The season has been laid to rest.

Fans have completed their lamenting of the Anaheim Ducks sweeping the Winnipeg Jets. The healing process has begun.

But, before full closure can be completed, an autopsy of the Jets season must be initiated.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

We turn our evidence-based breakdown of the former Jet, Zach Bogosian.

The Basics

Numbers include all situations including non 5v5 TOI.

Bogosian put up 13 points over a span of 41 games for the Jets, which is a pretty decent pace for a defender who did not play much on the power play. He also ate a tonne of ice time.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Usage

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Graph courtesy of WAR-on-Ice.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Rankings are out of the Jets 11 defenders with 50+ 5v5 minutes, except special team minutes are 4 players for power play and 7 players for penalty kill.

In many ways, Tyler Myers was a straight replacement for Bogosian. We see similar usage and deployment in both defenders. The only difference is that one played on the power play while the other played short handed minutes, by almost equal amounts.

Underlying Numbers

Zach Bogosian started off the season pretty rough, although things started to improve as time went on, especially after Dustin Byfuglien moved to defense, taking some of the workload.

Visual courtesy of Micah McCurdy.

Bogosian predominately played with Tobias Enstrom, with up and down results in shots, although he and Toby predominately outscored the opposition.

All numbers are for minutes as a Jet only, with the exception of GAR.

Zach Bogosian’s ability to consistently generate points from even strength situations has been underrated for quite some while, predominately as his offensive impact is much greater than his actual offensive play. It’s not uncommon for this phenomena to occur on the other end of the ice, but much rarer in the offensive zone.

Myers and Bogosian did not just handle similar minutes, but they also begat similar results. The interesting thing is that for the most part Bogosian actually performed superior to Myers… although neither of them were exactly anywhere near Norris conversation.

Both were in the bottom three for most of the Jets shot metrics, but Myers tended to be the lesser of the two players.

Final Thoughts

While the Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian deal was a package deal, it makes sense separating Bogosian and Myers from the rest.

Myers and Bogosian are both right-shot defenders of similar age, who played similar roles as Jets, and came out with similar results.

The question arises: will Myers improve over time with the Jets? It is possible that Myers could evolve into the better player, but it is also possible the two stay very similar and comparable for the remainder of their careers.

In the long run though, the Jets do gain the added benefit of Myers contract, having a much lower salary than AAV, while Bogosian was the opposite.

The Buffalo Sabres have a lot of promising pieces. It will be interesting to see how they evolve and how Bogosian evolves with them, as a former Jet.



