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vic03 · 12-31-2023, 04:01 PM

So I recently read a media who claims that while Roze stands out among the defenders, his claim to the Defensive Defenseman of the Year doesn’t stand on his own merits.
The claim is that even though Roze may lead almost every single defensive stat you can imagine, the rest of his blue line teammates round out the rest of the top
“Roze has been excellent, but it's hard to justify an individual award when everybody on the team has been at the same level.
The problem we run into is that none of the other names have stood out either.”
Now, are Roze’s stats the work of an outstanding defensive core? Somewhat yes, but I think the claim that Roze is hard to justify for the award is a bit far fetched, especially when there’s not many others who are really that close to having their name thrown in as a contender for the award.
I’m curious if the stats back up these claims.
Obviously no hate towards the original media, i think it was really well written, but my player was mentioned so of course I’m going to go in depth
Obligatory: there’s no way anyone could go as in-depth as I will into this and also write a whole media about all the other awards, I have the advantage of only looking at specific one instead of having to write multiple.
Leo Roze sits at 192 blocks, 60 hits, 33 Takeaways while having 21:10 ATOI, 2:19 of that on the penalty kill and only 9 seconds a game on the powerplay. Roze has a Corsi against 793, so at even strength Roze faced 793 shots that either were on target, blocked, or missed.
Some people may say Plus/Minus is a pretty useless stat, and I agree most of the time. But I think it can be an indication of talent, it just can’t be used on it on own. Leo Roze set the QCC franchise record of Plus/Minus in a season with his 60 this year, he also had the largest gap of plus/minus between 1st and 2nd place in the indexed era. I believe the old record was 8? I forget the actual number but it was a single digit.
His 192 blocks is also enough for him to move into 3rd place for blocks in a season for QCC, surpassing… himself. While being on a first place team who only let 25 shots a game

Players with 150+ blocks while on 1st place team (66 game era S57-74)
S70 - J-Roc (MET): 203
S68 - Nathan Meager (DET): 194
S74 - Leo Roze (QCC): 192
S69 - Nathan Meager (DET): 179
S59 - Grandmaster Funk (KEL): 170
S72 - Buster Knutt (MET): 167
S73 - Remington Richardson III (VAN): 165
S72 - Mick Mayhem (MET): 159
S67 - Nevek Hope (QCC): 157

That moves him into third of this, somewhat specific list, but 1-3 on that list are all very close, after Roze at 3 it drops pretty heavily.
Roze is also the #1 defender for the QCC penalty kill, which killed off 171/205 penalties for a league leading PK% of 83.4
Leo Roze faced 22.1 SA/60 which would result in around 486 shots against with Leo on the ice total for the season. QCC had 25.17 shots against a game, which is 1661 shots total. While on the ice for over 33.33% of the game, while being the first defender for their PK unit, only 29% of shots against QCC happened while he was on the ice,

With a Fenwick Against of 535, I believe that means that there was only 49 missed shots while Roze was on the ice. Now I don’t have a way of tracks when other players blocked the puck while Leo was on, he did have 192 blocks as well. Considering I don’t have the data for other blocks, and also that there was a huge amount of blocks by other QCC players, we can just say that in the end there was a 25% chance that Leo would block the puck on a shot. Does that seem accurate, not really? But at the same time he averaged 3 blocks a game and only faced roughly 7 shots on goal a game so perhaps it could be somewhat accurate.
Goal wise, Roze has a GA/60 of 1.7, dividing by 3(even if he didn’t played exactly 20 mins a game it’s still close enough) that is .56 goals against per game, meaning he was on ice 37 goals this season, QCC gave up 153 goals, meaning he was only on the ice for 24% of goals against while playing over a third of the game and being first defender on PK.
Another thing I wanted to look at is of those 37 goals he was on ice for, how many were shorthanded. We know that QCC gave up 34 goals on the PK(I’m ignoring majors that could’ve scored multiple times because that too hard). Now, I don’t have a way to check to see how many goals but i will try to estimate. We know Roze was on the ice for roughly 37 goals, and using his GF/60 which is 4.3, we can he was on the ice for 95 goals this season, which if they were all even strength would give him a plus/minus of 58…

I know 2 of his points shouldn’t register in the plus/minus stat since they are powerplay assists, so 93-37 gives us 56 plus/minus, it’s hard for me to judge how many more points were scored while Roze was on the powerplay because once again, not a stat I can track, but only playing 9 seconds a game i don’t think it would be an outrageous thing to say that he wasn’t on the ice for any more Powerplay goals. If that was the case that would mean Roze’s plus/minus including PK goals against would be 56, only 4 less than his true plus/minus, meaning he’d only have been on the ice for 4 PK goals against.
That would be absurd, or would it? I think that’s probably incorrect to assume that Roze was only the ice for those, so I’ll do some not so scientific stuff and probably get an even stupider number
Roze got 22 points this year, and was on the ice for 95 goals meaning he was involved in 23% of his teams scoring while on the ice. If that translate to the powerplay we can assume that there around 4x more goals than he was involved in, bringing the total to 8 powerplay goals while Roze was on the ice, meaning he would’ve been on the ice for 10 shorthanded goals against, seems like a more reasonable number. He killed 2:19 a game, so 1.15 penalties a game. that’s 76 penalties, which would give Roze a PK% of .868, higher than QCC’s team average.

