Losing Justin Schultz for over 50 games certainly didn’t help the Penguins. Schultz possesses the second best puck skills on Pittsburgh’s defense after Kris Letang. His return to the lineup was much anticipated. Logically, with Schultz back the Penguins would have two pairings that have a quality puck moving defenseman to help push play and attack the opposition. That’s not exactly how things have played out.
Justin Schultz’s underlying numbers since coming back leave a lot to be desired considering what they could be. The only reason I don’t think this is being discussed is because his on-ice save percentage is sitting at .943. If it was normal or below average instead of elite people would be wondering what is wrong with him. On-ice save percentage has the ability to hide a lot of things or expose a lot of things. Right now it is hiding Schultz’s less than stellar play.
Here is how Schulz’s 2018-19 season looks so far with his rank among the eight (8) Pittsburgh defensemen who have played 400 minutes this year for the team
CF% 45.33 (7) only Riikola lower at 45.18 SF% 43.65 (8) SCF% 46.09 (8) HDCF% 48.03 (7) only Johnson lower at 47.93 5v5 Points per 60 1.20 (3) only Letang and Oleksiak higher O Zone starting % 58.97 (1) On-ice save % .943 (2) only Riikola better at .946
Schultz has the ability to generate offense. That has always been one of his strengths. The problem this year so far is that he isn’t in the offensive zone to utilize those skills. The reason he was available for trade to the Penguins is the reason we are seeing some of these low numbers right now. You need to give Schultz appropriate deployment. His quality of teammate matters. He’s a great complimentary piece. He can’t drive things on his own. He couldn’t in Edmonton and he can’t in Pittsburgh.
Leading the defensemen in offensive zone starts makes sense. The fact his shot attempts and scoring chance data is low despite that points to something else being a problem. The problem is obvious. His most common linemate is Jack Johnson at 309 minutes at 5v5. His second most common linemate this year is Brian Dumoulin at 27:13. The Johnson-Schultz pairing isn’t working and it is more and more clear with the ever-growing sample size. The team at the present moment is unwilling to change things.
The team might not be open to change right now, but I am still going to take a peek at what that would look like.
Let’s take a look at the previous three seasons Schultz has been with the Penguins and focus on his top two most common linemates that are still rostered (Cole was his first). Those two players are Brian Dumoulin and Olli Maatta. Here’s how it looked
The results with Dumoulin are really good. They are so good that it is probably worth a look to see that pairing play together even if Letang is out of the lineup. If Letang is out of the lineup it is even more reason to load up with a great pairing. The Maatta numbers aren’t mind blowing, but still worth trying rather than continuing with the Johnson-Schultz experiment.
So if Schultz plays with Dumoulin how would it look if Maatta joined Letang?
That looks pretty damn good to me. When you look at the Maatta-Letang and Dumoulin-Schultz data there isn’t any reason to not roll forward with that as the top four. Kris Letang’s 5v5 points per 60 is even higher with Maatta (1.04) than Dumoulin (0.92) during the 2015-18 sample.
Stop the madness and go with things that have already been shown to be successful.
Maatta-Letang Dumouin-Schultz Pettersson-Gudbranson If winning the Stanley Cup is the goal the pairings above are very likely to be what maximizes the chances of doing it, again.
Thanks for reading!