dCorsi the Wing's Forwards and Weiss

While doing the research for the Dmen, I was curious and decided to look at the forwards we have coming back next season.
A reminder, although they are ranked by highest value, this is by no means a ranking of the players themselves. Tatar performed better in his role than all other players in theirs, this is not to say he would have done equally as well in a different role.

Tatar 2.073

Nyquist 1.602

Helm 1.406

Datsyuk 1.315

Zetterberg .589

Sheahan .3872

Andersson .045

Miller -.124

Alfredsson -.341

Jurco -.3907

Franzen -.762

Abdelkader -1.149

Cleary -1.609

Glendening -2.819

Weiss -6.926

            Now we can see some familiar names at the top of the list. Z and Pavel continue to be rocks, Helm dominates as the third line center. Encouragingly, all of the kids do pretty well, even Gus who was in a more challenging role after being promoted from the kid line. The bad news, while Franzen and Alfie’s negative numbers can be somewhat excused for their goal scoring ability, Abby and Glendening are getting hammered and have little offence to make up for it. Cleary also posted a hideous number, although it was his first season with a negative number, backing up my statements in the earlier post that he may have something to show if he can return to past form.

            Finally the elephant in the room, we have even more evidence to show Weiss as a massive bust, as he posted an incomprehensible -6.926. Since this was such an absurd number, I had to take a closer look. When breaking the data down into dCorsi For and dCorsi against, we see that his against numbers have dipped slightly in the past 2 injury plagued seasons, but nothing too substantial. Then we get to these graphs….

On the left, you see his dCorsi for and its sharp decent into the abyss. While the past 2 seasons were filled with injury the decline was in effect prior to these injuries. Despite last season, I was hoping a healthy Weiss could provide enough offensive depth to offset the Red Wing's current defensive issues. However based on this graph and the improvements made by Montreal and TB, I am growing increasingly less confident in the Wing’s ability to move out of the wild card spot next season.