I very much enjoy trying to figure out all the pieces of the puzzle when assessing a hockey team. One of the pieces that you can never quite get a total grasp on is Brandon Sutter. His advanced metrics aren’t good, but then you see him fly down the wing and rip a snap shot past the goaltender and wonder why his underlying numbers are so poor.
Today we’ll take a look at Brandon Sutter, the man who was originally sought in the David Perron trade by Edmonton.
Let’s start with what is his perceived strength, his ability to finish plays. By many accounts Brandon Sutter is having a great 2014-15. He certainly has no shortage of nice looking goals this year. It seems all of his goals are with him flying down the right wing and sending off laser beams past the goaltender. But is he actually scoring more this year? Is he generating more offense?
He is slightly up from his career average.
His career average has him at 15.58 goals per 82 games and 30.34 points per 82 games.
This year he is on pace for 18.04 goals and 33.62 points.
It is always good to trend above your career average but this is not drastically outside his normal production as some would have you believe this year.
Possession has never been Sutter’s forte and it isn’t any different this year. Eye test it all you want, spin the data all you want, Sutter plays in his own end more than the opposition’s and this has been a career issue no matter what role or team he has played on. Given that the NHL is a league littered with lucky bounces and weird goals off deflections you can’t afford to play out of your own end and allow the other team more opportunities to get lucky.
Think about it in these terms. Every shot attempt you get the opportunity to roll the dice. Anytime it comes up double sixes you earn a goal. The more rolls the better chance you have of scoring. This is shot volume in a nutshell. Some nights you may “get hot” and roll double sixes with less rolls. Other nights you may “get cold” even through you are rolling (outshooting) the opposition by a lot. Over time it will even itself out though. You want more rolls than the other team.
Alarming on these charts is the fact that 100%, I repeat 100% of the players improve when playing away from Sutter. Now in the spirit of fairness the likelihood that those players are with Crosby or Malkin is high so that certainly is an important variable to remember. However, the middle bar which shows Sutter away from all those teammates is under 50% on each one, that isn’t good. None of the defensemen reach a CF% of 50% when playing with Sutter. That just isn’t good enough.
The other team rolls the dice a lot more when Sutter is on the ice than when he is off it. Out of all the Penguin players who have played at least 300 minutes of even strength time Sutter has the lowest CF%rel at -6.4%, even lower than Scuderi’s -4.5%.
Coach Johnston loves to play Beau Bennett with Brandon Sutter and while they do have good results as as a duo, Beau is even better away from Sutter. Sutter away from Bennett is below the 45% barrier which is Craig Adams level stuff.
For those that for some unknown reason still hate possession I’ll shift the conversation to scoring chances. The amazing
War On Ice blog has recently come up with scoring chance data. Here is how they define it
* In the low danger zone, unblocked rebounds and rush shots only.
* In the medium danger zone, all unblocked shots.
* In the high danger zone, all shot attempts (since blocked shots taken here may be
more representative of more “wide-open nets”, though we don’t know this for sure.)
They also provide this addendum
These definitions are flexible but we feel they’re a reasonable starting point given all the data we have available. We’re open to changing it if we have sufficient numerical evidence.
Here are the Scoring Chance For percentages for all players who have played at least 300 minutes this year at even strength.
Interesting name right above Sutter considering the difference in quality of teammate this year as well as the usage for each player.
Those who are relying solely on the eye test for Brandon Sutter this year will probably have an inflated value for him. When peeling back the layers of his 2014-15 season I see more of the same, which for me hasn’t been all that impressive. If the Penguins choose to keep Sutter through this season and into next so be it, but they definitely should not entertain giving him a raise or extending him at all.
Whether it is his last name or people clinging onto his aesthetically pleasing snap shot goals, Sutter’s reputation precedes his on ice results.
Thanks for reading!
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