Something that I have found that comes up often in online discussions is where Habs defenseman PK Subban matches up to other well regarded young defensemen in the NHL. In one HfBoards thread I saw a list of a group of defensemen that Subban would be in the middle of, behind the top tier defenders like Erik Karlsson, Alex Pietroangelo and Drew Doughty. This group includes what might be considered the best defensemen from drafts including and after 2007.
PK Subban
Oliver Ekman-Larson
Ryan McDonagh
John Carlson
Cam Fowler
Travis Hamonic
Zach Bogosian
Kevin Shattenkirk
Tyler Myers
Michael del Zotto
Jake Gardiner
To this group I added the perpetually under-rated Victor Hedman whose good work in Tampa Bay has been obscured in popular perception by heavy defensive usage which deflates his offensive stats and plus minus.
For this study the average results from the previous two seasons have been taken to give a larger (and fairer) sample size to judge them by except for the few in the group that did not play as established top 4 defensemen for their team in 2010-11 (OEL, Del Zotto, Gardiner).
A sample of the most relevant advanced statistics from each major game state (5 on 5, 5 on 4 and 4 on 5) to provide a basic snapshot of the performance of these 14 defensemen.
Even Strength
| Player | Min/G |
QoC
OZone%
GF
GA
Corsi
relCorsi
P/60
Erik Karlsson
18.75
0.574
57.1
135
135
7.3
8.9
1.36
Alex Pietrangelo
17.00
0.697
52.3
118
92
11.1
7.9
1.07
PK Subban
16.64
0.824
47.4
111
105
5.1
7.75
0.85
Drew Doughty
18.19
0.859
51.8
115
98
10.4
5.3
0.97
Victor Hedman
17.29
0.782
43.7
115
108
2.3
5.1
0.97
Travis Hamonic
17.39
0.770
47.9
105
105
-3.9
4.4
0.95
Kevin Shattenkirk
15.90
-0.054
57.3
107
86
8.6
4.1
1.17
Oliver Ekman-Larsson
17.66
0.817
50.2
54
50
6.4
3.7
0.95
Jake Gardiner
17.11
-0.328
56.0
63
64
0.3
2.8
0.94
Tyler Myers
16.63
0.326
52.1
100
88
0.7
2
0.89
Ryan McDonagh
18.19
1.261
46.7
105
74
-1.1
1.8
0.79
John Carlson
17.20
1.069
47.7
124
114
0.3
0.5
1.00
Cam Fowler
17.69
0.500
50.5
87
135
-7.2
0.4
0.60
Michael Del Zotto
16.20
0.211
51.3
56
43
-6.0
-1.1
0.96
Zach Bogosian
17.41
0.5735
48.7
79
112
-3.9
-5.75
0.83
Here are the basic stats for even strength play for the defenders. QoC refers to Behind the Net’s relCorsi Quality of Competition rating, the most commonly used quality of competition metric, higher is considered tougher minutes with shutdown defenders usually above .5. OZone% refers the ratio between offensive and defensive zone faceoffs the player was on ice for, which reflects how much of an advantage/disadvantage a player started with on territory. GF and GA are goals for and against. Corsi is the differential between shots attempted on net per 60 minutes of play. Corsi is used as a very proxy for team on ice puck possession and scoring chances. Its an excellent metric for defensemen because it rates on ice play without consideration for particular shooting skills which defensemen have little influence over and team goaltending, making for a sort of super +/-. relCorsi is Corsi relative to the teams overall Corsi, which helps distinguish between good players on bad possession teams or bad players on good possession teams. P/60 is points scored per 60 minutes of ice time.
