Offensive Analysis of Elite Defenseman

[HolyShot*]

No Keith?

Does not compute.

Keith goes between boyle and suter.

 

[torlev*]

Isn't it amazing how other fans are more concerned about Karlsson's defense than Sens' fans?

That's right.... It's because we watch him play 28 minutes a game every single game, and not cherry pick his worst plays. When he makes a mistake, he's the most awful defenseman ever. When he makes great defensive plays, well... that's nothing special.

You just can't win, if you're Karlsson.

Isn't it amazing how a Sens fan goes to incredible lengths to come up with a scoring system that shows Karlsson as the best there is, and completely ignores looking at his defensive play?

The guy is an absolute pylon in his own end, and Sens fans are totally blind to it for some reason.

Elite offense. AHL D.

 

[Thesaurus]

Glad to see Byfuglien so high, he deserves it. Guy gets put through the ringer more than anyone around here for consistently being a top 3 offensive defenseman.

 

[RorschachWJK]

Yes, Karlsson is the leagues best offensive dman. And this was new to someone?

I'd still rather build my team around Chara, Suter or Keith.

 

[Tendresse]

This chart is all sorts of wrong.

 

[wgknestrick]

The analysis I performed in the last thread seemed to spark some interest discussion, and certainly sparked my interest, so I decided to analyze 10 defenseman who I think are some of the best defenseman in the league, and looked at their offensive production between the year beginning 2012 and up to today. The results are as follows:

If we sort by equalize the games played to the average of 152 games in this time span and look at points, we can see who the dominant defenseman are in the last 3 years:

Expectedly, Karlsson dominates all the other defenseman holding a 13% advantage on over the 2nd placed defenseman Kris Letang, who in turn holds a 16% advantage over Byfuglien. Karlsson is clearly in a tier of his own, as is Letang, and as is Byfuglien.

From there, there is a group of 5 players who appear to be within close proximity to eachother in offensive ability, and then Doughty and OEL trail behind.

If we then exclude secondary assists, which typically are less illustrative of a player's influence on a goal (yes I know not all the time: on average) the results are as follows:

Karlsson's dominance over the competition grows even further, as does Letang's over the 3rd place defenseman.

Interestingly, some defenseman such as Keith free-fall from their original position as their dependance on secondary assistance becomes apparent. This becomes apparent in looking at the following, which looks at how an individual defenseman's points are distributed between G, A1, and A2:

Evidently, Keith is extremely dependent on secondary assists, as are Subban, Byfuglien, and Suter with almost half of their total points coming from secondary assists.

The analysis so far clearly illustrates that Karlsson is a significantly better contributor to goals for than even the best competition in the league. The only player who even appears comparable is Letang - who has the fortune of playing on a team with some of the best players in the world (but that's a conversation for another day).

There is then an odd man out in Byfuglien who puts up a ton of points, but if you discount his secondary assists - which you may not feel is appropriate to discount - he falls into a similar tear as the other 5 high producing defenseman: Subban, Keith, Suter Weber, and Pietrangelo. However, Keith, Suter and Subban are also largely dependent on secondary assists, and as such it appears that Weber, Pietrangelo, and Byfuglien are truly the third tier of offensive ability: Tier 1 being Karlsson and Tier 2 being Letang.

Consideration can also be made for distinguishing power play points:

No one really stands out in this assessment other than Weber, Suter, and Subban who appear to struggle to produce at ES compared to the PP.

Overall percentages can be seen here:

My conclusion based on this 3 year analysis - excluding what my eyes tell me - is that Karlsson is by far the best offensive defenseman in the NHL and it isn't remotely close.

Letang is then quite evidently the 2nd best offensive defenseman in the NHL, and it also isn't remotely close. However, some may consider the team he plays on a significant factor in the actual number of goals, A1s, and A2s he puts up. You can evaluate that yourself.

After those two it becomes muddier, but it would likely be difficult to argue against Byfuglien being the 3rd best offensive defenseman.

The #4 and #5 spot I feel is hard to distinguish between Pietrangelo and Weber, and I don't think the difference would be significant so I would list them as interchangeable.

Subban and Keith appear to round out the #6 and #7 spot. Subban has a far better ratio of A2s to points, however Keith has a far better ES to PP ratio. Subban would appear to be the choice on the PP while Keith would be the choice at ES.

