Erik Gudbranson | #44 | D

[bree2]

we need gudbranson  on the team.  I would give him B

[Isam]

7 hours ago, Alflives said:

If this team wants to compete for a playoff spot and run, they need to extend Guddy. 

But he brings nothing else to the table. He gives up an extreme amount of shots and generates absolutely no offense. Toughness can only get you so far. In todays game you need to be able to balance that toughness with the ability to transition the puck to your fowards. If you can't do that then your a detriment to the team.

[Isam]

22 hours ago, Rob_Zepp said:

Sheltered?   He has played against most teams top pairing D and/or top wingers if you look at the stats.  Further, he is near top of the NHL for his team's save percentage at even strength when he is on the ice (something insane like 97%).   Further, he is something like 57% Dzone starts which is the same as Tanev.   Sheltered?   

Pdo is a good stat to use but it can be somewhat misleading since its kind of luck based. 

[Isam]

Personally, guddy can be effective if he has the right partner who can handle the puck moving duties.

[elvis15]

2 hours ago, Isam said:

Pdo is a good stat to use but it can be somewhat misleading since its kind of luck based. 

The main thing PDO is good for is to give some indication if a player is over or under-achieving.

 

3 hours ago, Isam said:

But he brings nothing else to the table. He gives up an extreme amount of shots and generates absolutely no offense. Toughness can only get you so far. In todays game you need to be able to balance that toughness with the ability to transition the puck to your fowards. If you can't do that then your a detriment to the team.

He does have the lowest shot and unblocked shot attempts (SAT%) on the team - especially when we're behind or the score is close. I agree he does very little offensively, but he's up there with Gaunce and Sutter (but with that toughness you mention) for doing the heavy lifting defensively.

Edited November 27, 2017 by elvis15

[samurai]

Currently we have 3 pylons on D - Edler, Hutton, and Guddy.  Edler won't leave but his days are numbered, so it becomes a question of keeping which of the two other guys. 

[Isam]

1 hour ago, elvis15 said:

The main thing PDO is good for is to give some indication if a player is over or under-achieving.

 

He does have the lowest shot and unblocked shot attempts (SAT%) on the team - especially when we're behind or the score is close. I agree he does very little offensively, but he's up there with Gaunce and Sutter (but with that toughness you mention) for doing the heavy lifting defensively.

I will try to watch him from your guys perspective once he comes back. Maybe Imissed something from the eye test or the stats..

[PhillipBlunt]

15 hours ago, Isam said:

Personally, guddy can be effective if he has the right partner who can handle the puck moving duties.

[Isam]

16 hours ago, elvis15 said:

The main thing PDO is good for is to give some indication if a player is over or under-achieving.

 

He does have the lowest shot and unblocked shot attempts (SAT%) on the team - especially when we're behind or the score is close. I agree he does very little offensively, but he's up there with Gaunce and Sutter (but with that toughness you mention) for doing the heavy lifting defensively.

Got a question. What is the overall stats for zone entries and exits with guddy?

 

[kloubek]

I just don't get why people keep defending him.  Guddy is a tough guy. That's it.  We can try to look at his draft position and claim he has more to his game than that, but he just simply does not accomplish anything other than that.

 

You know who else hits (albeit not as hard)?  Biega.  In 21 games, Guddy has 43 hits.  (2.05 per game). In 15 games, Biega has 42 (2.8 per game).  That's about 38% more hitting.  And yes, we all know Gudbranson can hit harder but I'd rather 38% extra (but lighter) hits and at least a tiny bit of offensive ability as opposed to a guy who more often than not kills any momentum down the ice.  Add to that the salary he is going to ask for and it's a no-brainer to me to get rid of him.

 

For the record, Del Zotto hits at a pace of 2.3/game, and Edler at a similar rate.  Which puts Gudbranson in 4th place for hits thrown per game on our defense.  I'm sorry guys - but even if your claim is that we need a hitter on our team like him, he doesn't even do it at the rate which would make that an argument.

[-AJ-]

4 minutes ago, kloubek said:

I just don't get why people keep defending him.  Guddy is a tough guy. That's it.  We can try to look at his draft position and claim he has more to his game than that, but he just simply does not accomplish anything other than that.

