In honour of Brandon Saad’s selection to the NHL All-Star Game, I thought no better time to take an in-depth look at his season thus far. He came to the Blue Jackets with some high expectations, and with good reason. He was a key part of the Chicago Blackhawks and their run to the Stanley Cup. Making the All-Star team is a big accomplishment but just how does the Saad from Chicago compare to the one from Columbus?
All stats used in this post are from War On Ice.
We will start by looking at, for lack of a better term, his traditional stats.
There was a lot of talk of how Saad would get an increased role with the Jackets as he was buried behind so many talented players in Chicago. That is not the case however. He has been getting nearly identical minutes. One interesting trend is that he looks like he's becoming more of a goal scorer, on pace for a career high. This makes sense, when you’re playing on a line with Patrick Kane you pass him the puck. With the Jackets, Saad doesn’t have that sniper to pass to and has elected to shoot more.
The step is to look at his rate stats. This is similar to the chart above but limited the sample to just 5 on 5 and expressed it per 60 minutes. What this does is it mitigates any special team and ice time factors. In Saad’s case it won’t be a big deal as his ice time has been fairly consistent. But this is good if you want to compare players across different lines.
Looking at Saad’s rate stats he appears to be much the same player he was in Chicago, at least at even strength. He has slightly better assist rate but a slightly lower goal rate. This is very interesting and why rate stats are important. Saad doesn’t show the same goal scoring increase that his pace above suggested.
Another interesting aspect is his PDO. PDO is a combination of a player’s on ice shooting percentage and on ice save percentage. It fluctuates as the season goes on but usually settles around the 100 mark. It’s used like a luck statistic, if a player is above 100 they are considered lucky and vice versa. This suggests that Saad has been slightly lucky this season. Saad has a career PDO 101.5 so while his current rate should drop it may not be as significant as one would expect.
Taking a look at Saad’s power play stats we can see why he's on pace for 30 goals. These again are expressed as a rate.
This is where we really start to see Saad’s impact and changes he's made. His goal rate has shot up substantially while his assists have plumped. This ties into what we talked about above. When you’re on the same power player as guys like Kane, Toews, and Keith you are going to pass them the puck. For the Jackets, Saad has become that go to option on the power play. His shots per game have more than doubled as has his shooting percentage. 22.7% is a high shooting percentage but not outrageous for the power play. Last season the top players were shooting as high as 29%.
If Saad does run into some poor shooting luck he may be able to off-set it with sheer volume. This is basically what Alex Ovechkin does. He doesn’t have the highest shooting percentage but he just takes so many shots that doesn’t matter. Finally we turn to possession stats. This will give an overall view of how Saad is performing. He is someone who is expected to tilt the ice for the Jackets and give them an edge in possession, scoring chances and goals.
When Saad is on the ice he gives the Jackets an edge in scoring chances and a significant edge in goals. Where he's been lacking though is in shot attempt differential. Again there are team effects in play here. Any player leaving Chicago is going to have poorer stats. Ideally you would still like to see him above 50%. One positive to take away from this is his Corsi Rel. Corsi Rel looks at how a player does relative to his team. Relative to the Jackets Saad has been a positive possession player. This just further illustrates how poor the team has been.
Overall what this comes down to is what your expectations of Brandon Saad were prior to the season. Many expected Saad to struggle without Toews and Kane and that has simply not been the case. He has been able to maintain his performance from a scoring standpoint and has been a positive possession player relative to the Jackets. Others expected him to breakout and have a big year, but that hasn’t happened either. The only major change has been on the power play, where he is shooting and scoring more. Outside of that Saad has been nearly identical to the player he was in Chicago and quite frankly there is nothing wrong with that.
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