Over the past two practices the Winnipeg Jets’ coach Paul Maurice has tried something a little bit different: Jacob Trouba has been removed from his natural right-side to the left of Dustin Byfuglien, and away from Mark Stuart.

There are some indications that this is move in the right direction for the Jets, but also that there is one step further the Jets could take as well.

Let’s take a look.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Jacob Trouba deserves more ice time

The Jets pretty consistently use whichever pair carries Dustin Byfulgien as their top defensive pair, and for good measure. The other two pairs are a bit less consistent in which one is given the second most minutes. More-often-than-not though, Trouba is situated on the third.

Graphic courtesy of hockeyviz.com

To say Trouba has been deployed as a third pair defender would be a misnomer though. At 20.29 minutes per game, and 15.88 for 5-on-5 situations, Trouba sits third overall for the Jets ice time allocation. Trouba usually earns extra minutes getting double shifted with either Tyler Myers or Byfuglien during high-leverage situations, like the final minutes of a period.

Despite garnering top minutes, Trouba’s ice time has fallen significantly from his previous two seasons. Both Tobias Enstrom and Myers have seen a drop in their usage as well. While part comes from the Jets playing a tonne of short handed minutes, the Jets have seen an appreciation of minutes with either Ben Chiarot, Adam Pardy, or Mark Stuart on the ice.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

This is not optimal. You want to play your best on the ice for as much as possible.

Steve Burtch’s dCorsi looks at a player’s shot differential for all shots (goals, saves, misses, blocks) relative to what one would expect given skater’s with factors such as zone starts, line matching, and line mates. The top-four Jet defenders by this metric have unsurprisingly been Byfuglien, Trouba, Enstrom, and Myers (in that order), with only the first three being in the positives.

These are the four you want on the ice more as they are the ones (well three out of four) out performing their usage and can take a large share of the workload.

Mark Stuart is an anchor

Trouba has spent most of his ice time in the NHL playing with Mark Stuart as his defensive partner. In fact, Trouba has played 1860 of his 2637 minutes with Stuart on the ice.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

While it is admirable the amount of effort Stuart gives consistently every game, and no one could dismiss how willingly he will sacrifice himself to help the team, Stuart has a history of making his linemates perform worse.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Numbers courtesy of stats.hockeyanalysis.com and skaters are ordered in most to least minutes with Stuart since the 2011-12 season. Byfuglien ice time includes minutes as forward and defender, while Bogosian minutes away include some of 2014-2015 season with the Buffalo Sabres.

Almost as consistently as Stuart “works hard”, the blue liner constantly finds his defensive partners out shot worse when skating beside him than away, and in the long run this means out scored given a large enough sample.

The Jets’ General Manager, Kevin Cheveldayoff, has some enormous decisions looming over the near horizon. The Jets have multiple contracts expiring with some big names looking for raises: Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Mark Scheifele, and Trouba as well. One reason why the Jets would want to thrust Trouba into a larger role is to see what he is made of and worth, or even his ability to replace Byfuglien if the need arises.

Now this situation is a bit of a catch-22. The Jets wish to see how Trouba performs away from Stuart to see how much they are willing to invest in him, yet at the same time giving him those minutes will likely improve his outcomes, increase his merits, and raise his value.

Trouba-Byfuglien have been really good together

For the most part this season, the Jets have rarely carried two pairs at the same time performing well.

Graphic courtesy of hockeyviz.com. Click here to expand image.

The graphic above displays the Jets defensive individuals and pairs performance in shot rates for and against, where top right is optimal.

The best big minutes defensive pair has been Enstrom and Byfuglien. This makes sense as it’s the Jets best left-shot defender with the Jets best right-shot defender. However, Trouba and Byfuglien have been even better.

The sample is small with only 67 minutes of ice time together. One would not expect that level of success to be sustainable and it is likely that the situational environments the two have played in have been beneficial to their results as well, due to playing together mostly in late-game, trailing minutes where score-effects peak in impact.

Still, despite all the factors that may make the results inflated, the mere fact that the results have been so exceptional is promising.

They are also two exceptionally skilled defenders so success is not all that surprising and should be expected over the long run. Matt Cane of Hockey-Graphs and Puck++ showed that the average defender should see their Corsi percentage drop about 1.39 percentage points when moving to their off-handed side. The difference in skill level between Byfuglien and Stuart or Trouba and Chiarot is well above that difference.

The next step forward is with Paul Postma

There is a potential issue though with the currently devised set up: the Jets will now dress Stuart and Chiarot together. Both players have been struggling this season and their functionality and effectiveness is limited. Neither are adept puck movers and there is a real danger to the two getting exploited, especially on the road.

The solution is Paul Postma.

Postma was dressed for two games this season. In those two games Postma ended up on the ice for two goals against, and was promptly sent back to the pressbox. The thing is though that it’s not a trend we should expect to persist.

While Postma was on the ice, the Jets directed 21 shots at their opponent’s net while they only allowed 7. Of the 7 five ended up on goal, and of the 5 two went in the net. Postma was outscored due to his netminder posting a 0.600 save percentage while the other being perfect.

Now some may then point to shot quality. DTM About Heart at Hockey-Graphs devised Expected Goals, a Corsi based statistic where shots are weighted by shot quality factors such as the shooter’s history, angle, distance, handedness, and whether the shot is from sustained pressure, rush, or rebound. This algorithm that includes shot quality indicates that more-often-than-note Paul Postma outscores his opposition given the shots that occurred.

This isn’t new. Postma has a history of crushing soft minutes on the third pair. Over his career as a Jet, the Jets have a 52.5 per cent Corsi with Postma on the ice. The Jets also control 52.9 per cent of scoring chances and 54.9 per cent of high-danger scoring chances according to war-on-ice. These results place Postma in the top quartile for third-pair defenders.

Postma has garnered those impressive results while playing over 50% of his time with Pardy and Stuart. His best results came while he was with Pardy, although the chances of Maurice sitting Stuart is slim-to-none.

The largest detraction to Postma is his inability (at least in usage, as effectiveness is unknown) to kill penalties. It should be noted thought that Byfuglien, Myers, Enstrom, and Trouba (ordered from best to worst) have all had varying levels of success on the penalty kill, enough to handle the minutes and enough to do it better than Stuart (who is one of the league’s worst penalty killers).

Postma is flawed and imperfect, but that is the norm for a third-pair defender. The goal though is to get the least flawed ones and skew the odds of outscoring the opposition in your favour.

Closing thoughts

The Jets are pushing Trouba into a more traditional top-four role, where he will gather most of his minutes while playing with another top-four defender. This is a good thing for Trouba, and it should be a good thing for the Jets.

There is the risk though that the third-par may get overly exploited with two inept puck movers together in Stuart and Chiarot. The solution to that is Postma.



