Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Ranked even strength production by defensemen

I did something like this for forwards awhile back and it proved to be fairly popular. So, here's a ranked (by ESP/60) list of defensemen from the regular season. I've marked Flames players in yellow. Also included are QUAL COMP ratings, corsi/60 rates, ES plus/minus and the PDO numbers of guys inside the 90th percentile (plus a few others I bothered to look up). Excluded are players that failed to play more than 30 contests this year.

**(Spreadsheet won't publish for whatever reason - here's a handy link to the numbers instead)**

Looking at this list made me wonder: is there any way to rationally and quantifiably capture the contributions of low-offense, hard minute defensemen? I mean, none of Regehr's stats are impressive at a glance, but well all know he's the best defender the team's got. The issue for me is - how good is he, really? Is there any way to know outside of "he plays the big guns on the other team consistently and doesn't seem to get killed"?

Other items of interest: Mark Giordano's standing in ESP/60 and corsi rate, the ridiculous PDO's of Boston defenders and Jason Smith apparently not scoring a single ES point the entire year.