Since signing with the Tampa Bay Lightning in the summer of 2012, Matt Carle has taken the brunt of many jokes. His first two years, played while carrying a $5.5-million cap hit, were wholly underwhelming for a player who was supposed to be a reliable top-four presence.
Things have changed.
The Carle we’ve seen through the first three months of the 2014-15 campaign is the Carle Steve Yzerman thought he was getting when he signed the player to a six-year, $33-million deal. He’s been driving possession, making smart offensive plays, and generally doing things right.
Does he make the odd egregious and highlight-worthy error? Sure. Is there an occasional gaffe? You bet. But, on the whole, Carle has improved in a big way.
To illustrate this point, the best place to start is with some basic analysis of the fancy stats. This tweet from James Mirtle gives a quick glimpse at how much better Carle has been this year compared to the last:
Most improved possession players in the NHL (raw CF%). Keep in mind some of this is usage and/or being on new team. pic.twitter.com/XExNA6rZWU
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) December 22, 2014Further, take a moment to consider where Carle is now compared to where players like Anton Stralman and Victor Hedman are now and have been in the past. Obviously team quality plays a large factor in these numbers, but the contrast is too stark to ignore.
The first argument people who like to poke fun of Carle will likely make is this: He’s playing with better players this season, and so his numbers should naturally be better. So let’s look at the with-or-without-you numbers for Carle and his most common ice-mates.
It’s kind of hard to draw a convincing conclusion from that graph. In some cases, Carle makes his teammates better. In some cases, Carle outshines his teammates. In a select few cases, Carle is a drag on his teammates.
Let’s compare that to last year’s numbers.
As you can clearly see, there wasn’t a player who Carle made better last year. In fact, every one of his most common ice-mates got worse when he was out there. That trend has been completely reversed in 2014-15. Carle is helping to make players like Steven Stamkos, Valtteri Filppula, and Ryan Callahan better.
So, if we can’t completely link Carle’s improvement to the people he’s playing with, maybe it’s his usage? Maybe he’s being put in easier situations. Here are his zone start numbers over the last three seasons:
On the surface, it certainly looks like Jon Cooper has been easing Carle’s minutes. He’s decreased his defensive zone starts and increased his offensive zone starts. However, some of that can simply be attributed to the team being better. It’s worth noting that, among who played/have played more than 200 minutes at 5v5, Carle had the third lowest OZFO% on the team last season, and has the fifth lowest this season. There’s not a huge change there. Further, he had the 11th highest DZFO% last year and now has the seventh highest.
Domenic Galamini of OwnThePuck.com did some great work with the usage question and came up with a conclusion that should certainly interest Lightning fans. After adjusting the Corsi numbers for usage, this was the result with regards to the Bolts:
.@philliamkessel pic.twitter.com/EFkMYK3b5L
— Domenic Galamini (@MimicoHero) December 30, 2014While he’s certainly not perfect, Matt Carle has improved in a noticeable and impactful way. For that he deserves credit. If he can continue to perform at this level, the Lightning’s need for defensive help will be minimized. It’s hard to ask for much more.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.
(All numbers – accurate to December 30th - courtesy of Puckalytics.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com unless otherwise cited.)