Ben Hutton | #27 | D

[SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME]

1 hour ago, Jimmy McGill said:

here's the percentage of time with each player from Dobber. The Biega pairing sample size is pretty small so that graph could literally be the result of one or two good possession games. I'm also hoping that Biega isn't a regular player next year to make a pairing that works with Hutton, that means something else had to give. 

 

The Guddy pairing if freaky bad. I guess they could try a Hutton-Tanev pairing more often but it sure looks like Chris is doing the heavy lifting. 

 

Freq	Line Combination
26.4	HUTTON,BEN - TANEV,CHRISTOPHER
23.2	GUDBRANSON,ERIK - HUTTON,BEN
19	HUTTON,BEN - POULIOT,DERRICK
16.4	HUTTON,BEN - STECHER,TROY
9.6	BIEGA,ALEX - HUTTON,BEN

The Hutton-Tanev pairing is interesting. At least when it comes to last season, it would seem they helped each other quite a bit. Tanev (red line) certainly didn’t have his typical positive Corsi in his 5v5 minutes played without Hutton. And together, both enjoyed a better CF% than either accomplished without the other.

 

EDIT: I’m away from home and on my phone, so it’s tough to pull data off Corsica or wherever (the more detailed stats queries never seem to work on mobile) . But I’d be interested in how Hutton-Tanev look historically, in terms of WOWYs (with/without) and also how they looked in terms of stats other than CF% (like scoring chances, expected goals, etc). If anyone is keen enough to pull the data from the past couple seasons for that pairing, I’d love to see it.

 

EDIT2: I just did a quick hit on the stats for the past three seasons. Interestingly, Hutton-Tanev was Tanev’s best pairing at 5v5 (per Corsica), in terms of relative CF% (+3.07%) and xGF% (+4.59%). In fact, statistically speaking, they’ve arguable been one of our better pairings since 2015. And that’s while playing at a ZSR (zone start ratio) below 50% (meaning more Dzone than Ozone starts).

 

Hutton-Tanev have also enjoyed a +12 penalty +/- over their 565.48 minutes together. Meaning that while they’ve been paired together, they’ve drawn 12 more penalties than they’ve taken. 

 

And (from 2015-2018) they are +6.48% in relative GF% and 52.63 in GF%. So even in terms of just goals (GF and GA at 5v5), Hutton-Tanev have provided good results for this team (in fact they have the best goals data for any Canucks pairing with 200+ 5v5 minutes played together over the past three seasons).

 

EDIT3: It’s tempting to chalk all this up to the “Tanev effect” but like I noted earlier, CT hasn’t really enjoyed better stats with any other partner (than Hutton) since 2015.

Edited May 4, 2018 by SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME

[JamesB]

30 minutes ago, SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME said:

I’d assume they’re for raw (unadjusted) CF% at 5v5. 

 

That said, adjustments for zonestarts and QoC don’t tend to move the numbers all that much.

 

Other than really extreme deployment, and even then it tends to be only a few percentage points. Certainly not enough to account for a ten point swing.

 

And no, PK wouldn’t be included.

 

1 hour ago, Alflives said:

Do these numbers account for Dzone starts, PK minutes, and strength of competition?

Thanks to Sid for the updates on performance by the Canuck D.  But I want to weigh in QoC (quality of competition) as it has become a pet peeve of mine.

 

I have two points:

 

1. It is very important. The D pairing that consistently goes out against the McDavid line or Crosby line or whatever is going to be much worse on event differentials (shots, shot attempts, goals) than the D pairing that goes out consistently against the bottom 6.

 

2. The adjustments that are commonly used for shot differential are dramatically inadequate, sometimes to the point of being actively misleading. It is hard to measure QoC. The finding that QoC as measured by shot differentials does not matter much is well-known. But that it not because quality of competition does not matter much, it is because the measures are so poor. I would agree with view taken at https://www.nhlnumbers.com/2012/8/16/a-competition-metric-based-on-ice-time. that probably the best measure of QoC is ice time (i.e. opponents who get more ice time are probably better players).  The differentials still won't look that big. A much better player gets only a modest amount more ice time and shutdown forwards will often get more ice-time than their underlying quality as players would warrant. 

