I’m a skeptic at heart so when I hear unabashed praise for someone I tend to think this is too good to be true. Maybe it’s why I instantly hated the movies Avatar and Titanic, maybe I just hate James Cameron. I don’t know. Right now the Oilers are rumored to be interested in pending UFA Mark Fayne and he’s getting a lot of praise from the regular stats guys whose opinion I value pretty high. Still though, I’m not entirely sold on Fayne. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t want the Oilers to sign him or that he wouldn’t make the Defense better, just that I wouldn’t make him out to be the possession savior the Oilers need.
Mark Fayne is a 27 year old College Trained right-shooting Defenseman who stands 6’3… and 210 pounds. He was drafted by the Devils and played minimally in the AHL after college before making it as a fulltime NHLer, so we know his development was handled well and he graduated to a decent club. His career high in Goals is 4, a number he’s hit 3 times, and his career high in points is 17. He isn’t going to wow anybody in the offensive zone, that can be assured, but he isn’t Ken Daneyko out there either (offensively speaking).
Fayne played a shade more than 18 minutes a night for the Devils this past year which would slot him around the 4-5 spot on their depth chart depending on the day. He played a grand total of 2 seconds per game on the PP and a more expected 1:59 per game on the PK. His shorthanded time on ice ranks a distant 4th on the team for defensemen so bear in mind that while he was used there were 3 others the Devils preferred over him.
Still though, these are good things for a guy who the Oilers probably see filling a role on the 3rd pairing and he’s still light-years ahead of Mark Fraser. And it’s true that his possession numbers look really good, he has a Corsi% of 55.3 and that’s killer!
So why so skeptical of Fayne?
First, the New Jersey Devils were a fantastic Corsi team so we need to focus less on his raw score and more on his Relative score. In relation to his team Fayne was still positive but only a +1.5% this past season. Now +1.5% is still hard to do when the rest of the team is so good, but it should hopefully temper some of the hyperbolic giddiness associated with him. More important to that, though, is how well he performed with and without certain players.
Here are Fayne’s 2013-2014 numbers with his main Defensive partner Andy Greene:
Fayne With Greene: CF% 57.6 Fayne Without Greene: CF% 47.2 Greene Without Fayne: CF% 54.2%
So this past season it really looks by number that Greene, who was New Jersey’s best defenseman, was dragging Fayne all over the ice. Now the two still played solid minutes together and did a great job, but who should be getting the credit for that? Fayne or his partner who led the team in ice time per game and is contributing at both ends of the rink? Additionally, Fayne’s top 3 Forward linemates were Jagr, Zubrus, and Zajac. So my question remains, who was driving the bus with regards to Fayne’s excellent possession numbers?
Now that’s what we saw last year but Fayne’s supporters will also point you to past years of work to show that he does indeed have a strong background of quality possession numbers. And he does. If you go back through the numbers he has excellent underlying numbers…but he’s also playing a lot of minutes with Andy Greene and before that it was Henrik Tallinder (and Tallinder was a possession beast). For forwards since 2010 he has played the most with Zubrus, Elias, and Kovalchuk.
I keep coming back to my biggest question, who was driving his possession numbers? Are they a reflection of him or the great situation he found himself in?
I obviously don’t know the answer to that but I hope the Oilers do before they commit to the term his camp is reported to be asking for (4-5 years as per Ryan Rishaug). At the end of the day Fayne is still just a 4-5 Defenseman who doesn’t add much offense and wont be an anchor on any special teams. If that’s the case and the Oilers think his spot will be filled internally soon then they can pass on Fayne.
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