The Oilers went out and acquired Sekera, one of Free Agency’s

biggest prizes, in the summer of 2015 for 5.5 million a year over 6 years. That’s

a lot of scratch. By about a million and a half he’s the highest paid Oiler

defenseman on the roster. Only somewhat ironically, “that’s the price you have

to pay” is actually the phrase that applies to signing UFA defensemen with a

positive track record. In his first year with the Oilers Andrej Sekera gained a

nickname that I think will probably stick with him while he’s here: The Shin Pad

Assassin. It’s catchy. It also carries a pretty negative connotation for a

player who lived up to reasonable expectations on an unreasonably terrible team.

When I hear “Shin Pad Assassin” what comes to mind is an

ineffective shooter from the point. This is someone who is consistently failing

to get shots through. Shots are being blocked and plays are dying below the

knees of opposition forwards. So what did Edmonton get out of Sekera last year?

Was he really the mercenary shin guard murderer we’ve been led to believe?

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Looking at where Sekera fit in among his peers last season,

it starts to become clear that the Oilers got pretty solid performances from

the Slovakian blueliner. One of the first things that is important to note

about Sekera in 2015-2016 is that he was a volume shooter. He ranked 32nd

among NHL defenders with 155 shots last season. He was sandwiched between Seth

Jones and Ryan Ellis on that list. In terms of getting shots past those pesky

forwards covering the point, in raw totals he did quite well.

Now, if we break down shooting into two states that matter

very much, 5v5 and 5v4 PP, then we might start to see things a little more

clearly. Luckily we have access to this information thanks to the various open

stats sites and we can also see shot rates on a per 60 minute basis. I’m just

going to limit things by only looking at players who played at least 500

minutes 5v5 and 100 minutes on the 5v4 Power Play.

While playing 5v5 hockey, Andrej Sekera’s shot rates drop

below the top pairing standard (top 60) and fall to 80th with 4.22

shots per 60 minutes. It’s identical to Eric Gryba’s shot rates 5v5. That said,

it’s also higher than Ryan Suter and Alex Goligoski’s shot rates. It’s just one

aspect of their offense so let’s not confuse this with me saying Sekera >

Suter & Goligoski, please.

However, if we look at the 5v4 Power Play data, Andrej

Sekera really shines at getting shots on net. Last year he was the 14th

ranked defender in shots per hour with 14.34 shots per 60 minutes played on the

PP. Frankly, he does quite well for himself compared to the rates at which his

peers hit the net on the PP. Sekera was firmly in the upper tier of NHL defenders

when it came to getting shots on net during the PP, when the need to do exactly

that was the highest.

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Embed from Getty Images Sekera’s uniform, as submitted to the Hockey Hall of Fame

Neither of the totals, higher on the PP and lower 5v5, can

firmly say whether Sekera was slaughtering shin pads with regularity. For

example, he might have just been taking a lot more shot attempts and even with

a high percentage being blocked he was ultimately getting more through to the

net. So was that the case?

If we want to find blocked shot rates we have to take the

shot attempt rate (Corsi) and then subtract the readily available unblocked

shot attempt rate (Fenwick) and what’s left is the blocked shot attempts

number. Here are Sekera’s numbers:

5v5

Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 10.46

Unblocked Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 5.85

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Blocked Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 4.61

5v4 PP

Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 35.51

Unblocked Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 20.53

Blocked Shot Attempts per 60 mins: 14.98

Are those hourly blocked shot numbers high? I suspect they

are, but without the numbers pre-calculated I figured that I would run them

myself for the other players I’ve already mentioned in this article plus some

notables. Then, maybe, we’ll have an idea where Sekera fits in with them at

least. Here are the blocked shot rates for those players:

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Seth Jones: 5v5 4.33/60, 5v4 4.74/60

Ryan Ellis: 5v5 3.03/60, 5v4 6.69/60

Ryan Suter: 5v5 2.84/60, 5v4 9.62/60

Eric Gryba: 5v5 4.15/60, 5v4 Nil

Alex Goligoski: 5v5 3.70, 5v4 6.50/60

Erik Karlsson: 5v5 4.98/60, 5v4 7.77/60

Brent Burns: 5v5 6.57/60, 5v4 11.94/60

PK Subban: 5v5 3.21/60, 5v4 10.26/60

Marc-Edouard Vlasic: 5v5 3.23/60, 5v4 7.26/60

This is not an exhaustive list of NHL defenders so we can’t

exactly make concrete conclusions but we have some solid indicators that Andrej

Sekera does have his shots blocked at a pretty high rate. When it comes to 5v5

blocked shot attempts, Sekera comes in with the 3rd highest rate of

all the defensemen on the list. When it comes to Power Play shots being

blocked, Sekera is number 1 with a bullet for shots getting blocked per hour.

It truly seems as though Sekera has rightly earned the title

of “Shin Pad Assassin”. If your eyes were noting that a lot of his shots get

blocked then you were not just seeing things. What you may not have noticed,

though, was that he was getting a good number of shots through as well. His

total offense was also solid. Though 30 points might not seem like much, it was

ranked 50th in the NHL and while it’s on the low side for a top

pairing defender, it’s still a decent amount of offense in the modern NHL.

Yeah, he’s the Shin Pad Assassin, but it’s not as bad as it is catchy.



