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Stone Keeping the Senators from Being an All-Time Disaster

December 12, 2018, 2:11 PM ET [12 Comments]
Trevor Shackles
Ottawa Senators Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS

The 18-19 Ottawa Senators have been fun to watch, there’s no denying that. There have been some encouraging individual performances, but on the whole, they are still one of the worst teams in the league. It doesn’t help that Matt Duchene is out indefinitely since he was clearly one of their three best players. Without a doubt though, the player that drives the train is Mark Stone.

I shiver to think where the Senators would be without him, because not only has he been fantastic for them, he also makes those around him that much better.

First of all, let’s look at the team’s possession stats. Through 32 games, their corsi sits at 42.61%, which is dead last in the league by far. The next closest team, the Anaheim Ducks, are at 45.24%. Since 2007-08 (as far back as these stats go), this Senators team ranks second last out of 362 teams. The only team worse than them so far? The 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres who tried so hard to lose in order to get Connor McDavid.

That means they have been worse than the 2013-14 Maple Leafs, the 2007-08 Thrashers, the 2015-16 Avalanche, and the 2013-14 Oilers. It has not been pretty. When Stone has been on the ice though, everything changes. He is only one of three players to have a corsi above 50% (Brady Tkachuk and Nick Paul being the others), as he sits at 52.82%. With such a massive difference between his possession numbers and the overall team's numbers, his relative corsi is of course massive at +14.92%. What that means is that without Stone on the ice, the Senators are getting 37.9% of the shot attempts.

Luckily for the Senators, he is getting 20:05 of ice-time per game, which gives them a fighting chance in those minutes. If you’re not amazed by his +14.92% relative corsi or just need context, here are the highest single-season relative corsi numbers since 2007 (min. 500 minutes):



That’s right, Daniel Sedin had the highest at 14.72% (in the lockout-shortened season), which is lower than what Stone is currently at. Plus it’s not as if many other players in the top-15 are even close, especially those who actually played a full 82 games. I have been using Natural Stat Trick’s relative corsi numbers, although Corsica’s numbers are slightly different and actually make Stone look even better by saying he has a +15.01 CF% relative. Either way, it has been a historic one-man show.

Yes, Thomas Chabot, Matt Duchene, Brady Tkachuk and others have been very impressive too, but not to the extent that Stone has in terms of shot share. It’s rare to see someone so far ahead of his peers like this. Furthermore, I found this graph from Tyler Dellow quite striking. What it means is that teams on the left have actually fared better without their most used forward, while teams on the right have fared incredibly poorly without their most used forward. Stone is the leading forward in ice-time, and unsurprisingly, Ottawa is the most extreme team listed:




We have always known that Stone is a fantastic player on his own, but over the past year or two, we are really getting to see the impact that he has on other players. I doubt Tkachuk and White would be off to the starts that they are having without Stone by their sides. They are good players by themselves, but Stone elevates them even more.

The Senators have not bottomed out just yet this season, as they are 24th overall in the league. Their possession numbers suggest they will fall further during the season, but Stone's ability to make the team decent for one out of three periods a game could stop them from being the 2014-15 Sabres.

He is in the prime of his career at the age of 26, and I see no reason why he wouldn’t age gracefully considering his wide range of skillsets. Even if the next great Senators team is not built until he is in his early 30s, he should still be amongst the league’s best right-wingers. He has been keeping the Senators from being even more of a trainwreck, and that is why he deserves almost any amount that he asks for in his new contract.
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