Nashville Predators: Cool the Jets On Trading For a Forward
The Nashville Predators have been rumored in the hunt to add one more forward to their roster. If it means giving up a top defenseman, it would be a big mistake.
The Nashville Predators have been in trade talks with the Colorado Avalanche for about the last year and a half now. The Avalanche have a forward in Matt Duchene that GM David Poile has coveted for quite some time. That, of course, has been the Achilles heel of the Nashville Predators for so long-not enough offense. Poile knows he has a good enough system of prospects to get almost any player he wants. But, Colorado general manager, Joe Sakic, wants a king’s ransom for Duchene. He knows the Nashville Predators have the deepest defensive unit in the league, when healthy.
It has been rumored he has gunned for either Mattias Ekholm or Ryan Ellis. As time goes on, and Duchene becomes less enamored with Colorado, it seems that Sakic is more and more willing to trade Duchene. But, he still wants a high return. If this drags on long enough, David Poile might just bite. If he does, he would truly be hurting his team’s chances at winning the Stanley Cup he so desires.
Who needs defense in an offensive league?
As you have seen me mention many times on here, the NHL has decided to manufacture more scoring this season. They have cracked down on penalties and have officials crying foul whenever a skater breathes wrong on another. It’s too early to truly tell if the rule changes add much more offense. But, the last time the NHL did something like this, it added over a goal more per game throughout an entire season. So, time most certainly will tell us if the rule changes have indeed led to more offense.
So, with all of that expected offense, the common consensus would be to add as many offensive threats to your team as you can. Not a bad thought. In hockey, there is only one statistic that matters when it comes to winning, goals. The basis of every advanced stat out there is goals. Take a look at the possession analytics of Corsi and Fenwick. The importance of having possession of the puck is because you can’t score without it. Or take the PDO statistic. PDO is the combination of the team’s shooting percentage (goals scored divided by shots taken) and the team’s save percentage (shots saved divided by total shots). All of that amounts to what? Goals.
Even though goals are the only important statistic, it doesn’t mean the only way to account for goals is by scoring them. Defense is just as important as offense. You can win by scoring one more goal than the other team, or you can also win by allowing one less goal than the other team. Look at the Predators win last week against the Philadelphia Flyers. It was 1-0. Defense dominated that game for both sides. The Predators just happened to play that much better defense.
To trade or not to trade
As I mentioned earlier: David Poile really likes Matt Duchene. Other Predators fans have mentioned finagling a deal out of Montreal for Canadiens forward, Alex Galchenyuk. Both are phenomenal players that the Nashville Predators would be lucky to have. But, not if it means giving up Ekholm or Ellis.
At the crux of my argument is an article done by former NHLer, Greg Desjardins. He wrote, “Replacement Level: How Many Wins Do Injuries Cost?” The reason it applies here, even though we are talking about trades, is because he’s considering a team losing its best forward or defenseman for an entire season. If the Predators trade a defenseman, they will be without him for the remainder of the season.
The purpose of his exercise was to determine what would happen if a team had to replace one of its top of forwards or defensemen for an entire year due to injury. He ran some calculations, which he explains in his article, and came to this result:
Teams can expect to lose four extra games if one of their top two blueliners goes down for the season, while losing a first-line forward appears to cost just one and a half losses…it’s clear that losing a defenseman is a bigger deal than losing a forward.
Hockey analytics expert, Rob Vollman, broke down what Desjardins found into goals. Remember, the only statistic that matters is goals. In his book, Stat Shot, Vollman explains that in today’s NHL, it takes roughly three goals scored to get a win. So, he took the average points added to the standings that Desjardins discovered for both forward and defenseman, and multiplied them by three goals. So, Vollman claims that a top line forward adds around 10 more goals than the rest of the team could muster up in the season. But, a top-line defenesman amounts to 26 more goals prevented than the rest of the team could do without him.
How it plays out
If we look at these results, we can adjust them a little bit based off of the actual players we want to involve. In our situation, we have two forwards-Matt Duchene and Alex Galchenyuk-and two defensmen-Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Ellis. Additionally, for our scenario, we are going to compare all stats from last season, since it was the last large set of data.
Last season, Galchenyuk scored 17 goals, just one season removed from scoring 30. Meanwhile, Duchene scored 18 for a bad Colorado team. If you consider both guys a top six forward, which you should, let’s compare them to our sixth best goal scorer from last season-Calle Jarnkrok. Jarnkrok scored 15 goals last season. In this case, Galchenyuk would have added an extra two goals to the team. Duchene would have added three, but probably much more with the upgrade in quality of teammates. Now, the true effect of adding Galchenyuk or Duchene would really be more. Either Galchenyuk or Duchene would command top minutes, meaning other players would lose minutes, hence less production. So, maybe Galchenyuk adds 5-7 more goals and Duchene probably adds closer to 8 or 10 than the next best option.
Numbers back it up
So, our best case scenario is adding 10 goals to the team if we had one of those two guys and kept all of our defensemen. But, that is the key. We can’t keep all of our blue-liners if we want to obtain either of those guys. To trade for Galchenyuk or Duchene, the Nashville Predators would have to give up Ekholm or Ellis. A good way to see how Ekholm and Ellis played last season compared to league average is through their Hero Charts. Take a look below.
Working on an article on why the #Preds shouldn't go after Duchene. Here's Ellis and Ekholm's Hero Charts from last season. pic.twitter.com/NpLNrWGtmN
— PredsHockeyFilm (@PredsFilm) October 24, 2017
As you can see, Ekholm is one of the best in the entire league at suppressing shots. Shot suppression is another one of those advanced statistics with goals as the foundation behind it. The more shots that are suppressed, the less chance the opponent has at scoring a goal. Ellis, although less defensive than Ekholm, still suppresses shots at an above average level. On top of that, Ellis potted 16 goals last season from the back-end.
Since, on average, a top-pairing defenseman keeps an extra 26 goals off of the board, we can assume Ekholm prevents at least that. I would venture to say he is even closer to 30 considering how good of a defensive specialist he is. For Ellis, since he is closer to average in suppression and a little more geared offensively, we can safely put him between 20-23 goals prevented. But, keep in mind, Ellis scores way above average for a defenseman. So, the net value of goals prevented plus goals added would be close to 30 as well.
Another thing that would make the trade even harder is salary. Ekholm and Ellis are on very team-friendly deals. Ekholm is locked up for another four seasons, while Ellis is a bargain at $2.5 million per year according to CapFriendly. Trading Ellis for Galchenyuk or Duchene would result in an increase of cap hit to the tune of $2.4 million and $3.5 million respectively. That would put a huge strain on Poile’s budget for the offseason.
As you can see: Even though the Nashville Predators would definitely score more goals with adding Galchenyuk or Duchene, they would also be allowing a lot more as well. By these calculations, there is just no way you can make that trade.
Next: Predators' Power Play Deceptively Elite
I am sorry Nashville Predators fans, our offense is as prolific as it is going to get.