Defense in the Big D

Lately, all talk regarding the Red Wings has centered on the defense and Ken Holland’s inability to lure a top-4 dman to the Motor City.
The inability to upgrade the play of Kyle Quincey is unfortunate, however against the Boston Bruins only Kindl/Lashoff were unable to break 50% CF at 5 on 5. With the return of Ericsson, this should push one of Quincey, DeKeyser, Smith down to the third pairing, creating the following lineup

Kronwall-Ericsson

Smith-Quincey-DeKeyser

Kindl

Lashoff

With this new lineup, Mike Babcock has room to experiment before determining who should take the bulk of the top 4 minutes. I wanted to do some of the work now and see who we could expect to succeed in “top 4” minutes, and who is better suited for cleanup duty in the bottom pair with Kindl.

To look at what we should expect out of each of the pairings I sorted defensemen who appeared in at least half of the games over the past 3 seasons by time on ice. After sorting, I divided them into three equal “buckets” to represent the 3 different pairings and ran the numbers to determine the results as well as the usage of each bucket. (mc79hockey has used the same process to look at different forward lines.)

With just a quick look you can see that the 1^st pairing guys are the superstars, putting up positive Corsi despite the worst zone start and toughest quality of competition. Interestingly the 2^nd pair actually comes out worse than the 3^rd pairing in terms of Corsi. My initial explanation for this would be a lack of quality top 4 dmen (which seems accurate based on the recent free agent signings). This  forces players to move up in the lineup to take on other teams middle 6 forwards, rather than being sheltered in the bottom pairing against the scrubs.

So now we have what we can call the “average” pairing defenseman, and lets see where they stack up compared to last season’s Red Wings.           

As you can see, the Red Wings have a clear advantage in terms of their zone start percentages compared to the average team. Regardless, some clear patterns seem to emerge. Kronwall and Ericsson do a decent job carrying the majority of the burden. While they are not an elite top pairing, they certainly are above average. When it comes to the trio in the middle, it becomes harder to say that they are anything more than an average 2^nd pair. I hope that the continued development of DK and Smith will allow them to carry the weight. While any of DK, Smith, or Quincey would slot in as an above average 3^rd pair dman, the pattern on that third pair would seem to be well below average. Despite Babcock doing everything humanly possible to shelter Kindl and Lashoff, they still manage to only barely break even.

Based on this, despite striking out on the free agent market, Wings fans can feel good about the top pair assuming Ericsson can return healthy and The 2^nd pair should be satisfactory if the kids can develop. Next time we will see where these pairing match up against the elite d corps in the NHL.

All stats and graph courtesy of ExtraSkater.com