Hahahahaha.
This one's quite the stretch, even for you.
Ah, yes, the last ditch effort of somebody who has nothing else. Pointing to something that can't accurately be proven.
Yes, I'm sure there's absolutely nothing questionable about comparing 2 lines' defensive impact with unproven stats, one of which had the league MVP, the other of which had 2 players in their first full years in the NHL and a 39-year old broken down player who was so bad even his career team didn't want back.
Matthews is easily the better player.
You can post however many laughing emojis you want, but it is absolutely not a stretch to stay Point has maintained his performance under a higher level of accumulated fatigue when Point has played 3,103:25 in the past two regular seasons and 398:25 in the past two playoffs, while Matthews by comparison has played 2,385:41 in the past two regular seasons and and 261:18 in the past two playoffs. That adds up to 3,501:50 for Point and 2,646:59 for Matthews. Point has played 851:51 more over the same time frame, or 32% more minutes. Point has obviously accumulated more fatigue through this sample and been on the ice for far longer, which makes any per minute metrics more impressive for Point than it does for Matthews.
In 2019, defensive play actually can be accurately proven or pretty close. And pretty much all defensive metrics, no matter how you look at them, have Point performing FAR better than Matthews over their ELCs.
Matthews: 60.69 CA/60, 2.61 xGA/60, 2.6 GA/60
1.71 Rel CA/60, 0.26 Rel xGA/60, 0.15 Rel GA/60
Point: 55.23 Rel CA/60, 2.18 xGA/60, 2.28 GA/60
0.95 Rel CA/60, 0.12 Rel xGA/60, 0.04 Rel GA/60
Matthews allows far more shots, expected goals, and goals. He does play on a weaker defensive team, but even
relative to their respective teams, Point does a better job defensively. Clearly, just the raw "against" metrics have Point well ahead of Matthews.
Or, if you'd rather visualize the data, look at their respective splits between their teams with and without them on the ice throughout their careers:
(Just click on the images to enlarge them. Each image represents one season.)
As we can see, Toronto is a significantly worse defensive team with Matthews on the ice in every season of his career, and the threat level of shots they allow with Matthews on the ice is at least 10% higher than league average in every season. This supports what the Corsi, expected goal, and goal against metrics have to say. Now let's compare this to Brayden Point:
And lastly, this is probably not the best statistic for properly judging defensive play, but it's still worth noting their A3Z comparison tools, which show that Brayden Point is far better at getting the puck out of the zone than Matthews.
As you can see, when Brayden Point attempts a zone exit, the rate at which he does so while maintaining possession is in the 99th percentile of the NHL.
There is a HUGE difference between these two defensively, and there has been in every season of their careers. 2018-2019 was the first season where Point did poorly relative to his team, but he still did significantly better than Matthews, just like in every other season of his career.
Obviously, there are plenty of other factors that go into these metrics that are not just the individual defensive performance of these players. But there are metrics out there which quantify for all of this information, and those metrics are in line with the conclusion that Brayden Point's defensive play is miles ahead of Auston Matthews' defensive play.
For example, Micah McCurdy, the creator of those heat maps, also has a player impact isolation model that attempts to account for every factor: teammates, competition, zone usage, score usage, etc. and isolate a player's impact on offense and defense.
As you can see, through Micah McCurdy's model, Brayden Point is significantly above average defensively, with an individual impact of a 9% reduction of threat coming from opponent shots, while Auston Matthews is below average, with an individual impact of a 4% increase of threat coming from opponent's shots. McCurdy's model only includes the past two seasons, though.
There are similar models out there, such as Evolving Hockey's regularized adjusted plus-minus, which also attempts to account for all variables and then isolate a player's impact on what is happening.
According to this model, Matthews' impact on expected goals against is over 2 standard deviations above average, and his impact on shot attempts against is more than one standard deviation above average. By comparison, Brayden Point is above average in both metrics.
If you look at something like Corsica Hockey's GAR model over this 3-year sample, and isolate DWAR, Matthews' DGAR is at -1.71, meaning his defensive performance is slightly below replacement level. By comparison, Brayden Point's DWAR is at 4, meaning Point has contributed significantly more than a replacement level player on the defensive side of things.
It is clear as day that Brayden Point is a far, far better defensive player than Auston Matthews. Every single defensive metric supports this. The fact that you would say this can't accurately proven is just hilarious, and shows how out of touch that you are with the metrics that are available today. When the gap between them is this massive, it can be accurately proven quite easily.
Of course, according to all of these metrics, Matthews is also the better offensive player.
Corsica Hockey GAR:
Matthews: 42.98 GAR, 15.79 GAR/82, 0.63 GAR/60
Point: 40.19 GAR, 13.46 GAR/82, 0.54 GAR/60
Slight edge to Matthews on this one.
Evolving Hockey GAR:
Matthews: 24.5 EV GAR, 6.5 PP GAR, 38.8 GAR
0.46 EV GAR/60, 0.77 PP GAR/60, 0.61 GAR/60
Point: 28 EV GAR, 15.5 PP GAR, 50.3 GAR
0.5 EV GAR/60, 1.52 PP GAR/60, 0.71 GAR/60
Slight edge to Point on this one.
Evolving Hockey even strength Regularized Adjusted Plus/Minus:
Matthews: +10.34 Goal Impact, +4.69 Expected Goal Impact, +19.8 Corsi Impact
0.193 GPM/60, 0.088 xGPM/60, 0.37 CPM/60 (These are just goal/xgoal/corsi impacts per 60)
Point: +20.53 Goal Impact, +13.03 Expected Goal Impact, +165.5 Corsi Impact
0.37 GPM/60, 0.233 xGPM/60, 2.96 CPM/60
Micah McCurdy's Isolated Impact:
Matthews: +8% net impact, +24% PP impact, +25% shooting, +114% penalty impact
Point: +16% net impact, +24% PP Impact, +17% shooting, +77% Penalty Impact
And then, going back to more rudimentary metrics:
5-on-5:
Matthews: 51.50% CF, 51.54% xGF, 55.30% GF
1% CF Rel, 1.3% xGF Rel, 2.83% GF Rel
Point: 52.19% CF, 53.72% xGF, 58.72% GF
1.04% CF Rel, 1.52% xGF Rel, 4.66% GF Rel
Point's team controls a larger share of the shot attempts, expected goals, and actual goals that occur while he is on the ice than Matthews' team does when he is on the ice. Not only that, but despite playing on a superior team to Matthews, Point's control of the shot share, expected goal share, and goal share, relative to Point's teammates are all higher than Matthews' relative to his teammates.
And before you mention competition, Point literally has a higher TOI% QoC (29.37%) than Matthews (29.35%). Before you mention linemates, Point has a lower TOI% QoT (30.44%) than Matthews (30.46%).
As much as you've convinced yourself that there is no way that anybody besides McDavid might be on par with lord Matthews, the reality is that simply isn't the case. Brayden Point is an excellent center, and he has been a huge part of his team's regular season success over the past 3 seasons. There is nothing easy about this comparison, but given their performance in the most recent season, I'd say that Brayden Point is the better player right now.
It's therefore valid to ask, as that Tampa fan did, why Brayden Point won't be paid anywhere near what Auston Matthews is paid. The answer is that they are signing with two different GMs who have two different internal salary structures, and that the area where Point is so much superior to Matthews is defensive play, which is a major market inefficiency that centers in particular are not adequately compensated for.
