So rather than sit around a mope till game 2, I figured I'd occupy my hockey-obsessed brain with something a little more useful (useful meaning: less whiny and obstinate).
Recently both Matt and Kyle mentioned Mark Giordano in seperate posts. Both perceive him in a postive light, which seems to jive with my own impressions of the young defensemen (despite the fact he's been given the stinkeye by the Calgary coaching staff for a large portion of the season). In the second half the year, Giordano has basically been the Flames "8th defenseman" behind the likes of Warrener, Hale and Zyuzin. He ended up playing in only 48 games, even though Rhett Warrener was skating around with "full-body soreness" for a sizable portion of the year and Andrei Zyuzin...well...sucks.
Given that I and other Flames fans seem to like Giordano, I set out to discover what the available objective data had to say about the rookie: was the coaching staff right in sitting him in favor of just about anyone else? Do we all have our heads up our asses, mezmerized by Gio's swarthy complexion and thick eyebrows? Or is Playfair making another mistake?
Analysis:
The basic stats for Marky Mark aren't terribly helpful because, well, he was a 6th defenseman who didn't play all that much this year. He averaged about 13 minutes a night on the 3rd pairing and occassionally got some PP time. In the 48 games played, Gio managed 7 goals and 8 assists for 15 points. Three of his markers came on the PP and two of them were game-winners. In comparison, Rhett Warrener accrued 4 goals and 6 assists in 17 minutes per night over 64 games. The much maligned Andrea Susan scored once and added 5 assists in his 49 games with about the same amout of ice time as the guy in question. Giordano was +7, Warrener +6 and Zyuzin -2.
The basic stats give us a foundation of an arguement, but they obviously don't tell the whole story. The next step is to consider the basic+ figures for all three players.
I published the ESP/60 and PPP/60 numbers in the Calgary/Detroit series preview. At ES, Giordano put up the best rate of production of any Calgary defensemen with a 1.21 ESP/60 number. In contrast Warrener had the lowest rate of any regular player at 0.50 ESP/60 and Zyuzin wasn't much better, putting up 0.67 even-strength points per 60 minutes of ice. Of course, the problem of "small-sample size" rears it's ugly head in this instance. because Giordano only played about 470 minutes all season, one could argue his rate is inflated. which is sensible, considering his number is a full 0.40 better than Phanuef's - the implication being that Gio would have outscored The Dion significantly had they played equitable amounts. Which is probably a false conclusion.
However, one can compare Giordano to the likes of Warrener and especially Zyuzin a little easier. Rhett played less than double the ES minutes of Giordano (814) and Zyuzin played almost the same amount (520.5).
(As a point of comparison, Phaneuf played 1336 minutes at ES).
Now, assuming that:
a.) smaller ice-time samples have the potential to inflate production rates thanks to the increased influence of chance on the resultant figures, and therefore, b.) the closer players are in ice-time, the more comparable they tend to be,
one can reasonably conclude that Giordano is a superior option, in terms of offense, than Zyuzin and likely Warrener as well. Hell, the difference between Susan's production rate and Giordano's is over 0.50 ESP/60, despite similar ES minutes. Over, say, 1200 minutes, that's an additional 10 points, assuming the variance between the two players would remain constant*. The difference between Warrener and Giordano is even greater, though their minutes are little more disparate. However, it's safe to say that Giordano's efficiency wouldn't fall to Warrener's level, even if his minutes were to jump up around the 800+ mark. Contextual knonwledge renders such an assumption probable: Warrener has the smallest production rate on the team and has never in his career been offensively adept. Giordano, on the other, produced well during his limited time in the NHL and led his AHL squad in scoring last year - despite being a blueliner.
(*what I mean here is, it's safe to say the player's production rates would fall to some extent as their minutes increased. The assumption here is the difference between their rates would always remain close to 0.50 ESP/60).
The PPP/60 figures aren't very helpful in this comparison since Warrener's number (7.50 PPP/60) is based on the single point he got in his 8 minutes of PP ice during the season. Zyuzin only skated for about 44 minutes of ice on the PP and yet scored not single point at all. He should have an inflated rate, but...that's just how bad Zyuzin is. Giordano played about 120 minutes with the man-advantage and only put up a fairly pedestrian 2.31 PPP/60 number. Still, all things being equal, I have no problem concluding that Marky Mark is, again, the best offensive option among the 3. There's obviously a reason Warrener doesn't garner any PP time and Zyuzin, as mentioned already, just sucks.
Naturally, confining the analysis of defensemen to their production rates isn't terribly helpful. A blueliners value lies as much (or more) in his ability to defend as opposed to score. Warrener's production efficiency rating is basically moot if he's able to shut-down opposing scorers with a high degree of efficacy.
Enter the advanced statistics of Gabriel Dejardin's amazing website behindthenet.ca. The helpful link at left will take you to a big, intimidating table filled with Calgary player names, numbers and some (+/-) symbols. The stuff to pay attention to is "Qual Comp." and "On/Off +/-".
