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I’ve spent some time this summer analyzing, visualizing, and eventually game-tracking the passing project data created by Ryan Stimson and his team. So far, we’ve covered the importance of shot assists, a way to classify playing styles for forwards and defensemen, and a closer look at the Anaheim Ducks (here), Montreal Canadiens, and New Jersey Devils (here).

In this piece, it’s the New York Islanders under the spotlight. With shot assists data and some game film, I can take a closer look at the way their defensemen create offense.

First, a little background. While looking at playing styles, I was surprised to note Islanders defenseman Thomas Hickey’s spot on the styles chart:

*full interactive view is here.

Somehow, Hickey finds himself among the league leaders in shot assists rate, nestled in with stars like John Klingberg, P.K. Subban, Drew Doughty, Victor Hedman, and Jake Muzzin. He’s below average in taking shots (this is individual Corsi for per 60 minutes, so all shots on goal, blocked shots, shots that miss the net) which places the Isles’ reclamation project in the “playmakers” quad.

This is somewhat surprising.

Hickey was originally a waiver add by the Isles and has never bested 20 assists or 22 points in a season. Counting him among the NHL’s best passers by rate seems a stretch.

So, how did Hickey create so many shot assists?

The quick answer is that shot assists data is relatively new. Uncovering players with previously underappreciated skills is part of the process as the new data is collected and parsed. But the deeper answer lies in the highly activated strategy the Islanders seemed to employ for their defensemen last year. Here’s a look at how the Isles’ defense corps compared as a group to the rest of the NHL:

*full view here.

Interesting, the team median for NYI falls right around league average for defensemen (~5.5 ShA/60). But the “box” for the Isles’ top half extends much longer than many other teams. This is caused by Hickey, Calvin De Haan, and Nick Leddy who are each above league average for shot assists among defensemen.

We can look at this in another way:

*interact here.

Here, we see Hickey, De Haan, and Leddy perched in the playmakers quad, as we knew. But the bottom-half of the Islanders’ box-and-whisker plot is clarified. Travis Hamonic, Brian Strait, and Johnny Boychuk are all below average in ShA/60 (though all clearly above average in shots per 60, which we’ll touch on later).

The Islanders have a clear separation of talent. Three of New York’s top-seven defensemen are pass-heavy on offense. Three are clearly shot-heavy offensively. Marek Zidlicky is an island all his own.

Although these graphs help put Hickey’s strength as a passer into some team-based context, it’s still a little unclear how this plays out on the ice. Let’s turn to a look at some video to see how the Islanders employed an active defense corps to create offense from the defense.

January 25th vs. Detroit Red Wings in January – Boychuk was out.

Early in the game, we get our first view of the Islanders’ aggressive strategy for their blue liners. Hamonic hits the offensive blue line with pace, fires a puck on goal, and remains low in the zone for a moment before retreating to his position.

Not long after, Hamonic dives into the zone for another shot on goal.

Another minute later, Zidlicky makes himself available for a pass deep in the offensive zone. Nothing comes of his availability.

De Haan joins in the offensive action, pinching deep during a net-front puck battle. Nothing comes of this play specifically but the point is clear: the Islanders’ defensemen have permission to enter deep into the offensive zone if they perceive the chance to create offense.

Early in the second period, Hickey makes his first foray into the offensive zone. He joins the rush, firing a shot on goal, then remains deep in the zone to apply puck pressure to continue to create some offense (see red arrow).

Over the course of 5-on-5 play, I tracked 13 obvious pinches by Islanders defensemen, where the defender skated down to the top of the faceoff dot or further to get involved in the offense. We’ve established the Isles’ offensive aggression sufficiently but I’ll quickly note that my favourite chance in this game was this one.

Anecdotally, I’ve noted before that teams that encourage their defensemen to pinch deep seem to boast better shot assists totals from their blue liners. This makes sense – to create a shot for a teammate, a defenseman needs to be actively involved in offensive attacks. The Islanders seem to adhere to this strategy.

However, we’ve yet to see a single shot assist from Hickey. And we don’t until the Islanders are down 3-2 late in the third period:

In this first still, we see Hickey in the midst of providing a shot assist to the open forward on the half-wall. The shot attempt creates a rebound that bounces into the high slot and Hickey follows the shot, eventually circling close to the front of the net.

Here, Hickey has retrieved the rebound and quickly circles high in the zone, searching for an open teammate.

Hickey slides the puck to Hamonic who blasts a shot on goal. Red Wings goaltender Petr Mrazek makes the save and the Isles earn an offensive zone faceoff.

That’s it from Hickey — two shot assists in about 15 seconds. In the game, Hickey played just over 16 minutes of even-strength ice time in the game (lowest among the Islanders’ blue line), finishing with a shot assist rate of ~7.2 per 60 minutes. This is below his season average (just over 9 ShA/60) but one more pass leading to a Corsi event would have been enough to match his average pace.

What’s the takeaway?

First, there appears to be something worth looking into regarding aggressive zone positions for defensemen and elevated shot assists rate. This hasn’t been examined numerically here but seems to be an interesting, if not obvious, hypothesis.

Second, most defensemen don’t create many shot attempts during 5-on-5 play. Though he fell short of his average in this game, Hickey needed only a short burst of offensive facilitation to beat the league average defenseman in shot assists rate. We know that ShA/60 (along with S/60, added together to create Stimson’s “primary shot contributions”) are repeatable and important offensive metrics but they are not highly frequent events for blue liners (unless you’re Erik Karlsson).

Last, the breakdown of Islanders’ playing styles highlighted Hickey, De Haan, and Leddy as playmakers and Hamonic, Strait, and Boychuk as shooters. Interestingly, the Islanders’ common defense pairings paired these skill sets neatly:

*pairing details courtesy of corsica.hockey

All major pairs included a playmaker and a shooter (excluding the two pairs involving Zidlicky, who landed in the “no offense” quadrant).

Did Capuano purposely pair players with complementary styles together? Is there something in the Islanders’ systems that encourages defense partners to divide the tasks of passing and shooting in the offensive zone? Is it simply random? These questions aren’t answered here and are worthy of a deeper look.

In the meantime, let’s watch to see if Hickey continues his strong passing rates in 2016-17. Perhaps his standard stats will show some improvement if he continues playing regular minutes with the Islanders.

Using the Islanders to give passing and shot assists context