bad corsi, especially for a championship team. that to me yields two possibilities.

1. beagle is worse than his line mates like alex chiasson et al. and he is a terrible 4th line centre and a sub-replacement level nhl guy who dragged down his line mates corsi and should be out of the league. thus the capitals went out in the playoffs in the first line because they were a 3 line team with a bad 4th line centre.

2. his linemates and deployment significantly explains his corsi, and he was great not only as a shut down centre in key situations but also in propping up a weak 4th line so that the caps managed to play a solid 4 line game and win the cup.

what i see here are people giving lip service to the obvious reality of (2) while advancing (1) based on selective stat picking. to me that is simply dumb and reflects the agenda of posters who want to hate and disparage this guy because they don't like the term of his contract or the guy who signed him or whatever. it is not an honest assessment.

i mean to call him "tanner glass bad"? really? was tanner glass ever out when his line mates were not? was he taking defensive faceoffs for other lines while defending leads in circumstances where he is statistically bound to see more shots against and less shots for, even ignoring the fact he is taking a defensive faceoff? there is a huge gap between the value of a 4th line role playing winger, and a 4th liner shutdown centre who is propping up that line and also deployed defensively up the line up in key situations.

here's a reality, the caps bottom of the lineup was weak. there are 3 forwards last year who played over 60 regular season games and averaged over 10 minutes and under beagle's 12:30 minutes. those players (chiasson, stevenson, and dsp) played 203 games between them so with beagle they actually form a chunk of the third as well as the fourth line. except for stevenson they all had a corsi under 45. stevenson was a giddy 45.4.

compare that to malhotra's 2011 season being held up against beagle, where malhotra had a 46 corsi but actually played third line minutes, over 16 minutes a game. now tanner glass played 8 minutes a game so malhotra was obviously not playing with him all the time. everyone else he played with regularly has a much higher corsi. guys who played less minutes than malhotra include raymond, higgins, hansen, tambellini, and torres. torres at 48.7 has the worse corsi among them. tambollini somehow managed a 54 corsi, higgins 57.

if you look at the corsi gap between beagle and his line mates and malhotra and his line mates, it begs the question to me of how you could use the same statistical gap to criticize beagle but not malhotra.

Read the article above. It is not really a defense of Beagle. It's the same as what I am saying.

It's basically saying that he's not good enough to handle these minutes and it's hurting the team. The "trust" is misplaced.

I mean, here I am defending Brandon Sutter again (very unusual for me), but he had a worse zone start percentage, and ostensibly tougher competition. He outperforms Beagle in terms of corsi, fenwick, shots and high-danger chances by 4+% in each. Other players near the bottom of the zone start percentage and d-zone starts/60 lists include Cizikas, ROR and Brodziak. They all outperform Beagle.

Two things are true here:
1. Beagle is deployed in an uber-defensive role
2. Beagle is objectively not good at that role. You claim he is a "good" and "skilled" veteran shutdown center. He is simply not, as there are others with similar deployment who perform much better.

We already have someone who is deployed in such a manner (Sutter) and performs significantly better than Beagle.

It is laughable that some members here think Beagle will be able to "shelter" our other younger players like Petterson (and/or "teach" them how to play defense) when he is abjectly bad at said defensive role he is deployed in. I am not the one who said Beagle is "Tanner Glass bad", but the conclusion remains the same: Beagle is not good at the role he has been deployed in (and seemingly is intended to be deployed in with the Canucks).

As for the comments regarding Malhotra, there is a significant, absolute difference between being a 39% vs 46% shot differential player. The latter is acceptable (and seems about what you would expect) from a capable defensive player placed in an uber-defensive role (based on comparisons to similarly deployed players). 39% is way, way, below the performance you need from that role. The point of a pure defensive specialist is that you can kind of come out okay in those situations, with the upside being your offensive players get much softer minutes they can succeed in (and outscore, hopefully). But if your defensive specialist is getting crushed, that kind of defeats the purpose.

This is just an honest assessment of the player.

Sorry for ranting.

 

[Bougieman]

You would think all this stuff could be discussed in the Jay Beagle thread, no? I keep checking this thread to see if there is any more talk about Pettersson and being disappointed.

 

[Canadian Canuck]

Just because Beagle is overpaid doesn’t mean he “sucks” and is the “worst player in the NHL and Tanner Glass bad”

I’d bet you anything that if Beagle was making 2.5 or lower nobody wouldn’t say anything.