Looking at the possession stats and quality of competition, three groups of players become apparent. The shutdown players that beat their circumstances, the shutdown players that tied or lost their circumstances and the lower pairing defenders.
| Shutdown, Beat circumstances | |||||
| Player | Min/G |
QoC
OZone %
GF
GA
Corsi
relCorsi
P/60
Alex Pietrangelo
17.00
0.697
52.3
118
92
11.1
7.9
1.07
Drew Doughty
18.19
0.8585
51.8
115
98
10.4
5.3
0.97
Erik Karlsson
18.75
0.574
57.1
135
135
7.3
8.9
1.36
PK Subban
16.64
0.8235
47.4
111
105
5.1
7.8
0.85
Victor Hedman
17.29
0.782
43.7
115
108
2.3
5.1
0.97
Oliver Ekman-Larsson
17.66
0.817
50.2
54
50
6.4
3.7
0.95
Of these players there seems to be two tiers; Doughty, Karlsson and Pietroangelo clearly being the class of the field while Subban, Hedman and OEL are about equivalent as shutdown defenders that slightly out-perform their circumstances. Doughty and Pietroangelo seem to be the best overall while Karlsson is clearly the top offensive performer at even strength. Karlsson’s GF/GA seems to be screwed by poor goaltending and should probably be much higher due to a good Corsi rating. Hedman gets the prize for most difficult circumstances at even strength given his heavy diet of defensive zone draws.
| Shutdown, match circumstances | ||||||||
| Player | Min/G | QoC | O Zone% | GF | GA | Corsi | relCorsi | P/60 |
| John Carlson | 17.20 |
1.069
47.7
124
114
0.3
0.5
1.00
Ryan McDonagh
18.19
1.261
46.7
105
74
-1.1
1.8
0.79
Travis Hamonic
17.39
0.770
47.9
105
105
-4.0
4.4
0.95
Cam Fowler
17.69
0.501
50.5
87
135
-7.2
0.4
0.60
Zach Bogosian
17.41
0.574
48.9
79
112
-4.0
-5.75
0.83
Carlson and McDonagh appear to be the class of this group both playing tough minutes about equal on possession. McDonagh has an excellent GF/GA but a large portion of that can be attributed to the excellent goaltending of Henrik Lundqvist, as he has a very high on ice save percentage. Hamonic and Fowler both played on very bad squads which hurt their on ice stats. Fowler’s second year was significantly stronger than his first though, indicating that he maybe wasn’t NHL ready at 18.
| Lower Pairing Offensive Defensemen | ||||
| Player | Min/G |
QoC
O Zone%
GF
GA
Corsi
relCorsi
P/60
Kevin Shattenkirk
15.90
-0.054
57.3
107
86
8.5
4.1
1.17
Tyler Myers
16.63
0.326
52.1
100
88
0.7
2.0
0.89
Michael Del Zotto
16.20
0.211
51.3
56
43
-6.0
-1.1
0.96
Jake Gardiner
17.11
-0.328
56.0
63
64
0.3
2.8
0.94
The last group all were used more like 2nd pairing offensive defensemen at even strength. Shattenkirk did an excellent job at beating those minutes with very high possesion and point scoring numbers, Myers and Del Zotto played 2nd pairing minutes about equal to their competition but had very good goaltending from Miller and Lundqvist to boost their GF/GA totals. Gardiner actually was fairly unremarkable considering how soft his role was.
If we’re looking to rank the quality of Subban’s even strength play by the numbers he seems to be in the 4-6 range with OEL and Hedman, coming out a little better than Carlson and McDonagh.
Penalty Kill
| Player | GA / 60 |
Shot AA / 60
Min/G
PK Subban
3.279
81.0
2.46
Ryan McDonagh
4.698
96.6
2.27
Drew Doughty
4.674
85.8
2.12
Alex Pietrangelo
5.043
86.1
2.49
Tyler Myers
5.238
98.1
2.26
Victor Hedman
5.583
91.2
2.38
Travis Hamonic
6.258
97.5
2.14
John Carlson
6.390
86.4
2.28
Zach Bogosian
7.266
100.5
2.41
8 of the 14 defensemen were relied on for significant (2+) minutes per game on the penalty kill and are listed here. GA/60 is the goals against per 60 minutes of penalty kill play. Shot AA/60 is the shot attempts against the team per 60 minutes. Min/G is average penalty kill minutes per game.
Subban appears to be the clear class of the field here, his shots and goals against are far above anyone else’s. In fact, they rank amongst the best in the entire league over these last two seasons.
