Detroit Red Wings: An Early Look Into The Analytics

After doing a deep dive into the forwards’ analytics, how do the Detroit Red Wings defenseman stack up?

Corsi (CF): 

Looking into the analytics, Red Wings defenseman Filip Hronek has produced the best Corsi numbers, which should not be too surprising since he has emerged as one of the Red Wings top defensemen.

For those who have appeared in at least six games, the next ranked defenseman is Mike Green, who also spends time with Hronek as the top pairing for the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings have Dennis Cholowski next on the list, as someone who has been prompted by coach Blashill to better his defensive play.

Of qualified defenseman, Danny DeKeyser is the only defender who was a CF% lower than the team average of 46.1 CF%. Some defenders have appeared in less than six games with Blashill splitting time and an injury to DeKeyser.

PDO (A measure of luck):

According to the PDO measures, the Red Wings defense core is not getting the most amount of luck, but DeKeyser is statistically the highest ranked one. A 110% PDO rating for DeKeyser leads qualified defensemen and forwards for that matter. Something to note about this, DeKeyser is the only qualified defenseman who has a PDO above 100%, which implies that he is the only defender who has been getting lucky on his shots.

The defenders who have a PDO under 100% are Green (98.2%), Patrik Nemeth (95.2%), Hronek (95.1%), and Cholowski (92.8%) for the Red Wings. To better understand this, these numbers essentially are saying that these defensemen are getting less lucky when it comes to scoring and scoring chances in general.

This may not show a ton of value, but for fans who may want to label how some of the players are playing, it shows whos been getting lucky and who hasn’t in a statistical measure.

Zone Starts (oZS% and dZS%):

No surprise here, the defenseman that coach Blashill is deploying in the offensive zone most frequently are Mike Green (55.4 oZS%) and Dennis Cholowski (51.1 oZS%). This is not strange since Green has far and away been the offensive quarterback amongst the Red Wings defensemen.

Cholowski has defensive struggles, which would make sense for Blashill to deploy him in the offensive zone to hopefully limit the amount of time in the defensive zone. On the other side of the ice, the defenseman who has been deployed in the defensive zone the most was a little more surprising.

Hronek lead qualified defenseman with a 67.6 dZS%. Not too far behind Hronek is DeKeyeser who has a 65.3 dZS% for the Red Wings.