 

[The Iron Goalie]

Can we stop talking about Beagle here? This is the Pettersson trade, so go to the Beagle/management/etc threads if you want to argue over a 4th line C.

*edit - good mods.

 

[krutovsdonut]

39% corsi on a cup winner, and a 45% GF% despite a 104 PDO. He may have been the worst NHL regular last season. He was Tanner Glass bad.

just putting this post here still in the pettersson that didn't make it over to provide some context for what triggered this discussion.

 

[VanJack]

Can you imagine Beagle and Eriksson still playing for the Canucks at 37? They'd have to speed up the tape or pretend it was in slow motion.

 

[Melvin]

You would think all this stuff could be discussed in the Jay Beagle thread, no? I keep checking this thread to see if there is any more talk about Pettersson and being disappointed.

I love thst this insufferable post got moved to the Beagle thread.

 

[Wo Yorfat]

Can you imagine Beagle and Eriksson still playing for the Canucks at 37? They'd have to speed up the tape or pretend it was in slow motion.

It shouldn't be too bad. We'll just have to prop them up a little bit

 

[Hit the post]

Can you imagine Beagle and Eriksson still playing for the Canucks at 37? They'd have to speed up the tape or pretend it was in slow motion.

Look at the Sedins at 37 - and they were once elite players.

Ain't going to be pretty.

 

[F A N]

Look at the Sedins at 37 - and they were once elite players.

Ain't going to be pretty.

Gillis had no issue with signing Shane Doan. Some players do age well. But I think it's fair to say that for numerous UFA signings, you're almost expecting the player to not be worth the money in the last year or two or even three if it's a longer term contract.

 

[Nick Lang]

Can you imagine Beagle and Eriksson still playing for the Canucks at 37? They'd have to speed up the tape or pretend it was in slow motion.

Beagle hasn't even laced up the skates yet but already you're mocking him 5 years in the future? Good grief.

 

[WinterEmpire]

Beagle hasn't even laced up the skates yet but already you're mocking him 5 years in the future? Good grief.

You're right, Beagle wearing a Canucks jersey will give him instant +15 speed boost and this shouldn't be an actual concern.

 

[CanaFan]

Beagle hasn't even laced up the skates yet but already you're mocking him 5 years in the future? Good grief.

Call it a reasonable guess. 4th liners typically drop off a cliff when they hit 32-34. Why would Beagle be a special exception?

 

[tantalum]

Call it a reasonable guess. 4th liners typically drop off a cliff when they hit 32-34. Why would Beagle be a special exception?

You don’t even need to say 4th liners or off a cliff. Nearly all players decline at this age. So if you are already a 4th liner it is obvious what that decline means.

 

[Nick Lang]

Call it a reasonable guess. 4th liners typically drop off a cliff when they hit 32-34. Why would Beagle be a special exception?

37 year olds are still capable of skating, and playing sports. He is also a health and fitness nut who has huge dedication to the game. You're right though. Far easier and self satifying to bad mouth him prematurely.

Calgary-raised Jay Beagle takes long road to Stanley Cup final

 

[Hollywood Burrows]

lmao he's a health and fitness nut aka a "professional athlete"

 

[Shareefruck]

37 year olds are still capable of skating, and playing sports. He is also a health and fitness nut who has huge dedication to the game. You're right though. Far easier and self satifying to bad mouth him prematurely.

Calgary-raised Jay Beagle takes long road to Stanley Cup final

This means nothing. Even the most dedicated hockey players decline when they're 37. Generally, only stars are able to survive that decline and still come out of it as effective (albeit lesser) hockey players, except in the rarest of occasions. Beagle does not have that kind of cushion to work with.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

4 years is too long,but it is not a problem with the way the Canucks have structured the cap (prospects will be coming off of their ELC's by then)...The NTC is "modified",so he can be moved in 3 years.

As far as 4C's go ..he is a good one..

 

[pgj98m3]

Beagle and Sutter will help Peterson immensely.

As an up and coming young offensive player what could be better than practicing every day against elite defensive centers? Not much. Peterson’s growth and development will be in large part thanks to Beagle and Sutter for that reason. Of course if we could sign some all star hall of fame offensive players to mentor him from the other side of the puck it would help too but how many of those guys are available? Show me another Sundin on the market. There isn’t.

Seriously...”elite”.......HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA......GASP........HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA