Rick Nash, the first overall pick from the 2002 NHL Entry Draft, is widely regarded as one of the NHL’s finest power forwards and the Columbus Blue Jackets’ franchise player. Certainly the team recognizes him as such; otherwise they never would have signed him to an eight year, $62.4 million contract extension to keep him in Columbus. Yet, his play this year has been criticized, for reasons that are immediate clear when one looks at his stats line:

• 2009-10: 29GP – 15G – 15A – 30PTS, -11

That minus-11 rating is tied with line-mate Derick Brassard for the worst on the team. However, while the numbers are ugly, I’m not at all convinced that it’s fair to pin the blame for them on Nash. I’ll explain.

Nash is also dead-last in one other statistical category for the Blue Jackets: on-ice save percentage. When he’s on the ice, the Blue Jacket’s goaltenders have a combined even-strength save percentage of .840. To put that in perspective, the league’s worst goaltender (more than 10GP), Vesa Toskala, has a .871 SV% at even-strength this year. Last year, the league’s worst goaltender (more than 25GP), Manny Legace, managed a .893 SV% at even-strength. The number was the same in 2007-08, when it was managed by Johan Holmqvist. The point here is that .840 is a worse number than we’d expect the league’s worst goaltender to put up.

Could Nash have earned the number by playing irresponsible defensively? It’s possible, but unlikely, because while he may have been responsible for a few defensive breakdowns, he’s unlikely to have been at fault for 32 of them (the number of goals scored against the Blue Jackets at 5-on-5 when Nash is on the ice). Not only that, but there’s past history to consider. Last season, when Nash was on the ice the Blue Jackets’ goalies managed a .910 SV% – pretty close to the middle of the pack. If they’d managed that behind Nash this year, Nash would have been on the ice for 14 fewer goals – and he’d be the proud owner of a plus-3 rating. That’s not to say that we should just plug that number in, but is it likely that Nash has suddenly become that much worse at playing defence? We don’t know of any significant injury, and it’s not like age is a factor.

Secondly, as Vic Ferrari so ably demonstrated two years ago, the fact of the matter is that individual players don’t have that big of an impact on the save percentage of their goaltender. Ferrari split players into four groups (first, second, third and fourth lines) and showed conclusively that while individual players can do a lot to impact on-ice shot rate, their impact on on-ice save percentage isn’t very big at all – it’s almost impossible to measure (Nash’s shot rate, by the way, is comfortably top three on the team).

I’m curious to see if anyone has arguments the other way, but based on all of that, I’d be inclined to predict that Nash’s plus/minus is going to improve – a lot – as the year goes on, because it’s probably not his fault that it’s as bad as it is.