I think a lot of fans around the league look at the Tampa Bay Lightning roster and take for granted everything Steve Yzerman has done since joining the team. While it’s true that Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman, the team’s two core pieces, were on the roster when Yzerman arrived, the transformation around them has been remarkable.
Frequent commenter ‘Cloud’ suggested that I take a look at today’s Lightning roster and compare it to the one that made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final in 2011, Yzerman’s first season with the team.
Today, there are only three players from that 2010-11 team that still call themselves Bolts. Stamkos, Hedman, and Eric Brewer still all wear Lightning blue on a nightly basis. Other than that, everything has changed. Steve Yzerman’s Yzerplan tore what looked like a successful team apart. And for good reason.
That 2011 roster was a mosaic of older player, youngish players, and everything in between. The one common thread between so many of the guys, though, was that they overachieved and caught fire at the right time.
ExtraSkater gives us a good way of visualizing that. Consider the following charts.
Notice that the team’s possession numbers (Chart #1) trended downwards all year? That looks like regression towards the mean, if you ask me. The good possession numbers generated by that roster weren’t sustainable. That downward trend just continued into the next year, which caused the Bolts to miss the playoffs entirely.
Secondly, the PDO chart (Chart #2) shows us that, while the team’s possession performance was slipping, its luck was getting better and better. PDO is the sum of a team’s save percentage and its shooting percentage, two statistics largely based on luck. The acquisition of Dwayne Roloson combined with the team’s relatively high shooting percentage in close situations was enough to propel the team past its slipping possession numbers.
The 2013-14 Lightning, on the other hand, were a much more consistent possession team, save for one truly elite stretch after Stamkos broke his leg.
In addition, the bump in the team's PDO was largely due to Ben Bishop's Vezina-caliber season. The team's shooting percentage was right in the middle of the pack, which suggests that it was at a sustainable level.
Zooming in and away from the team metrics for a moment, it’s worth noting that Yzerman has replaced so many of the mix-and-match characters that defined that 2011 team with young building blocks that should be members of the Lightning for years to come. Gone are guys like Sean Bergenheim, Simon Gagne, Ryan Malone, Marc-Andre Bergeron, and Adam Hall, among others. In are guys like Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson, Alex Killorn, JT Brown, Nikita Kucherov, and so much more homegrown talent.
As mentioned above, only three players remain from that 2011 team. The turnover has been incredible. A defense that once comprised of Hedman, Mattias Ohlund, Brett Clark, Pavel Kubina, Randy Jones, and Mike Lundin now actually resembles an NHL blue line.
Just remember that the top line for stretches of that 2010-11 season included Stamkos, Marty St. Louis, and Ryan Malone. One of those guys now plays in New York, another is without a job in the NHL, and the last one is Captain of today’s Bolts. Lots of things change with time.
A lot of people probably look at that 2011 run as the pinnacle of Yzerman’s time with the Bolts thus far. I disagree. Would you trade that 2011 roster and run for what the Lightning have today? I wouldn’t. What Yzerman did in 2011 was piece together a competitive team. Conversely, he’s building a winner right now. For Tampa Bay Lightning fans, that’s great news.
As always, thanks for reading. And thank you to Cloud for submitting this topic.
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