The Keystone To The Penguins Defense
- Josh Boulton (@ToughCallBlog)
- Feb 22, 2016
- 3 min read
By Josh Boulton (@ToughCallBlog)
It's no secret Kris Letang is the key stone in the fragile construction of the Penguins defence.
He'd still be the key stone on deeper rosters, but to the Penguins he appears to be pretty much the only card they have to play. He may be the Ace, but is he the only one capable of providing help to the offensive juggernaut up front? As I found out, sometimes a hand of four 4's is just as good or better.
At the start of the year, Kris Letang struggled just as much as the rest of the team, scoring just one goal in his first 28 games. He also seemed to have injuries every other weekend. He's a tough guy though, and for the most part has tried to stay in the lineup to help his team out.
Statistically this season, the team is better with Letang in it. In the pre-Sullivan portion, Letang was in the lineup for 25 games and missed 3. The record with him: 12-8-4-1. Without: 0-2-0-1. But this isn't as obviously explicable as you might think looking at some other stats.
Everyone was explaining away the lack of offense from the star studded forwards by saying the defence wasn't good enough to get them the puck. Letang is the only one that can do that, right? Well, again pre-Sullivan(when the slumping occured), with Letang the team averaged 2.2 regulation goals per game. With Letang scratched, the average only dropped to 2.0 rgpg).
What's a little surprising is that in 25 pre-Sullivan games featuring Letang, he only recorded at least one point in 11 of them(less than half!) The team record for those 11 games however was a staggering 6-2-2-1. This should make sense. The only offensive d-man contributes, overall offense goes up and we win more. Yet it really doesn't.
In the 11 games pre-Sullivan that Letang scored a point in, as a team the Pens scored 2 goals or less six times (55% of games), 3 goals three times, and 4 goals twice (just 18%). In the 14 games Letang was held pointless, the Pens scored 2 goals or less seven times (a slight improvement to 50%), 3 goals one time, and scored 4 goals or more four times (a huge increase to 28%). Amazingly, the stats tell us that when Letang doesn't score, overall team offence actually increases.
What I would conclude from all of this is the problem with the defensive depth isn't its effect on team offense, as presumed. The most revealing stat turns out to be that in those same 11 games in which Letang scored at least a point, the opposition scored 2 or less in eight of them, or 73% of the time. For the record, in the other three games the opposition only got 3. Compare that to the times when Letang doesn't score a point. In those 14 games, the opposition scored 2 or less nine times, a decrease to 64% of games. His scoring doesn't help overall team offence, yet it seems to have a profound effect on team defence. That explains the 6-2-2-1 run when he got on the scoresheet.
Also, in the mini stretch of 5 games after Sullivan was hired and Letang was injured and out of the lineup, the Penguins gave up 3 or more 3 times in a row and went 1-4.
(At this time I'd like to point out that it would be unfair to compare these stats to the Sullivan half of the year because Letang has scored at least one point in almost every game since then.)
So after all is said and done, do we have to worry about our lack of depth on the back end? Not as much as we might think. We're not the best, but good enough to hold our own. We have to rely on our best players to be our best players just like anyone else. If that continues to happen, we'll be just fine.
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