Thanks to Ryan Stimson of All About the Jersey (formerly In Lou We Trust) and numerous volunteers we have passing data from this past season.
For background information on the project and the full data set see this post.
This is part five of trying to find out who was the Blue Jackets best passer last season. You can find part one of the series here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.
The focus here will again be on defencemen. Last time the focus was on passes made in the defensive zone, specifically the first pass. This time we are going to look at offensive zone passes.
These charts should look familiar as they are the same used for the forwards back in the first post. The first graph is shots generated from primary passes.
All data is from 5 on 5
David Savard fares well here which is very good. In the last post I noted how ineffecitve he was at clearing the defensvie zone. He's clearly a much better offensive player than defensive player so the best way to use him would be getting him into the offensive zone as much as possible.
On the other end of the spectrum we have Kevin Connauton who was one of the best at exiting the zone. I really thought he would have done well in something like this.
Up next is primary passes in the offensive zone vs passes leading to scoring chances. This will show us who is generating the best quality chances.
I’ve been very impressed with Savard here. He generates a large amount of shot attempts from his offensive zone passes. He does a very good job of picking his spots as he gets a high number of quality chances as well. Getting a chance to play with Ryan Murray as Savard has in the pre-season, should help further improve Savard’s numbers.
Right there with Savard is Goloubef. I think Goloubef deserves a long look this season. He has shown to be better than Prout by both the eye test and the stats. He doesn’t bring the physical edge Prout does but he's a better overall defencemen.
Fedor Tyutin gets the fewest shot attempts from his passes, but he gets the most scoring chances. He’s not an offensive minded guy but he clearly picks his spots well of when to pass.
I still can’t believe Connaunton didn’t fare better. I had always thought of him as a more offensive minded player but that just hasn’t been the case for him in pro hockey. I keep thinking back to his lone season in the WHL where he scored over a point per game. He did get 19 points this season which is solid, however it came with a 9.4 shooting percentage which was 11th among defencemen who played at least 40 games. It’s unlikely he shoots that well again this season so I’d expect his point totals to drop.
Up next will be the final post in the series declaring who the Blue Jackets best passer is among forwards and among defencemen and how this information can be used when determining line combinations.
You can find me on Twitter @PaulBerthelot