Pietroangelo and Doughty both look pretty good by both measurements. McDonagh is strong on goals but weak on shots, while Carlson is the opposite, which may be goaltending related. Hamonic and Bogosian both look weak.
Power Play
| Player | Min/G |
Goals
Points
G/60
P/60
Team GF/60
Team SF /60
Alex Pietrangelo
2.84
10
38
1.19
4.79
6.927
99.6
Erik Karlsson
3.62
7
49
0.76
4.36
6.462
98.1
Kevin Shattenkirk
2.83
8
33
0.95
4.13
7.557
100.5
Cam Fowler
3.60
8
34
0.86
3.53
7.191
103.5
Tyler Myers
2.56
6
21
1.10
3.52
6.756
96.0
PK Subban
3.15
14
32
1.04
3.01
5.241
97.5
Oliver Ekman-Larsson
2.05
2
8
0.71
2.49
5.367
75.3
Michael Del Zotto
3.85
3
21
0.45
2.40
5.145
88.8
Drew Doughty
3.71
8
28
0.86
2.31
5.157
97.8
Jake Gardiner
1.94
1
7
0.41
2.06
4.944
81.9
Zach Bogosian
2.17
1
11
0.19
2.00
5.562
88.2
11 of the 14 averaged 2 or more minutes of power play time per game in qualifiying seasons (technically Gardiner is slightly below that cut off but was included anyway). Players are ranked here according to their point scoring rates. Goals and Points are totals including unusual (5 on 3, 4 on 3) situations. Team GF and SF are the opposite of the stats from the PK
The two with the best team results are Fowler and Shattenkirk, the best personal scoring is by Pietroangelo, Karlsson and Shattenkirk. Based on this Shattenkirk appears to be the class of the group although that’s debatable. Myers as generally good numbers behind these 4 while Subban comes in behind him. Subban does have a pretty good claim of being one of the best or the best goals scorers. His goal scoring rate per minute is one of the highest at 5 on 4 but he also has a number of 5 on 3 goals to make him the top goal scorer with 14, with Pietroangelo being the closest behind him with 10. Subban does not appear to be a strong driver of play or quarterback on the powerplay compared to this group, but does have a claim of being the best point point shot.
Analysis
The best all situations defender appears to be Alex Pietroangelo, who posits top level results in each game state. Karlsson dominates the offensive results both on even strength and the powerplay, with Shattenkirk appearing to be the next best but with relatively weaker defensive play. Doughty is top level 5 on 5 and on the penalty kill and decent on the power play.
Subban is only behind Pietroangelo is being strong at all 3 game states. If we use special teams play as a tie breaker between players of a similar tier in 5 on 5 play, he should probably come in 4th in value behind the big three of Pietroangelo, Doughty and Karlsson. Bogosian was interesting in that he played an all situations game but was mediocre in all of them. Del Zotto and Gardiner very much appear to be the two runts of this litter, not so great at even strength or the power play and not playing on the penalty kill.
Carlson, McDonagh and Hedman work out to be the defensive defensemen from the group. Carlson’s scoring rates on the power play were relatively good so he might be considered a good all situations defenseman if he had the opportunity. Hamonic has a similar profile to Carlson but somewhat lesser results. Tyler Myers played decently in all situations but didn’t stand out at any of them.
Based on these stats I put together an informed but subjective ranking of the 14 players, with tiers of value separated by a space. Fowler, Ekman-Larson and Hedman should get extra credit compared to these rankings for being the youngest of the group (being from the 2010 and 2009 drafts).
| Alex Pietrangelo |
| Erik Karlsson |
| Drew Doughty |
| PK Subban |
| Oliver Ekman-Larsson |
| Victor Hedman |
| John Carlson |
| Ryan McDonagh |
| Cam Fowler |
| Kevin Shattenkirk |
| Tyler Myers |
| Travis Hamonic |
| Zach Bogosian |
| Michael Del Zotto |
| Jake Gardiner |
Interesting defensemen of similar age not profiled by draft year
2006: Johnson, Petry, McBane
2007: Alzner, Gunnarson
2009: Kulikov, Leddy
2010: Faulk
2011: Larson