If it was the 4 like mentioned previously it would be a .947 so I think it’s fair to say Roze had a personal penalty kill percentage of .868-.947, those are insane numbers. Completely estimated yeah, but with logic behind it

Simo Jääskeläinen is honestly a great comparison point to Roze, he’s who I think should definitely be nominated for defensive player of the year, the both play almost the exact same minutes, exact same line, and both lead in shorthanded time on ice for Defensemen on their team. They are also both on the 2 best defensive teams in the league
The easiest stat to point out is blocks, which isn’t Simo’s strong suit only having 75, but one stat doesn’t tell a whole story.

Simo has a GA/60 of 2.1, using the same logic I used for Roze, Simo was on the ice for 46 goals against , while his team gave up a total of 194, meaning he was on the ice for 23% of goals against, which is just below what Roze had(24%). Simo is doing this while also being first defender for PK and averaging over 20 minutes a night.
Simo has a SA/60 of 25.3, meaning a total for the season would be 556.6 shots against, to a total of 1865 for all Falcons, which is 30% of all shots, just over what Roze had(29%)

Simo has a GF/60 of 3.5, which would result in 77 goals while on the ice for him, using the 46 goals against we already have we get a plus/minus of 31, which is exactly what his real plus/minus is…. Did Simo give up 0 goals on the PK???
Probably not, he probably had some powerplay goals that I don’t know about, and since he didn’t get any powerplay points I can’t try to make an estimate on it like I did for Roze. I would assume with how close their other stats are though, is Simo is around the same percentages that Roze is

If we look at their other stats though, we can try and find a distinction
Roze ended +60 while Simo only ended +31, however Simo ended with 55 takeaways to Roze’s 33. Hits wise, which I don’t think matter since forwards always lead it and that’s stupid(but I digress), Roze has 60 on the season to Simo’s 75. Blocks which I mentioned before Roze is way ahead with 192 to Simo’s 75.

These two players are both insanely talented defensively, and are probably the 2 best defensive players in the league, so really looking at the numbers how do we separate them, you can say Simo’s on the worse team but honestly these two are both on the 2 best defensive teams in the league so saying the Falcons are the “worse” team is a bit of a long shot as to a reason Simo is better.

So who is better? Who deserves the award? Obviously I’m going to say Leo does because he’s my player, but also because while Simo is right there on the analysis, and above him on hits and takeaways, all the other raw numbers point to Leo

Besides his franchise record setting plus/minus, breaking the record for the gap between 1st and 2nd in plus/minus, to the 3rd most blocks by a player on the presidents trophy winners, I think Leo is a clear pick for the award, while Simo is a clear runner up.

Both players should be all-stars for their defensive talent however

In conclusion, I think it’s a bit of a wild statement to say that Roze’s stats don’t sit on their own merit. Yes he’s on the best defensive team in the league this year but he’s leading every single defensive stat on that team, not only is his leading it, he’s doing it while playing the most shorthanded minutes of the defensemen, and being a second line defender on a team that has a very equal share of time for Defenseman, he is constantly going up against the best players on every team and constantly continuing to stay on top of every stat there is.

I hate to sound like I only care about my player, but, Roze is the best defensive player in the J currently, and honestly I think it should be enough to get a Defender of the Year nomination even with the lack of point production, but I don’t really believe that’ll happen.
(I’ll be okay with an all-star spot tho Wink

)

ec06aaj · 12-31-2023, 06:13 PM

Oh hell yeah it's turning into an academic debate. Get ready @vic03, my rerebuttal's going to have charts and graphs and FOOTNOTES.

vic03 · 12-31-2023, 06:20 PM

12-31-2023, 06:13 PMec06aaj Wrote: Oh hell yeah it's turning into an academic debate. Get ready @vic03, my rerebuttal's going to have charts and graphs and FOOTNOTES.

the debate for an award no one cares about besides us will be legendary

ec06aaj · 12-31-2023, 06:36 PM

12-31-2023, 06:20 PMvic03 Wrote: the debate for an award no one cares about besides us will be legendary

you find a venue I'll hire some lecterns to give us authority

Nicklas Lidstrom will moderate, confused the entire team why he hasn't heard of any of these players