 

You know who else hits (albeit not as hard)?  Biega.  In 21 games, Guddy has 43 hits.  (2.05 per game). In 15 games, Biega has 42 (2.8 per game).  That's about 38% more hitting.  And yes, we all know Gudbranson can hit harder but I'd rather 38% extra (but lighter) hits and at least a tiny bit of offensive ability as opposed to a guy who more often than not kills any momentum down the ice.  Add to that the salary he is going to ask for and it's a no-brainer to me to get rid of him.

 

For the record, Del Zotto hits at a pace of 2.3/game, and Edler at a similar rate.  Which puts Gudbranson in 4th place for hits thrown per game on our defense.  I'm sorry guys - but even if your claim is that we need a hitter on our team like him, he doesn't even do it at the rate which would make that an argument.

I mentioned this earlier, but when looking at tangibles, Gudbranson is frankly not very good. His intangibles are the primary thing keeping him with regular minutes IMO. Guddy has good leadership and frankly, just having a 6'5" big man on the back end makes opposing players think twice about taking liberties. Biega doesn't provide that same factor.

 

Still, if his tangible numbers (offensive and defensive) don't improve soon, I'm going to be concerned about him going forward. Intangibles are worth something, but you can't entirely make up for poor play with intangibles.

[Isam]

2 minutes ago, kloubek said:

I just don't get why people keep defending him.  Guddy is a tough guy. That's it.  We can try to look at his draft position and claim he has more to his game than that, but he just simply does not accomplish anything other than that.

 

You know who else hits (albeit not as hard)?  Biega.  In 21 games, Guddy has 43 hits.  (2.05 per game). In 15 games, Biega has 42 (2.8 per game).  That's about 38% more hitting.  And yes, we all know Gudbranson can hit harder but I'd rather 38% extra (but lighter) hits and at least a tiny bit of offensive ability as opposed to a guy who more often than not kills any momentum down the ice.  Add to that the salary he is going to ask for and it's a no-brainer to me to get rid of him.

 

For the record, Del Zotto hits at a pace of 2.3/game, and Edler at a similar rate.  Which puts Gudbranson in 4th place for hits thrown per game on our defense.  I'm sorry guys - but even if your claim is that we need a hitter on our team like him, he doesn't even do it at the rate which would make that an argument.

I actually agree, but people keep saying hes this great defenseman. Personally I'm having a tough time justfying their argument. Is his neutral zone play good? Maybe thats it.

 

[kloubek]

22 minutes ago, -AJ- said:

I mentioned this earlier, but when looking at tangibles, Gudbranson is frankly not very good. His intangibles are the primary thing keeping him with regular minutes IMO. Guddy has good leadership and frankly, just having a 6'5" big man on the back end makes opposing players think twice about taking liberties. Biega doesn't provide that same factor.

 

Still, if his tangible numbers (offensive and defensive) don't improve soon, I'm going to be concerned about him going forward. Intangibles are worth something, but you can't entirely make up for poor play with intangibles.

I agree that they are worth something, but you gotta be able to play the game.  In this day and age of the NHL being high tempo and high skill, there just isn't room on a team for bruisers (even with intangibles) anymore.

[aGENT]

49 minutes ago, kloubek said:

I just don't get why people keep defending him.  Guddy is a tough guy. That's it. 

From another thread:

 

19 hours ago, aGENT said:

Try to think of it as offense by proxy.

 

Gud does the things and plays the minutes and situations that allow time and space for more offensive players to create offense. And the extra energy and less injuries that affords them vs having to play that physical role as well. 

 

19 hours ago, aGENT said:

* 'Bleeds' low percentage shots against tough competition with a large amounts of Dzone starts and pk time while bringing physicality and 'nuclear deterrent'/a safe working environment factor. 

 

Context. 

 

Again if he's not doing those things, smaller, less physical D who might struggle against tougher competition/matchups/zone starts etc would need to play those situations and minutes.

 

Inherently that makes them less able to create the offense and puck transitioning everyone seems to love to look at graphs and charts of. Again, offense by proxy. 

 

It also would likely lead to more injuries to those guys and perhaps crushed confidence as those (primarily younger guys on our roster) struggle to cope in those situations.

 

We just got Pouliot's confidence levels back to something resembling why/when he was drafted high. Do we really want to screw that up by moving Gudbranson unnecessarily? Do we want guys running Juolevi when he arrives? 

 

I sure don't. 

 

17 hours ago, aGENT said:

I'm really not sure why the difficulty in understanding that a one dimensional D core of ANY kind is a bad idea.