Next would be Suter who relies heavily on both PP time and secondary assists to reach his point totals, however, the point differential between him and Doughty in the 3 year period is too large to ignore.

Doughty would be at #9 - showing strong goals and primary assists, as well as a fairly average PP production relative to normal production.

OEL rounds out the #10 spot, primarily due to the fact that he was still too young in 2012 to really make the impact that he is making now.

NOTE: My analysis has not considered the teams' the players play on, which in my opinion is an important factor. I would recommend you incorporate that into your review of my assessment.

Overall rankings for the 3 year period:

1. Karlsson


2. Letang

3. Byfuglien
4a. Pietrangelo
4b. Weber
6a. Keith
6b. Subban
8. Suter
9. Doughty

10. OEL

While I appreciate the effort that went into this (and it was significant), you fail to evaluate the players on a "fair" level IMO. You use the last 2 seasons as your denominator instead of a "per minute" denominator which will lead more normalized results that eliminates any injuries or deployment biases. For example, Karlsson played 400 more 5v5 minutes than Letang over that period. Buff played 500 more, etc. You are also missing out on a significant player (IMO) in Franson who should be in your lists, despite not playing as many minutes.

If you look at their 5v5 pts/min, you can see that it goes
http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/rat...e&minutes=1000&disp=1&sort=HARTp&sortdir=DESC

Letang
Karlsson
(large gap)

Burns (should probably be excluded due to his positioning change to F)
Yandle
Buff
Franson

5v4 PP pts/min
http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/rat...se&minutes=300&disp=1&sort=HARTp&sortdir=DESC

Pietrangelo
Shattenkirk
Dion
Letang
Suter
Buff

I can only conclude that it is not "clear" who the best offensive defenseman is. It is Karlsson if you value goal's scored (g/60min) as he is the clear leader there behind Burns, Yandle, Green, and OEL. It is Letang if you value points (and can ignore the offensive powerhouse he leaches points off of).

 

[Cowboy Dan]

Nicely done. Although it is incredibly hard to do a hockey analysis strictly on statistics as there are so many other factors that come into play during a game, as you pointed out, this is a good basis for judging these players. Anyone taking this as carved in stone, however, is very naive, as is anyone who ignores it completely.

As a side note, it's amazing to me how quick this site takes offense to threads like this. A thread about the leagues best offensive defenseman has quickly turned into a debate about defensive ability and who people would rather start a team with. Its mind boggling, actually.

 

[Sureves]

Something wrong with your math on the Buff goals plus a1 percentage row.

Interesting analysis. I've been touting Buff as underrated for some time.

This chart is all sorts of wrong.

Thanks for pointing out, the "sort by largest to smallest" without pasting values first messed up the first three columns, the overall column G+A1 % is still correct though, it was the other columns that were jumbled.

Fixed now!

 

[Sureves]

Nicely done. Although it is incredibly hard to do a hockey analysis strictly on statistics as there are so many other factors that come into play during a game, as you pointed out, this is a good basis for judging these players. Anyone taking this as carved in stone, however, is very naive, as is anyone who ignores it completely.

As a side note, it's amazing to me how quick this site takes offense to threads like this. A thread about the leagues best offensive defenseman has quickly turned into a debate about defensive ability and who people would rather start a team with. Its mind boggling, actually.

A lot of people making similar comments to yours, but I'll quote yours for simplicity: absolutely agree.

The analysis I performed is far from perfect. TOI and team goals for are certainly very important factors to include in any assessment of the top offensive defenseman over a three year period, which I have done mainly to stay within the attention span of the every HFboards reader.

I may expand the analysis to incorporate those factors as well. If I were to theorize, I would say the analysis would bring Letang back down to earth, would shove Weber up a little bit, Karlsson would likely stay where he is, OEL would likely look significantly better, and Suter would look worse.

I think the others would have a fairly minor impact with those factors considered, but that's me just eyeballing it.

 

[billybudd]

If we then exclude secondary assists, which typically are less illustrative of a player's influence on a goal (yes I know not all the time: on average) the results are as follows:

That might be sort of true for a left wing, but not for a puck-moving D.