 

I was just thinking of the Canucks, where Edler and Tanev would come over the boards every time top players come on the ice. If QoC measures tell us that does not matter much, that is telling us more about the usefulness of those measures (or lack thereof) than about the relative performance of the Canuck Dmen.

 

On to some other points:

 

3. While I am at it, I have become less and less impressed with crude shot attempt differentials. There are of course various adjustments available at CORSICA -- based on high danger scoring chances and on score, among other things. And shooting efficiency also matters. It is okay to have fewer shot attempts if you have good chances when you do shoot.

 

4. But I appreciate the overall message: The Canuck D performed poorly overall last year. And if it is going be better next year that will need to come from individual improvement by the players already in the mix as I don't think high quality infusions are likely. I am thinking Juolevi makes the team even though he is probably not yet a legitimate NHL quality D right now. If he was, I think he would be on the Finnish World Championship team. But, more significantly, Salo and other Finnish coaches have all said that he is progressing but their comments imply that he is not at the NHL level yet. And, as of tomorrow (May 5), we will need to stop using the "he is still a teenager" excuse. Anyway, I hope he has a good summer and comes back ready to make a contribution at the NHL level.

 

5. Back to Hutton. I hope he can turn his trajectory around. There is nothing in the data that makes me particularly optimistic. He needs to contribute more to the offensive game and to the physical game and each of those is a tall order in itself.

[aGENT]

2 minutes ago, JamesB said:

And, as of tomorrow (May 5), we will need to stop using the "he is still a teenager" excuse.

Shame his birthday isn't on Star Wars day... Anyhoo, FWIW, 20 years old is still really, REALLY young for an NHL D.

[Nancouver]

On 2018-05-03 at 9:24 AM, SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME said:

Hutton’s “Canucks Army Year in Review”:

https://canucksarmy.com/2018/05/03/canucks-army-year-in-review-ben-hutton-3/

 

You can pretty much sum up most of the article with the following quote and chart:

 

“Something that’s often lost in any conversation about Ben Hutton is that the praise directed his way by the so-called “advanced stats” community is always in relation to the rest of the Canucks’ defence. It’s not so much that Ben Hutton is a great defender, it’s that there’s no reason he should be the focus of so much negative attention when the rest of the Canucks defence has performed so poorly.”

 

Pretty much the same point I’ve been making for a while on Hutton. 

 

And here’s a look at his WOWYs (with and without):

 

 

That Hutton-Gudbranson WOWY.  Yikes! I knew it was bad but yeesh, that’s just terrible. If Hutton is back next season, we need to keep those two guys as far away from each other as possible. At least for Hutton’s (and the team’s) sake (Guddy seems to get around the same results whether he’s with or without Hutton).

 

And Hutton definitely has some more encouraging numbers when you take Guddy out of the equation. Especially the Hutton-Tanev partnership in a top-4 role and also Hutton-Biega as the third pair. 

I would strongly disagree that guddy was dragging Hutton down, if anything it was the other way around. Once Guddy was paired with edler we started to see him play to his potential meanwhile Hutton was riding the pine. I’d also say judging by Guddy’s signing and Huttons healthy scratches that benning and green both agree.

[SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME]

@JamesB

 

Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that QoC and zonestarts do make a significant difference in isolated conditions. As in we know that hard matches against elite players are significantly more challenging and that Dzone faceoffs tend to produce negative differentials (at least in the first few seconds of those shifts).

 

However, where they lose some importance is looking at the entire sample of a player’s season. Try as they may, coaches cannot really control icetime to such an extent as to always give the “hard minutes” to their best players. Shifts on the fly and neutral zone faceoffs take up the vast majority of a player’s shifts, with Ozone and Dzone faceoffs leaving a small fraction. And even then, other than extreme usage, the differences in most players’ ZSRs isn’t too huge. Similarly, while coaches (well, other than Willie D ) will always try to play matchups, they really can’t control things to the extent that only one pairing consistently faces the opposition’s top line, et cetera. They try, and you see this in their bench management, but over the length of the game, hard matches tend to make up only a fraction of the total shifts played. Again, we don’t tend to see huge differences in the QoC players face, however it’s measured.