 

You can't just have 6, small, skilled  D any more than you could have 6 'Gudbranson's'. Or a forward group/team without anyone to check other teams best lines or PK.

 

You need a mix of players regardless of their offensive or advanced, stats (that aren't terribly good at measuring contributions of that type of player anyway -  See: Sutter and his rep with the advanced stats crowd).

 

[EagleShield]

33 minutes ago, -AJ- said:

I mentioned this earlier, but when looking at tangibles, Gudbranson is frankly not very good. His intangibles are the primary thing keeping him with regular minutes IMO. Guddy has good leadership and frankly, just having a 6'5" big man on the back end makes opposing players think twice about taking liberties. Biega doesn't provide that same factor.

 

Still, if his tangible numbers (offensive and defensive) don't improve soon, I'm going to be concerned about him going forward. Intangibles are worth something, but you can't entirely make up for poor play with intangibles.

Out of interest, Tom Sestito was a big man that made opposing players think twice about taking liberties, but was a fundamentally flawed hockey player at the NHL level. Why are people so defensive of Gudbranson but were so willing to throw Sestito out the door?

 

Also, the point around his super high even strength on-ice save percentage is fallacious. Yes, it is 0.966, but last year it was 0.888 and career he averages out around 0.918. League average even strength save percentage from 2011 (his NHL debut season) is 0.921, so he's below par on that front.

[JM_]

44 minutes ago, -AJ- said:

I mentioned this earlier, but when looking at tangibles, Gudbranson is frankly not very good. His intangibles are the primary thing keeping him with regular minutes IMO. Guddy has good leadership and frankly, just having a 6'5" big man on the back end makes opposing players think twice about taking liberties. Biega doesn't provide that same factor.

 

Still, if his tangible numbers (offensive and defensive) don't improve soon, I'm going to be concerned about him going forward. Intangibles are worth something, but you can't entirely make up for poor play with intangibles.

The only stat that I can see that stands out in this regard is his shot attempts are down from his career average. I think the recent game vs LA shows what he's capable of though. There are a lot of top pairing D who give away the puck more than Guddy does. at 15 he's in some pretty good company actually. Not saying I'd put him out there over Tanev but I do think this whole discussion is falling into a bit of the old confirmation bias thing, on both sides of the argument. If he can play more like he did in LA he'll be a good asset for us. 

[Isam]

3 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

The only stat that I can see that stands out in this regard is his shot attempts are down from his career average. I think the recent game vs LA shows what he's capable of though. There are a lot of top pairing D who give away the puck more than Guddy does. at 15 he's in some pretty good company actually. Not saying I'd put him out there over Tanev but I do think this whole discussion is falling into a bit of the old confirmation bias thing, on both sides of the argument. If he can play more like he did in LA he'll be a good asset for us. 

I agree. 

[-AJ-]

7 minutes ago, EagleShield said:

Out of interest, Tom Sestito was a big man that made opposing players think twice about taking liberties, but was a fundamentally flawed hockey player at the NHL level. Why are people so defensive of Gudbranson but were so willing to throw Sestito out the door?

I believe that size and strength is generally more necessary while defending than on offense, so someone who primarily possesses those attributes can last longer as a defenseman than a forward. Defensemen have almost always been larger on average than forwards.

[Boudrias]

21 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

The only stat that I can see that stands out in this regard is his shot attempts are down from his career average. I think the recent game vs LA shows what he's capable of though. There are a lot of top pairing D who give away the puck more than Guddy does. at 15 he's in some pretty good company actually. Not saying I'd put him out there over Tanev but I do think this whole discussion is falling into a bit of the old confirmation bias thing, on both sides of the argument. If he can play more like he did in LA he'll be a good asset for us. 

Gudbranson passes my eye test just fine. He is a +2 and MDZ is a -8. MDZ takes more offensive risks so what does that stat really tell us? At the end of the day in CUP play do you need a bigger group of d-men. I say yes. I would expect players like Tanev, MDZ and Stecher to fade.  

[RetroCanuck]

3 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

Gudbranson passes my eye test just fine. He is a +2 and MDZ is a -8. MDZ takes more offensive risks so what does that stat really tell us? At the end of the day in CUP play do you need a bigger group of d-men. I say yes. I would expect players like Tanev, MDZ and Stecher to fade.  

I like how your opinion is based on one stat and that stat is the worst of them all