Now let’s see what Kyle Dubas was up against.

Every NHL GM knew what Kyle Dubas needed by the trade deadline — a solid Top 4 right-handed defenceman to help bolster the Leafs playoffs chances. That plus other buyers searching for the same RD unicorn undoubtedly made it a near-impossible goal. The market can be cruel. In this case, I’m sure the Carolinas of the world would have demanded a high price, most probably spelled Kapanen or even Nylander.

Over the last two months, the importance of a young RFA like Kapanen became clear. He had found his game higher in the lineup and his game was rounding out, from the penalty kill, to his 5v5 game, and eventually to the powerplay. Trading away one of the fastest skaters in the league who can also put up a SKATR profile like the one below would be a desperation move.

We don’t know how high Kappy’s upside is yet and where I come from, that has to be a good problem for a GM.

While others among the Leafs fan base have been promoting various trade options, I was scratching my head. I never wrote anything. I stood on the sidelines because this was a really difficult and risky situation for the Leafs. It’s easy to list good RD defencemen. The hard part comes when you weigh the odds of a team being interested and what they would demand in return.

It felt like one of those chess games where the only move left is stalemate.

But I became more aware of Jake Muzzin when Elliotte Friedman said something in his much-followed 31 Thoughts. That led to a tweet from me as I thought about Muzzin, the left-handed defenceman three time zones away.

Friedman has a way of being subtle and it would not surprise me if he had more to go on than just his random intuition. Now Jake was on my radar as well as the radar of some other fans. But we should be real here, Jake Muzzin is not a Doughty, he doesn’t have that pedigree. But the point here is that he has been playing very well and Doughty has struggled.

From SKATR Plots tab

But he is an LD — I still saw the trade possibility as low given the Leafs were strong on that side with Rielly, Gardiner, and Dermott.

In the end, Kyle Dubas must have seen nothing worth the price at RD and opened up to other options. That led to striking a deal at a lower cost for a Top 4 LD who has played very well. And right now Mike Babcock is whispering “he’s six foot three and two hundred and thirteen pounds all day long.”

This season he has averaged 21:32 minutes per game, has 4 goals and 17 assists, has played 97 minutes shorthanded and 56 minutes on the powerplay. He was a core piece of the Kings defence. Beyond all the fancy stats, here’s how his ‘heavy’ physicality shows up — an ingredient that many fans and probably the coach have been looking for.

He can hit, take the body, enjoy playing in his own end and he can still get out of the zone. He’s been developed, coached, and mentored by some of the best in LA. Think Radko Gudas only better.

Some may think I don’t value physical play. Actually what I value is the effective and legal use of physical play. Hits that make a forward lose possession, or break up a zone entry are good things. Hits that stop a forward from breezing down main street are good things.

Jake’s latest SKATR profile. I’ll have another update in a few days.

He played second pair LD beside Alec Martinez on a team that was struggling. Yet he put up this SKATR profile with a 5v5 game score at the 73rd percentile. Having seen a thousand profiles, I was impressed. He’s not perfect — he isn’t going to have a lot of scoring chances of his own, he takes a few too many penalties and his shot suppression is at the 38th percentile.

Doughty got the tougher usage but in the second pair slot Jake Muzzin put up some impressive numbers, individually as well as his Relative to Teammates CF% — an excellent 86th percentile. So when he was on the ice, things got better for the struggling Kings.

And thanks to the A3Z viz by @CJTDevil we know something else about Mr. Muzzin. He can exit the defensive zone!

The chart below shows that his rate of 5v5 possession zone exits are at the 85th percentile over the past 2 1/2 seasons. Ron Hainsey has had a lot of difficulty with zone exits, as has Zaitsev for that matter. This represents a significant improvement to the Leafs top 4 and one that has been long overdue since Zaitsev proved to be a bad signing.

Note, this is based on 32 manually tracked games by Corey Sznajder over that span but 555 minutes is a good sample.

At 29 with 1.5 years left on his contract, is he aging well? Yes. Here’s a look at the stability of his career based on Even-Strength Goals Above Replacement, using the latest WAR models.

As for the level of his “ES eGAR”, it lines up with his second pair usage and earlier profiles if we compare him to the Leafs Top 4:

He’s not the next coming of Gardiner with an eGAR/60 of .24 compared to .73 for Gards, but at $4 million for this season and next, he’s more affordable through the cap crunch year of 2019–20. What’s most important here is how he stacks up against Hainsey and Zaitsev and that probably points to how he will be used.

The chart below shows the “Plus Minus” at Even-Strength after modeling has helped identify the actual contribution each defenceman makes when on the ice. Jake Muzzin is an upgrade to the Top 4 when it comes to driving shot-based (CF) or expected goals based (xG) metrics. You can learn more about these metrics at Evolving-Hockey.com.

He’ll most likely be paired up with Morgan Rielly since they’ve both played the right side*.

[* EDIT 1/29 : Lebrun reported that Muzzin has played a bit on the right side, while Daryl Sutter said in an interview with Steve Simmons that Muzzin has never played the right side. So we have some question as to how much he has played on the right. He played mostly on the left side of Alec Martinez this season and mostly as Drew Doughty’s LD partner in his early years.]

Changing sides isn’t the optimal thing to do for defensemen, studies show they usually see their corsi numbers go down. One thing you can notice is how they would need to reach or turn around along the boards and make other adjustments, such as how they prevent forwards from going wide outside. But playing the wrong side is not uncommon in the NHL with such an imbalance between LD and RD players.

I don’t have stats for this but I suspect that Muzzin will also show an ability to police the slot and net front a little more aggressively than the current group.

I would really prefer a lineup like this to start with although the reports are Hainsey may be relegated to the third pair:

Rielly— Muzzin

Gardiner — Hainsey

Dermott — Zaitsev

Daily Faceoff which utilizes Manny Perry’s corsica player ratings has this initial lineup based on early reports. (EDIT: it has since proven to be accurate.)

Maybe the most interesting thing in this lineup version is the player ratings and defence pair ratings compared to the rest of the league. Jake Muzzin is ranked 8th on LD and Morgan Rielly is ranked 11th beside him. Overall they would be a true top pair, ranking 8th in the league. In this lineup Rielly switches sides, so it’s anyone guess until Babcock speaks.

There could be debate about Hainsey being placed higher than Zaitsev but I truly believe that right now Hainsey is a better pairing for Gardiner than Zaitsev which tells you all you need to know about my opinion of Zaitsev’s play. Anything that can be done to move Zaitsev out of Top 4 usage would be good for the team. Hainsey will allow Gardiner to play up ice more, Zaitsev will be Dermott’s anchor. I feel sorry for Travis.

Whatever the lineup, the team is much stronger now than it was yesterday. So my overall rating of this trade is an ‘A-’.

Update Jan 30th: Results of a twitter poll. The majority of my followers are Leafs fans but there are also quite a few from other fanbases. I’d say this confirms the “A -” rating I personally gave out.

Leafs get a top 4 D with proven steady credentials for 1.5 years at a reasonable cost and without giving up key assets. This is “McDonagh lite” but it may prove to boost the contenders as much as McDonagh boosted that team down South.

Job well done Mr. Dubas.

I’m an independent blogger. Most of my hockey contributions are in visualizations but occasionally I will write when I think it adds to the conversation. Credit to @TheLeafsIMO, @CJTDevil for A3W, @EvolvingWild’s RAPM/eGAR, @DailyFaceoff and corsica for the use of their public work products. Go check them out.