We are going to sorely miss Brodie. I agree with the idea though that the progression of our young D will lessen the blow, though.
Chatting with my friend today, it appears Brodie was never significantly in the plans of this organization moving forward.
For us fans, who have very limited data in reality (NHL teams are playing with metrics that make our local "Corsi" Wizards look like toddlers in college), TJ Brodie I guess was one of those guys that while the metrics we can use, shows him as a solid foundational piece, in terms of team tracking he didn't move the needle in terms of positive game play.
I think Treliving mentioned it a while back, where Calgary often tracks an individual players performance throughout the game and what they do to impact the game positively with their play. They track and score some crazy things (like things we don't even remotely have access to unless we were scoring it at home, things like cycle breakup stats, gap control metrics, even shit like icing metrics) that apparently had Brodie as a fairly even contributor for Calgary. Not saying Brodie was replacement level, but in terms of forking over a 20 million dollar contract over the next four years when there's a very distinct possibility this team is completely rebranded in 2; it just didn't make sense.
Here are some crazy stats that no one probably was tracking before I mentioned this (my buddy pointed out).
- Rasmus Andersson has the best +/- in the league in terms of forcing icings against the other team. Essentially when Ras is out there, teams are forced to ice the puck a lot more; which leads to more favourable matchups.
- The Flames were just outside the bottom 10 of defensive zone turnovers.
- Rasmus Andersson had the lowest defensive zone turnover rate in the NHL for any D-man playing more than 500 minutes. In fact his defensive zone metrics are comparable to guys that you would really not imagine.
- TJ Brodie was in the dreaded bottom zone in terms of defensive zone turnovers. This is due to having the puck a lot, this is also due to him not being a great defender under pressure.
- In the playoffs, Calgary were a bottom 10 team in overall giveaways. Which is a really damning statistic; considering 8 teams got to play at least 4 more games than Calgary.
Now, a guy like Hanifin is also in that Brodie zone; there's feel in the management group that he could grow into something a bit more round... but TJ is what he is as a 30 year old.
There's thoughts that Tanev will improve the PK for Calgary, something Brodie never really flourished with, while also improving the below-the-blueline stats.
Dunno. I thought TJ was solid in Calgary, but I don't think he's a player that can't be replaced internally.
But, folks can flame away at some of the post here with the same metrics we're used to seeing. I'm just saying the Flames are using analytics we're not tracking.