Fresh off a 45-point season, it’s safe to say that Montreal Canadiens fans expected more than three goals and 10 assists from Jaroslav Spacek. It’s also safe to say the Czech hockey brain-trust had hoped for more, as they opted to leave Spacek off the roster (along with teammate Roman Hamrlik) for the 2010 games. Aside from the offensive dip, the other statistic most often quoted to describe Spacek is his league-leading 67 giveaways.
I’m going to explain why I think Spacek’s statistical struggles are perfectly unsurprising in a moment, but I’d like to take a minute to focus on the giveaways number. The NHL’s real-time statistics are useful for all sorts of things, but cross-team comparisons are not one of them. That stat quoted above is generally used in a sentence like this one: “Montreal has four of the league’s eight giveaway leaders on defence!”
Which is more probable: that Montreal has four of the league’s eight worst defenders in terms of giveaways, or that the guy recording the statistics in Montreal is either drunk or just plain trigger happy? To answer that question, we’re going to look at a few different things. For starters, let’s look at last year’s giveaway leaders… and we find Montreal has three of the six leaders again! Or over to 2007-08, where Montreal had three players ranked in the league’s top 11. David Johnson of hockeyanalysis.com adjusts stats like giveaways for the difference between home and rode arenas – and surprise, surprise, he finds that Montreal’s numbers last year should be adjusted downward, from a team total of 965 to 597. All of this fits in well with an odd point noted over at Lions in Winter:
My second rant of the night is this: can we please find a sensible person to record subjective statistics in Montreal? It’s getting embarrassing. Some trigger happy fellow recorded 11 giveaways for Jaroslav Spacek. Murray Wilson (and I didn’t think he was way off base) claimed it was the best game he’d seen Spacek play. 11 giveaways and best game ever don’t jive, especially when a very very bad season is 100 giveaways, not 1,100. The same hyper-responsiveness is at play for other stats like blocked shots, hits, missed shots and others.
In short: ignore the ugly giveaway numbers. They’re all but meaningless.
Next point: Spacek’s offensive dip. The most obvious point here is power play time. Last year, Spacek recorded 22 points on the power play while averaging 3:41 per night with the man advantage. This season he’s down to less than two minutes per game, so while his scoring rate has dipped a little bit the main cause of this points decline is the drop off in power play time. The other reason for his offensive decline is being used in a different role at even-strength.
In Buffalo last season, Spacek was relied on to play offensive minutes – he had 36 more offensive zone draws than defensive zone draws, and he did it while playing second-tier opposition on a team that scored just a hair under 3.00 goals per game. This year he’s playing heavy defensive minutes – against the best opposition, and he’s on pace to start in his own end of the rink 101 times more than the offensive zone. It’s a completely different role for Spacek, and it makes sense given the Canadiens abundance of offensive defencemen. Despite playing ugly minutes, Spacek leads the Montreal blue-line in plus/minus (plus-6) and sits right behind Andrei Markov in terms of his impact on the Canadiens’ shot rate.
He’s being asked to be a shutdown defenceman, and that means he isn’t going to put up offence. The giveaway totals are all but meaningless garbage and get way too much play. Bottom line: Spacek’s doing a fine job in a difficult role, and he’s one of the few Canadiens players that can say that. I’m surprised at his exclusion from the Czech team, and I have no doubt that he’s living up to the expectations Jacques Martin had when he decided to put him in that role.
Some Montréal fans like to call Spacek Sissy and many are indeed finding his contribution lacking. As you so clearly demonstrate, he’s been given some of the toughest jobs on the team, and the different indicators of Quality of Competition bear that from what I can tell.
I’ve been recording scoring chances for the habs this season in the same fashion guys like Dennis King at mc79hockey, Kent Wilson at battleofalberta and others, using the same definitions and, from what we could tell from different matchups, quite similar results.
So, my point: looking at both scoring chances % and Shots attempted %, Spacek and Hamrlik are, on a pretty feeble even-strength team, hovering around 50%, which is pretty darn good considering their role. Good players, even in rough circumstances, keep finding a way to tilt the ice the right way and Spacek certainly has done that this year, counting stats or not.
As a habs fan, I’m darn glad they get to rest during the olympics.
Olivier, that “Sissy” nickname is from way back for Spacek. It predates him coming to Montreal by quite a bit. I call him that because, well, it’s his nickname and it’s kind of funny. It has nothing to do with how he plays.
And to add another point: Spacek is doing this all playing the right side this year. He had exclusively played the left side on defence before coming to Montreal, but switched to accomodate Montreal’s lack of right-side D (Josh Gorges and Ryan O’Byrne are the only two right side D in the top 7).
Fantastic stuff!
Olivier – what’s the link to your site? I’d love to see that scoring chance data.
Saskhab – great point about switching sides on ‘D’. One that doesn’t get brough out enough, actually.
First, thanks for quoting me on Spacek and Murray Wilson. I still stand by the drunkenness of the Montreal stats keeper.
Second, I thought I’d add this little bit of information to the debate: Spacek has been on the ice for 50 of Montreal’s 124 goals for this season. That’s third to Cammalleri and Plekanec. In ES goals, he is second being on for 40, 5 behind Cammalleri. That’s 40 of 84!
Now, regardless of what he’s doing on defense, he certainly seems to be able to create the conditions for goals to be scored. In fact, Josh Gorges might learn something…
JW, Olivier’s blog can be found here.
Thanks, Robert.
Topham:
My pleasure! You guys do great work.
This article was linked on Die By the Blade, SB Nation’s Sabres blog, so let me ask something from a Sabres fan’s perspective.
Since the Habs have a glut of offensive defensemen and Spacek has been an offensive defenseman for pretty much his entire career, one has to wonder why someone of his particular skill set was acquired to fill a role that historically he hasn’t played. If you’re looking to get someone to be a shut-down defensive defenseman, someone like Jaro Spacek isn’t really the type of player you should be looking for. The Canadiens certainly had better and cheaper options available to them than getting an overpriced free agent and then using him in a role he’s not suited for. Certainly Gainey and Martin are smarter than that, aren’t they?
Calvert: I used to think quite a bit of Gainey as a G.M., but his work the last few years in Montreal really makes me wonder. He’s given Martin so many offensive guys (including a guy in Bergeron whose only value is as an offensive specialist) that I don’t know if Martin has a choice. He could stick Markov in that role, but Markov’s a higher-end offensive producer than Spacek.