 

So the point is, it’s not that zonestarts and QoC are meaningless. More than the differences between players tend to become less and less significant over larger samples.

 

If a coach could actually control the game to the extent that he could ensure only one of his D pairings ate up all the minutes in a season that his team played in versus the league’s superstar opposition forwards, then you’d see some huge adjustments for that pairing. But that’s not really how things tend to work out.

 

My point isn’t to devalue “hard minutes.” It’s more that many people on these boards (present company excluded) tend to dramatically overvalue zone starts and matchups. And they do this to an extent that’s really not reflected in any of the data I’ve looked at over the years.

 

And some (again, present company excluded) try to use these factors to excuse some rather piss poor results from certain players (not gonna name names).

 

This is a pet peeve of my own.

 

Without a doubt, you need specialists on any team to take those key defensive zone faceoffs and to be available to hard match when conditions allow and to try to shutdown opposition forwards. I’d never try to claim these roles aren’t important. But just because a player gets used in those situations doesn’t mean he should have a blanket excuse for poor overall results. The truly “hard minutes” are only a small portion of most players’ overall icetime (even for many of the ones considered to be defensive specialists). And so the differences between most teammates and the resulting stats adjustments aren’t generally as significant as many people believe them to be.

Edited May 4, 2018 by SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME
Typo

[SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME]

23 minutes ago, Nancouver said:

I would strongly disagree that guddy was dragging Hutton down, if anything it was the other way around. Once Guddy was paired with edler we started to see him play to his potential meanwhile Hutton was riding the pine. I’d also say judging by Guddy’s signing and Huttons healthy scratches that benning and green both agree.

Dragging down would be an oversimplification and it’s not an assertion that I’ve tried to make (and the article also avoids making that claim). I do believe that Hutton-Gudbranson have been a poor pairing based on their results. And eye test wise, I’ve generally not liked them as a pairing. I’m not too interested in assigning blame either way. I just don’t want to see them played together anymore. Just seems to be a bad match for both.

[Nancouver]

5 minutes ago, SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME said:

Dragging down would be an oversimplification and it’s not an assertion that I’ve tried to make (and the article also avoids making that claim). I do believe that Hutton-Gudbranson have been a poor pairing based on their results. And eye test wise, I’ve generally not liked them as a pairing. I’m not too interested in assigning blame either way. I just don’t want to see them played together anymore. Just seems to be a bad match for both.

I would strongly.... agree! with that statement. Definitely not a good pairing together. Just seems like a lot of people on here liked blaming Guddy when Hutton was equally bad or worse when they first got paired up.

[NewbieCanuckFan]

24 minutes ago, Nancouver said:

I would strongly.... agree! with that statement. Definitely not a good pairing together. Just seems like a lot of people on here liked blaming Guddy when Hutton was equally bad or worse when they first got paired up.

Rightly or wrongly, the older & more veteran guy will tend to get the more blame in such a situation.

 

Sometimes though, a pairing not working doesn't mean either player is useless - it might be just a bad pairing due to chemistry.  Look no further than just how awful the Edler-Bieksa pairing was (this was before Bieksa got old).

[SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME]

26 minutes ago, Nancouver said:

I would strongly.... agree! with that statement. Definitely not a good pairing together. Just seems like a lot of people on here liked blaming Guddy when Hutton was equally bad or worse when they first got paired up.

I think both Guddy and Hutton have taken their fair share of blame, justified and unjustified. When it comes to Guddy, there’s no question some of the stats have reflected poorly on him. It’s complicated though, and CF% in isolation only gives you a small slice of the picture (although one where he doesn’t look too good). I might dig into Guddy another time with my take on the good and bad I’ve seen in his game, both in terms of his analytics and also his play on the ice (at least according to my eye test).

