Tässä on yksi ihan kelpo perustelu, miksi Carlson ei voittanut Norrista. The Athleticin tilastoniilo Dom Luszczyszyn jätti kokonaan äänestämättä häntä ja perustelut ovat aika hyvät. Artikkeli ohessa
Why I left Draisaitl, Carlson and Couturier off my NHL awards ballot
Koska kaikki eivät pääse maksumuurin vuoksi lukemaan, niin lainataan tähän tuo Carlson -osio:
Norris Trophy
- Roman Josi
- Victor Hedman
- Charlie McAvoy
- Alex Pietrangelo
- Jared Spurgeon
Of the three non-conforming calls to make that are being explored here, this one was the easiest. Well, that’s not exactly fair – the least difficult might be more apt. For the other two, I had a fierce debate over the final spot between who I chose and who the larger voting body appreciated more. For this award, Carlson was a little lower on my radar. Definitely in consideration, but there were other names in the mix I considered over him.
Carlson had some very splashy point totals and that generally means he played a big role in the offence. He had 75 points in 69 games, an absurd number that led all defencemen by 10. And that wasn’t built up by feeding Alex Ovechkin for one-timers, either; he was a driver at 5-on-5 leading the league in points per 60 among defencemen.
The question of Carlson’s total value comes two-fold: how much offence did he actually drive and does it make up for his defensive weaknesses?
I had nine names I was debating – the five listed above, Carlson, Miro Heiskanen, Dougie Hamilton (yes, even in just 47 games he was that good) and Jaccob Slavin. Of those nine here’s where Carlson ranked in terms of various on ice-metrics, both raw and using RAPM which accounts for teammates and opponents.
Offence
GF/60: 3rd
RAPM GF/60: 4th
xGF/60: 7th
RAPM xGF/60: 8th
Defence
GA/60: 9th
RAPM GA/60: 8th
xGA/60: 9th
RAPM xGA/60: 9th
Overall
GF%: 9th
RAPM GF%: 8th
xGF%: 9th
RAPM xGF%: 9th
Oh, and on the power play he ranked sixth in goal impact by RAPM and raw totals, only ahead of the three defenders who don’t get time on the top power play unit. Is this your king?
In terms of on-ice metrics, it’s very hard to see an argument for Carlson’s merit as the other teams benefitted much more from the presence of their star defenceman than Washington did with Carlson. The defensive metrics are the worst of the field (and among the worst in the league, frankly) and his offence simply isn’t enough to shoulder that burden. Despite all those points he scored, he wasn’t even first in that category suggesting that while he may be more of a focal point to Washington’s offence, it didn’t actually help them score more goals than say, Josi or Hedman.
It’s the overall numbers that hurt his candidacy. Of the nine defenders, Carlson was the only one that was outchanced for the year and the only player whose team outscored and outchanced teams with him on the bench. The difference between him and the next worst defender by expected goals percentage here is over 4 percentage points. By goals, it’s close at 3.6. That’s a chasm that’s hard to ignore.
Having said that, Carlson’s gaudy point totals aren’t nothing. The fact he was the focal point of the offence and got those last touches before goals, that he set up so many is an achievement is hard to overlook. Anyone who says “well, his expected goals rate was bad” and ignoring his production is missing a piece of the puzzle just as much as anyone who says “well, he got a lot of points” and ignoring his lesser 5-on-5 impacts.
There’s a balance to be struck, but even by my model, GSVA, which is relatively generous to point-scoring defenders, Carlson’s total value was lacking compared to some of his peers. Despite the woeful defence, he ranked 13th by GSVA with 2.33 wins, and if you exclude defenders that didn’t play top pairing calibre minutes he moves up to 10th. Carlson had a lot of points, but the difference in actual defensive performance was enormous compared to players like McAvoy, Spurgeon and Heiskanen and it means he definitely isn’t as well regarded as more well-rounded players like Josi, Hedman, Pietrangelo and yes, even 47 games of Hamilton.
Evaluating defencemen is hard and there are other pieces that are missing from public analytics that are worth noting too – it’s why I had Carlson higher than 10th, closer to seventh or eighth. But based on everything we do have access to and how strong the field was overall, it was hard to find a spot for Carlson in the top five.
