Login

academydropout · 08-08-2021, 12:38 PM

In the first part of this series, I looked at the SMJHL defensemen with the highest proportion of TPE spent on attacking attributes. For balance, in this part, I will look at the other end of the list: who has spent the highest proportion of TPE on defensive attributes?

Bear in mind that this analysis does not consider ALL of a player’s TPE spend, only a comparison of the amounts spent on attacking vs defensive attributes. So in some cases, while a player may have a much higher spend on defensive TPE than attacking, it’s possible that they also have a high spend on physical attributes. This is something we saw with the first part of this series, and I suspect this will hold true again in this article.

As before, I will be looking at OGR, DGR, shots, points, hits, and blocks. Again, I am also ignoring players with fewer than 200 TPE spent in total, as it’s a safe bet that they are not going to be particularly active players and I don’t want to skew the numbers too much.

Jamal Nightingale (COL)
Left Defense | 13% OFF | 87% DEF
55 shots on goal, 17 points | 102 blocks, 103 hits
50 OGR | 69 DGR

Okay so this is my player. Of the names in this list, he has the lowest total TPE spend, but is arguably the most well-rounded build, with 13 for every defensive and physical attribute except hitting (14) and strength (11) -- I’m ignoring faceoffs (5), and fighting (5) since they’re not relevant to most defenseman builds as far as I’m aware -- and this is evident in his output. 17 points as a third line defenseman (with only one goal) and over 100 each of blocks and hits is a decent return -- for a rookie season, this is good, even -- but these are not standout numbers in the greater context of the league, making it difficult to tell whether the greater focus on defense is truly paying off.

Duncan The Walrus (MET)
Right Defense | 15% OFF | 85% DEF
72 shots on goal, 24 points | 117 blocks, 102 hits
51 OGR | 71 DGR

Despite having only fives for aggression and bravery, Duncan has the highest total blocks + hits on this list. He does have the highest checking (16), and very good positioning and defensive reads (15 each) though, so that perhaps explains why despite having only slightly above average shot blocking, he’s close to making the top ten in the league for that statistic. What this seems to suggest is that mentals can help, but simply being good at something (and being in the right places at the right times) is probably more effective at racking up defensive actions.

Ryan Gardner (QCC)
Left Defense | 16% OFF | 84% DEF
111 shots on goal, 19 points | 74 blocks, 142 hits
54 OGR | 89 DGR

Yooo… that defensive game rating tho. Gardner appears on the leaderboard for hits (5th) with a whopping 142, and his defensive game rating is likely the result of his excellent defensive read ability and notably high aggression (12 vs league average of 6.59). Interestingly, Gardner is also capable of making decent offensive reads (his score of 12 is slightly below league average), which perhaps explains why he’s more involved on offense than the other names in this list. He is most definitely not a scorer though, as evidenced by his poor return of 6 goals from over 100 shots on goal. Defensively though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better guy.

Eddie Kastrba (CAR)
Right Defense | 20% OFF | 80% DEF
74 shots on goal, 20 points | 55 blocks, 95 hits
52 OGR | 53 DGR

Kastrba is the most interesting case here, as his output seems to be reasonably balanced between offense and defense, despite spending a whopping four times as much TPE on defensive attributes. Comparing this to the roughly 2:1 in favour of offense that yielded strong numbers on both sides of the puck, this would suggest that a focus on defense is not an efficient way of spending TPE.

Conclusions
As before, it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions from a small sample of data, and the cases of Kastrba and Gardner seem to be providing almost entirely contradictory outcomes. It occurred to me as I wrote this second part that my methodology has one major flaw: I don’t control for time on ice and line placement. Naturally, more time on ice will yield higher numbers in counting stats, while playing on a weaker line might potentially inflate rating scores due to lower quality of opposition. What I have noticed that I don’t see any contradictory evidence for, is that investing in physical attributes is very important. Almost every player in either of these lists has been near or above average in every physical attribute except fighting (and some notably strong there too; particularly in part two). If I were to single out specific things to focus on as a defensive defenseman, I would suggest strength and balance over the others, based on Gardner’s output. However, it looks like getting all physicals (except fighting) to 13 would be good for covering your bases. Beyond that, the corresponding read attribute is important depending on which way you decide to focus, but it’s hard to really pinpoint anything beyond that other than obvious things (i.e. high scoring will yield more goals, high hitting will yield more hits etc).

This has been an interesting exercise in build comparison, though, and I think I can maybe build more efficiently from this point by considering which builds have been successful this past season.

Opera_Phantom · 08-08-2021, 12:58 PM

Approved!

+5 TPE @academydropout

***micool132*** · 08-08-2021, 01:34 PM

Interesting read!

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us