FanPost

Gritty Players Need Not Apply: In Defense Of Murphy's Law

The Hurricanes defense last year was something of a youth revolution led by Noah Hanifin their first round pick from that year's draft. Hanifin was considered a fortuitous drop. Many scouts had him pegged as maybe a top three pick, and most at least a top four, but nevertheless, when the smoke cleared Hanifin was left. Francis and company didn’t hesitate to take their shot on the young 18-year-old college freshman. But if draft platitudes translated into NHL prowess, Alexander Daigle wouldn’t be a punchline to a joke of his own crafting. Hanifin had yet to play an NHL game, and there was still doubt if he would make the club right out of training camp; however, opening day came and Hanifin had earned a spot on the roster for the time being.

In addition to Hanifin, there was a stable of young defenseman waiting in the wings as well. Ryan Murphy headlined this group as the player with the most NHL experience, but his play had been described as uneven at best up until that point. Murphy was joined by Michal Jordan as the only other defenseman on the team with some NHL experience. Jordan would serve as the seventh defenseman on the squad. Behind those two, Brett Pesce and Jaccob Slavin waited in the wings on the AHL squad, few people, though, thought they would see any action in Raleigh that year.

But all this youth was stuck in the potential phase of their career at season's start. Well at least until Wisniewski’s first shift of his first game with Carolina, when he grabbed his knee and was forced to hobble off into the locker room. A couple days later the worst was confirmed; Wisniewski had torn his ACL effectively ending his season.

Wisniewski’s injury, though, would be a blessing in disguise. His absence on the team created a void, which forced the team to lean on their defensive youth. The first to come up was Pesce who with his solid defensive play earned a permanent spot on the team. Next was Slavin who impressed even more than Pesce once he was up with the Hurricanes. Slavin especially rose to the task with the absence of Justin Faulk for a large span of games due to a shoulder injury.

So at the end of the season, the Hurricanes appeared to have not only one, but three solid NHL caliber defensemen that were below the age of 22. This is in addition to Justin Faulk who is only 25 years old, and a two-time All-Star. It makes a great story, doesn’t it? But that’s all it is, is a narrative. Let’s see what the actual stats say about this young defensive squad’s performance.

The first thing to look at is their CF% throughout the year:

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Graph and data courtesy of Corsica

As the graph shows, for the majority of the year the Canes young defense were pretty good possession players with the exception of Noah Hanifin. In Hanifin’s defense, though, his possession numbers don’t start to get horrible until the end of the year right after the trade deadline where everybody on the defense seems to take a hit on their possession numbers as well. Hanifin's numbers just take a more precipitous drop which seems troubling and is something to watch more closely next year.

Faulk, Slavin, and Murphy don’t take quite the dive that Pesce and Hanifin do, but since Faulk is one of the best defensemen in the game that’s to be expected. Slavin’s numbers show that even with the loss of high-quality possession players like Liles, Eric Staal, and Kris Versteeg at the trade deadline, he is still able to hold his own which puts him at the head of the class of the Hurricanes young defensive corp. Given his time on special teams and the coaching staff’s trust in his play, it would seem the Hurricanes staff also agree.

This isn’t to say that Hanifin and Pesce were bad last year, but there are signs their play degraded as the year went on. Hopefully, it can just be chalked up to lack of fitness, and unfamiliarity with the 82 game grind of an NHL season.

The next graph up shows how the Hurricanes’ young defense performed relative to their team:

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Graph is mine, stats are from Puckalytics

The X axis is the players CFRelTM and the Y axis is CARelTM. The top left quadrant is bad compared to the rest of the team, and the bottom right is good. The top right is exciting, and the bottom left is boring. The chart shows that Faulk and Slavin really drove the offense to the detriment of their defensive play as they allowed more shot attempts against.

Faulk is already considered one of the better offensive-minded defensemen in the league so his position on the graph is not surprising. Slavin’s position could be a sign that he will become another Faulk. Pesce’s spot on the graph shows he didn’t really contribute much to the offense, but he was really good in his own zone at suppressing shots. Already Pesce seems to dominate in his own zone, and players like Marc-Eduard Vlasic and Niklas Hjalmarsson could be close to what the Hurricanes have in Pesce if he keeps improving. Here, Hanifin doesn’t really seem to move the needle, just like in the CF% chart above, but again he’s the youngest of all the defensemen.

This last chart shows the young Canes defensive prowess as they rank in shot suppression compared to the rest of the NHL for the 2015-16 season. The measure used to determine that, is to rank each of these players by Corsi Against per 60 minutes to show the shot attempts each player allows when he’s on the ice.

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Graph is mine, data from Corsica

As above, this graph shows that Pesce is a beast in his own end in keeping the other team from getting shot attempts off. He ranks in the top 20% in all the NHL in CA60. While Slavin, Faulk, and Hanifin don’t come close to Pesce, they still rank in the top half of the NHL. These numbers also coincide with the Hurricanes, as a team, being in the top 10 in the league in CA60 as well as 12th in raw CA and 11th in CF% in the 2015-16 season.

Perhaps the most interesting stats of the group are the ones posted by the player that has pretty much been written off as a bust: Ryan Murphy. Sure Murphy was demoted to the AHL in the beginning of last season, but when he came back up he seemed to take advantage of the opportunity and pretty much outplayed the rest of the Hurricanes defense.

In the first graph, you’ll see that Murphy’s CF% is head and shoulders above the rest of his defensive teammates. Yes, it does take a dive at the end, but its descent mirrors that of his teammates and shows that the drop could have been more systemic than just poor individual play.

In the second graph, Murphy is the only player to actually be located in the good quadrant of the chart relative to his teammates. In short, he was the only defensive player to affect his team positively on both the offensive and defensive side of the puck. The third graph shows him being even better at suppressing shots than Pesce; ranking in the 85th percentile of defencemen in the NHL. For a player that is often derided as being poor in his own end, when Murphy was on the ice, teams had fewer shot attempts than when he wasn’t. This is an undisputable fact.

One danger, though, is the small sample size since Murphy only played in 35 games last year. Some would also point to his performances from the years before as well as proof that this season could just be an outlier. Yes, that could be true, but Murphy finally has some talent to play with now instead of the likes of Brett Bellemore or Rasmus Rissanen. At the least, Murphy’s performance earned him his contract this offseason, and he should be a player to watch to see if he can sustain that level of play for an entire season.

So did the Hurricanes defense live up to the narrative painted about them by the press last year? Overall the answer, according to the stats, is yes. Pesce and Slavin both played above what was expected of them when they were called up; they just happened to do it in different aspects of the game. Faulk continued to show why he is one of the better defensemen in the game. Hanifin while not amazing, was able to tread water after being thrown in the deep end. Ryan Murphy demonstrated improvement from the years before, and what could be potential of living up to his draft status.

Last year the Hurricane’s defense surprised everybody. This year they won’t have the advantage of being unknown, and the rest of the league will be looking to exploit any and all weaknesses they have. The only question now is if Carolina’s young defensemen can continue to grow in their roles, and not just be one hit wonders.