Sean Tierney wrote a fascinating piece over at Today’s Slapshot looking at players and teams though the lens of Shot Assists. A shot assist is any pass that immediately preceded a shot attempt. All the data was gathered from
Ryan Stimson and his great passing project. If you would like to read the piece by Sean you can find it here:
Sean produced some great visuals to show all 30 teams’ forwards and defencemen. We will start by looking at the forwards.
To interact with the visual check out Sean’s tableau profile which you can find
here.
The average for forwards is around nine shot assists per 60 minutes. The Jackets for the most part all hover around that mark. They don’t have an extreme outlier in either direction. This really jives with what I
wrote about earlier in the season. The Jackets last season had a very average forward group. Brandon Dubinsky and William Karlsson are the two highest points on the Jackets plot. Gregory Campbell and Rene Bourque were two near the bottom.
What this is showing is that at five on five the Jackets did not have someone who’s passed at an above average rate. They didn’t struggle at it but didn’t excel either. For those who watched the Jackets closely last season this isn’t anything new. Players like Boone Jenner, Brandon Saad and Nick Foligno are very good at what they do but they are not regarded for their passing ability. Even players like Dubinsky, Cam Atkinson, and Scott Hartnell, players who ranked 2nd, 3rd and 4th in assists on the team last season, are not players thought of for their passing ability. The only player the Jackets have that has a reputation of being a strong passer is Alexander Wennberg. Wennberg led the team is assists with 32, but was just above average in terms of shot assists with ~10 per/60.
This is a problem as the Jackets have plenty of guys who can score, but will have difficulty if they can’t pass them puck. Adding Oliver Bjorkstrand isn’t going to help that. He's another player who’s regarded for his ability as a sniper, not as a playmaker. The addition of Sam Gagne won’t help in this area much either. He was right around eight shot assists per 60 with the Flyers last season.
With the Jackets forwards just average at passing they need their defencemen to be strong in this area. Let’s take a look at the data.
Interact with the visual
here.
Defencemen average about five shot assists per 60. Again the Jackets hover right around the average but this time it’s because they have some players who are very good and some who are very bad.
The Jackets need their defencemen to be good at passing to help out the forwards. They need to be able to make good stretch passes, but in particular they need them to be strong in the offensive zone. By strong I mean they should be aggressive on pinches and look for chances to jump up into the play. The Jackets had some issues with this last season but the good news is that the players who struggled the most are no longer with the organization. Fedor Tyutin and Kevin Connauton had two of the four lowest shot assists per 60, and neither will be on the team next season. The other two were Jack Johnson and Cody Goloubef, both of whom will have reduced roles. Goloubef enters camp as the seventh defencemen, while Johnson will be playing on the second pair. Just based on addition by subtraction the Jackets d-core should be better at passing the puck.
Another element which will improve the d will be a full season of Seth Jones. Jones and Ryan Murray are both very good at passing. Jones in his limited time with the Jackets led the defence group with close to nine shot assists per 60, well above average. Not far behind was Murray who averaged around seven shot assists per 60. These two are going to play huge roles in the Jackets offense this season and their success will go a long way to the team’s success. Here are a couple examples of what I'm talking about.
Jones is a very smart player and has very good vision. Here he used his great skating to jump into the play creating an odd man rush, then showed that great passing ability to set up a goal.
Murray has always had this offensive side to his game, but it was rarely seen when he played alongside James Wisniewski. With Jones he can make more aggressive plays like this. Murray does a great job here at taking the puck deep and setting up Dubinsky. Murray like Jones has great vision and did a great job here to take the puck all the way behind the net and make a sweet pass.
The Jackets are also going to add Zach Werenski to the defence this season, who is highly regarded for his offensive play. He has a great shot and can score, but he’s also been a really strong passer, racking up 25 assists this past season at Michigan and another nine assists with the Monsters.
Using shot assists has given us a further understanding of the Jackets players this past season. Their forwards were just average at passing and that is part of the reason this group as a whole was middle of the pack. They don’t have players who excel at passing which hurts what they can do offensively. They need their defencemen, notably Seth Jones and Ryan Murray to take on larger roles in the offensive zone to help generate more scoring chances. If not the Jackets will remain an average passing team.
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