It seems like I'm always mentioning the poor play of the Blue Jackets top defence pair Jack Johnson and David Savard. The reasoning for this is they are clearly overmatched as a top unit. Simply by watching them it’s easy to see, they are always hemmed in their own end.
I want to compare how this unit stacks up to other top pairs in the league and show that if the Blue Jackets seriously want to contend in the next year or two they have to address this top pair.
To do that I went to
Left Wing Lock to see how frequent defencemen played together this season, and then used time on ice from
War On Ice to confirm what players were seeing the most minutes at even strength.
I looked at the pairs and weeded out the ones that have not played at least 500 minutes together over the last three seasons. This helps to avoid any sample size issues, and newly formed partners. That left me with 21 defensive pairs.
I then gathered each pair’s goals for percentage (GF%) and Corsi for percentage (CF%) from
Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com when they were on the ice together at 5 on 5. This will give an idea of who is out shooting the opposition as well as who is outscoring them.
For example if a pair has a 60% GF% that means when they were on the ice together their team scored 60% of the goals. The average across the league for this would be 50%. Same thing applies to CF%.
The following graph shows the best pair, worst pair, the average of all 21 pairs and the Blue Jackets pair.
View post on imgur.com
Johnson and Savard are well below the average in both GF% and CF%. Their CF% is actually the worst in the league at 47.3%.
The best pair in terms of GF% over the last three seasons has been the duo in Los Angeles; Drew Doughty and Brayden McNabb. They have been paired together for 603:19 and have a 65.8 GF%. This pair finished second in CF% with 57.8%
The top Corsi pair was the dynamite duo in Tampa Bay, of Victor Hedman and his partner the underrated Anton Stralman. Those two have combined to have a 58.7 CF%. They also finished second in GF% with 63.3%. These are two of the premier pairs in the league, and you need to have that dominate top pair if you want to contend for the Stanley Cup.
The worst pair in terms of GF% was Carolina’s Justin Faulk and Ron Hainsey. They had a measly GF% of 39.7%, the only ones to be below 40%. They did however have a 54.6 CF%.
Johnson and Savard were the only pair to be below 50% in both GF% and CF%. There is obviously some bias in this as most pairs who have been that poor would have been split up or wouldn’t receive top minutes.
Now I know defencemen provide value that doesn’t always show up in the numbers but the fact of the matter remains, when Jack Johnson and David Savard have been on the ice, the Blue Jackets opponents have taken 52.7% of the shots and scored 55.6% of the goals. That would be an issue for any defensive pair let alone one considered to be the top pair. This is clearly an issue for the team and something that needs to be addressed by the coaching staff and front office.
The easiest and most logical solution is to simply give them less ice time. I know this team isn’t stacked with defencemen but it makes no sense that Johnson plays two minutes more a game at 5 on 5 than Ryan Murray. Murray has the potential to be that top pair guy. Give him some more opportunities to prove it.
The other move would be to shake up the pairings. I would try Murray with Savard and Johnson with Tyutin. Johnson and Tyutin haven’t been terrible when paired together in the past. Over the last three seasons they have played 817:14 together, and have a GF% of 51.9% and a CF% of 48.4%. While those numbers aren’t great they are much better than the Johnson-Savard ones.
A lot of things have gone wrong for the Blue Jackets this season. The top defensive pair of Jack Johnson and David Savard are one of the big reasons for it. They haven’t shown to be up to par with other top pairs in the league. If Columbus is serious about contending for the Stanley Cup they have to address this either by giving them less ice time or changing the pairs completely.
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@PaulBerthelot 
Columbus Blue Jackets Blogger • 
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