When I
wrote about the Blue Jackets defence last week, I was surprised to see how well David Savard had done this season. It’s been
well documented in the past how poor Savard and his partner Jack Johnson have performed in recent years. When the Blue Jackets locked up Savard to a long-term deal
I wrote about how he needed a breakout season to justify this deal. Halfway into this season it’s clear the breakout is happening.
When talking about Savard the first thing that always needs to be brought up is his ice-time. In the past few seasons he was on the top pair and it was clear neither he nor Johnson were able to handle such a tough role. They were tasked with playing in all-situations and taking on the oppositions best forwards. With the acquisition of Seth Jones and the emergence of Zach Werenski they have taken some of the load off of Savard.
His average time on ice currently sits at 21:24, down almost two minutes from the 23:10 he averaged last season. His power play time has vanished as this is the area where Werenski in particular, excels. Savard is still playing a ton of minutes at 5 on 5 and continues to take on tough opponents.
Savard’s quality of competition is the highest among the Blue Jackets defencemen. John Tortorella continues to use him against the best players on the opposition. He also does Savard no favours in terms of zone starts, as Savard starts in the offensive zone just 42.94% of the time at 5 on 5 per
Natural Stat Trick, the second lowest behind his partner Johnson.
Despite this unfavourable situation, Savard has been fantastic this season. He doesn’t have the offensive numbers, but his underlying stats have been great. His Corsi is second among defencemen at 52.26%, just barely behind Werenski at 52.95%. To put this into perspective, there have been 39 defencemen this season to play at least 400 minutes at 5 on 5 and start 45% of their shifts or fewer in the offensive zone. Of those 39 just five have a Corsi above 50%, including Savard. The others are Zdeno Chara, Radko Gudas, Braydon Coburn and Alex Pietrangelo.
If that wasn’t enough Savard is just one of nine of these tough start defencemen to have a scoring chance for percentage above 50%. His 53.15% ranks behind Chara, and ahead of players like Pietrangelo, Cam Fowler, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Ryan McDonagh. Savard’s goals for percentage of 61.54% leads the 39 defencemen and he is one of just three players, Christian Folin and Alexey Marchenko the others, to have a GF% above 60%. When Savard has been the ice the Blue Jackets have been generating shots, chances and goals at a very high rate considering the circumstances.
So what has changed this season to make Savard into this shutdown defencemen? To find out we turn to the work of Corey Sznajder (
@ShutdownLine)and his work with micro-stats. Corey tracks a ton of micro-stats notably zone entries and exits among numerous others. He makes all the data that he gathers available on his website
The Energy Line. There you find all the data and learn more about what he does. Also if possible I would recommend supporting what Corey does. He works tirelessly to track this and without it posts like this wouldn’t have the level of depth.
Corey has 10 Blue Jacket games from this season tracked. Savard has played in nine of those. It’s not a huge sample by any means but it does provide some valuable insight into why Savard has been as successful as he has. The two areas of most interest here are zone exits and blue line defence. If Savard has done well at exiting the zone and not allowing the opposition entrance into offensive zone then it would explain why his Corsi and scoring chance numbers are so high.
Looking at the zone exit data, Savard has attempted to exit the zone 80 times. He has done so on 57 of those attempts giving him an exit percentage of 71.25%. That is middle of the pack for the Blue Jacket defencemen. The leader is Zach Werenski who gets the puck out of the zone 78.64% of the time and at the bottom is Jack Johnson who does so only 68.6%. Of those 57 exits for Savard, 24 of them were possession exits, meaning the Blue Jackets maintained possession on the exit. These include both passing the puck out and carrying the puck out. Savard has a possession exit percentage of 30% which is the lowest on the team, tied with Ryan Murray. Seth Jones leads the way at 41.9%. Looking further into the data you can see why Jones has the success he does and Savard does not.
Jones leads the Jacket defence in pass% and carry%. This is the type of thing you notice when you watch Jones; he's a fantastic skater and is great with the puck. This was never in doubt, but we have some numbers to support this and can see just how effective Jones is. Werenski is right behind in Jones in pass% and carry% and has the lowest fail%. Just further evidence of how well this kid is playing. Turning out attention to Savard it’s easy to see here why his possession exits are low. He rarely carries or passes the puck out, electing to dump-it out or clear it out, neither of which directly leads to possession of the puck for the Blue Jackets.
Someone has realized whether it was Savard himself or the coaching staff, but he is not a good player with the puck on his stick. We don’t have exit stats from last season but I would wager that Savard would have more failed exits. He struggles at carrying the puck so he doesn’t do it that often anymore. The idea of “safe is death” is real and dumping it/ clearing it isn’t usually the smart option but it’s better than alternative; turning it over in your own zone.
This play style works for Savard because he is very good at defending zone entries against.
Savard isn’t targeted all that much as teams rightfully choose to go after Johnson. When teams do target Savard things do not go so well, he leads the d-core in breaking up plays at the line at 9.62%. Very surprisingly right behind Savard in this is Markus Nutivaara. Teams carry the puck in against Nutivaara the least, opting to go after Murray. This is interesting as you think teams would want to attack the rookie, and maybe they did early in the season, but realized how good he was at shutting plays down before they even got started.
You are not going to break up every entry against so another good area to look at is how you limited the damage once teams gained the zone. Allowing a zone entry is fine, if you limit what they do afterwards, preventing the opposition from getting passes and shots.
Savard allows the second fewest shots against per entry and is tied with Jones for second fewest passes allowed. This here is the best indicator as to why his possession numbers discussed above are what they are. When teams come after Savard he is not allowing them to do anything. He either breaks the play up right away or keeps it in front of him so that he doesn’t allow the player to make a pass or take a shot.
David Savard has been a revelation for the Blue Jackets this season. He is no longer on the top pair but he continues to face tough opponents and have unfavourable zone starts. He’s been very good in that role this season as he plays to his strengths in the defensive zone. He doesn’t exit the zone as well as you would like but he off-sets that making it very difficult for teams to enter the zone. Putting it all together, David Savard has become a shutdown defencemen and is one of many unheralded reasons why the Blue Jackets have been so successful.
You can follow me on Twitter
@PaulBerthelot 
Columbus Blue Jackets Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»