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While I admittedly didn't watch every Calgary Flames game last season, as an outsider it was clear that T.J. Brodie was among the best Flames players on the ice almost each and every night.
Obviously I'll watch the Flames on a regular basis now that I cover them for Hockeybuzz, but last season there wasn't much reason for me to.
Anyways, I decided to take to the numbers to see just how good T.J. Brodie is and how well he played last season. Suffice to say, I came away extremely impressed.
Numbers aren't everything, but these numbers seem to show the same thing I saw with my eyes: T.J. Brodie is already arguably the best player on the team.
Don't believe me? Let's take a look at some charts I made.
We'll start with the forwards.
Before I begin, these charts display possession numbers for Brodie and how each player fared with Brodie compared to without him.
Every player but Matt Stajan have the same thing in common: they're significantly better when Brodie is playing with them than when he's not. Mike Cammalleri is over a 50% possession player with Brodie. When Brodie's not on the ice, that number decreases significantly. You'll notice the same with with Jiri Hudler, Lee Stempniak, Alex Tanguary and Roman Cervenka.
As you can see, the Flames weren't a very good possession team when Stajan and Brodie were on the ice together and both players did better without the other. That was one of the rare cases on the team, but they'll be cases like this for every player.
The point I'm trying to make here is that Brodie drives possession and almost each of the Flames top forwards do better with him than without him. Cammalleri, Hudler, Cervenka, etc. didn't do too well without Brodie, but he did well with pretty much anybody, as this chart indicates.
Point being: Brodie was a carry show in terms of possession and his teammates needed him to boost their numbers a lot more than he needed them.
Now that you've seen the impact Brodie has on forwards while he's on the ice, let's take a look at how each defenseman on the team does with him compared to without him.
Again, this is mainly in order of who he played most with down to least with from left to right.
His most common defense partner this season was Dennis Wideman. As you'll notice, they did pretty darn well together. Both were worse without the other, but Brodie fared better without Wideman than Wideman fared without Brodie.
Jay Bouwmeester is the Matt Stajan of defenseman, apparently, as both players did a little better without the other than with them.
And then you have the rest of the defense core. Again what you'll see is that they all do better with Brodie than without, in most cases by a rather significant margin.
One thing that stood out to me is the Flames possession numbers when Brodie and Mark Giordano are together. Basically the Flames carried play when those two were paired together. It was a small sample size, but I shouldn't be too surprised that the Flames carried play when their top two defenseman were on the ice together.
Basically the point I'm trying to get across here is that T.J. Brodie doesn't just play solid defense and pick up some points, he also drives possession better than every defenseman on the team. Heck, he does it better than a good chunk of the league.
For those not familiar with possession numbers and what they mean, I'll have you know Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ottawa, etc. were among the top possession teams in the league last season. Look at the success they had. Possession stats are the most indicative to success. Like everything in life, there are some exceptions but in most cases there is a direct correlation between the two.
Any way you slice it, Brodie was arguably the best player on the Flames last season and there's no reason he shouldn't be again this season. After all, he's only getting better.
Jay Feaster needs to lock him up and while Feaster wants a short-term contract, I'm in the belief that a longer term contract for Brodie would be more beneficial for both sides going forward.
It's too bad that likely won't be the case.
**
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