The first column in question - Quality of Competition - basically rates the degree to which a player faces the opposition's "big guns". As Dejardins explains, this particular metric is calculated by:
"averag(ing) (the) On/Off-Ice +/- of the opposing players a player faces."
The on/off-ice +/- number is the difference between the team's ES scoring rates when that individual player is one the ice and on the bench. The "scoring rate" is calculated as GF/60 (goals for/60 minutes), and they can be found on the right side of the table. Therefore, a positive (+) on/off stat means the team scores more when player X is on the ice. A negative (-) means the team tends to get scored on more with player Y on the ice. And thus the higher the (+) the more player contributes to the team's GD (goal differential), and, by extention, win record.
So, let's say Kris Draper is consistently sent out against Iginla, Langkow, Tanguay, Stuart and Regehr during round one. His "Quality of Opposition" rating would be the average of those 5 player's on/off +/- figures:
Iggy - 0.68
Tanguay - 0.50
Langkow - 1.31
Stuart - 0.76
Regehr - 0.79
--------------
Drapers Qual of Comp = 0.808
Back to the question at hand. The table shows that Warrener has faced tougher competition this season than Gio, (0.039 versus -0.066), with Zyuzin facing roughly similar opponents (-0.040). Overall, it looks like Marky Mark was the most sheltered defenseman on the team this year, which is to be expected given he is a young rookie.
Score one for Rhett. Another mark against Susan.
The adjusted +/- numbers tend to favor Giordano, however. The Flames scored at a net rate of 0.90 GF/60 when Giordano was playing versus just 0.22 GF/60 when Warrener was on the ice and -0.46 GF/60 for Zyuzin. When each player was off the ice, the team scored at a net rate of 0.76, 0.68 and 0.52 for Susan, Warrener and Giordano, respectively. Keep in mind, a lower number is better for the off-ice +/- rate. A higher number means the team's net scoring is higher when player X is on the bench.
The resultant on/off +/- (the difference of on-ice and off-ice net scoring rates: high on-ice # minus a low off-ice # equals an effective player) numbers are 0.37 for Gio, -0.46 for Warrener and -1.22 for Zyuzin.
What does all this mean?
It means Warrener plays against stiffer competition than Giordano, but doesn't necessarily get the job done. The confounding element here, however, is that Giordano could conceivably struggle against higher competition, which would likely result in a lower on/off +/- number for him. Let's score the Warrener/Gio comparison a wash.
Zyuzin, on the hand, does indeed suck. He plays against weaker opponents and still manages to contribute negatively (-1.22) to the team's scoring rate. Basically, The Flames score more when he's off the ice and score less when he's on to the tune of 1.22 goals per hour - even though he faces mainly 4th liners and checkers. Ugh.
Other Observations:
- Notice that several of my favorite whipping boys have the worst on/off +/- ratings: Amonte (-1.49), Friesen (-1.52) and, before he left, Andrew Ference (-1.72). None of the 3 faced the toughest opponents (0.026, 0.032 and 0.001 respectively) and yet they all clearly struggled. This is an especially pointed indictment of Playfair's tendeceny to throw Amonte on whenever the Flames are trailing by a goal or two at the end of the 3rd period. Everyone else seems to recoginze instinctively that Tony is a poor option for such an assigment but...there it is.
The good news is - Ference was traded for Stuart (take a look at the latter's metrics - WAY better) and both Amonte and Friesen will be jettisoned into the ether of free agency (and probably retirement or obscurity) in the off-season.
- I gave Regehr a hard time earlier in the season, but he is clearly the Flames best d-man according to the advanced stats. He faces the best quality competition (0.068) and still manages the 3rd highest on/off +/- rating (0.79) on the team behind Langkow and Juice. All this despite having relatively poor linemates (quality of teammates -0.01).
- Marvel at the on/off +/- figures of Huselius and Langs (1.00, 1.31). What a great season for these guys.
- Phaneuf still has some developing to do before he can be considering a top-notch defender. His quality of comp wasn't very high (0.006) and yet he managed a negative (-0.20) on/off +/- rating. Keep in mind, these advanced stats basically omit PP contributions, where Phaneuf excels. The other positive is the team scored at a high rate when he was on the ice (3.46 GF/60), meaning he just needs to get that on-ice GA/60 rate (3.01) to go down in order for him to improve (as a comparison, the team's rate of goals against/60 while Regehr was on the ice was 1.84).
Conclusions:
Giordano is a better scorer than both Zyuzin and Warrener, although he does need to be sheltered from the other team's big guns. He had the best adjusted +/- figure of all three defensemen, with the caveat that he faced the "easiest" opposition. Overall, I would consider him at least on par with Warrener and a vastly superior option to Andrea.
In regards to the questions put forth at the onset of this post I'd say: We don't have our heads up our asses and Playfair did (is?) making a mistake keeping Giordano out of the line-up.