[Nancouver]

13 minutes ago, SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME said:

I think both Guddy and Hutton have taken their fair share of blame, justified and unjustified. When it comes to Guddy, there’s no question some of the stats have reflected poorly on him. It’s complicated though, and CF% in isolation only gives you a small slice of the picture (although one where he doesn’t look too good). I might dig into Guddy another time with my take on the good and bad I’ve seen in his game, both in terms of his analytics and also his play on the ice (at least according to my eye test).

I agree there is a lot to it and don’t get me wrong Guddy is no lidstrom. There is a lot to say for chemistry between players and I would think knowing what the other guy is thinking and capable of is pretty important in a D pairing. Hopefully they both have better years next year

[Rush17]

Has anyone seen any "weigh loss progress photos" from Hutton and his camp?  He's had a few weeks off now I'm sure he's shed some weight.  I wanna see him primed and ready.

[Rob_Zepp]

On 5/3/2018 at 9:24 AM, SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME said:

Hutton’s “Canucks Army Year in Review”:

https://canucksarmy.com/2018/05/03/canucks-army-year-in-review-ben-hutton-3/

 

You can pretty much sum up most of the article with the following quote and chart:

 

“Something that’s often lost in any conversation about Ben Hutton is that the praise directed his way by the so-called “advanced stats” community is always in relation to the rest of the Canucks’ defence. It’s not so much that Ben Hutton is a great defender, it’s that there’s no reason he should be the focus of so much negative attention when the rest of the Canucks defence has performed so poorly.”

 

Pretty much the same point I’ve been making for a while on Hutton. 

 

And here’s a look at his WOWYs (with and without):

 

 

That Hutton-Gudbranson WOWY.  Yikes! I knew it was bad but yeesh, that’s just terrible. If Hutton is back next season, we need to keep those two guys as far away from each other as possible. At least for Hutton’s (and the team’s) sake (Guddy seems to get around the same results whether he’s with or without Hutton).

 

And Hutton definitely has some more encouraging numbers when you take Guddy out of the equation. Especially the Hutton-Tanev partnership in a top-4 role and also Hutton-Biega as the third pair. 

When stats show that Hutton and Pouliot are better Dmen than Guddy and Tanev, one has to seriously question the value of those stats.   

[luckylager]

On 5/4/2018 at 6:35 PM, Rob_Zepp said:

When stats show that Hutton and Pouliot are better Dmen than Guddy and Tanev, one has to seriously question the value of those stats.   

I hate the corsi crap. But anyways.

 

If you think about the situations in which Hutton was paired with Guddy, I'm pretty sure Tanev and Edler were injured and those two were stuck at first pairing... Barf. Of course they get their butts kicked. That is not a first pairing. 

Same can be said about the Hutty Tanev pairing. We had Hutton taking first pairing duties and crapping the bed just like he did with Guddy, only with a better Dman.

 

When he finally gets a third pairing, where he belongs, good corsi. Unless I'm missing/forgetting something, Ben Hutton is an effective third pairing D.

[Rush17]

Ben Hutton is coming up on Sportsnet 650. Start time is 6:30am I believe. They will likely replay it a bit later too.

 

I'm curious how his progression has come so far this offseason. Time shall

[Rush17]

12 minutes ago, Rush17 said:

Ben Hutton is coming up on Sportsnet 650. Start time is 6:30am I believe. They will likely replay it a bit later too.

 

I'm curious how his progression has come so far this offseason. Time shall

Here is the tweet on it

 

 

[-Vintage Canuck-]

 

[Rush17]

Audio link above

[PhillipBlunt]

Good luck to Hutton in coming back to camp with something to prove.

[Rob_Zepp]

On 5/4/2018 at 5:34 PM, Rush17 said:

Has anyone seen any "weigh loss progress photos" from Hutton and his camp?  He's had a few weeks off now I'm sure he's shed some weight.  I wanna see him primed and ready.

[Rob_Zepp]

13 minutes ago, Rush17 said:

Audio link above

Kid has talent - particularly skating ability but he needs to do less "head butting with coaches" and more being a sponge as he remains too indecisive in key situations.   I hope he really commits to a process as given his draft slot, he is a nice find if he can wiggle into the top 6.