Coming into the 2013-2014 NHL season there were rumors floating around that Detroit Red Wings’ defenseman Jakub Kindl could be traded at any moment. With promising young defenseman slotted to start the year with the Red Wings AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, the team was looking to give the best of that bunch an opportunity to ply their trade against NHL competition. With his contract (three years and $8 million remaining) and seemingly no place in the team’s future, Kindl seemed to be the odd man out.
How has Kindl responded to the uncertainty? Through just eight games it is difficult to say with any kind of confidence but that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze the data we have. While Kindl has posted some of the best possession numbers of any player in the NHL, we need to put those numbers in context in order to understand them.
All statistics cited are courtesy of war-on-ice.com unless otherwise specified.
By 5-on-5 Corsi For %, Kindl is best among Red Wings defenseman with a CF% of 64.2%. For comparison, the team’s next best defenseman is Brendan Smith at 52.9%. If we include forwards in the comparison, Kindl tied for second on the team with Andrej Nestrasil behind only Tomas Jurco.
By relative Corsi %, Kindl leads the team at +15.0%. In fact, among all NHL skaters who have been on the ice for at least 100 minutes of 5-on-5 time, Kindl’s +15.0% relative Corsi % is the highest in the league.
Is he really that good? In short, no. A look at deployment shows that Kindl has played the easiest minutes of any Red Wings defenseman. If we measure the quality of his opponents by either the average ice time those players see on their team (TOI Competition %) or by opponent CF% (both are weighted by time played against Kindl), he’s played lesser opponents on average than all other Red Wings defenseman.
Another component for evaluating a player’s deployment is how often he is starting shifts in the offensive zone. Again, among all Red Wings who have played more than one game, Kindl leads the team in percentage of shifts started in the offensive zone (47.1%) and ratio of offensive zone to defensive zone shift starts (68.8%). So in addition to playing against the weakest competition, Kindl is being used in the most sheltered role of any other defenseman.
But I still don’t think that’s the whole story. Using the database on the website puckalytics.com, we can attempt to account for a player’s favorable or unfavorable zone starts by looking at what site creator David Johnson calls Zone Start Adjusted data (ZS Adj.). By applying this filter, you remove all data points from the 10 seconds immediately following a faceoff. The idea is that by removing the 10 seconds following a face-off, you are eliminating (or at least mitigating) the effects of a player’s zone starts.
Interestingly in this case, despite Kindl’s highly favorable zone starts so far this season, his 5-on-5 ZS adj. CF% is 66.0%. By mitigating the effects of zone starts, Kindl’s CF% actually improved. This could indicate that his zone starts are not significantly driving his outstanding possession numbers. While it does not change the fact that he’s played against weak competition, there still appears to be evidence that Kind’s possession numbers are not purely driven by deployment. This is still a small sample size so it is important to see how this changes as the season goes on.
Given how clearly sheltered Kindl has been through the first eight games of this season, it bring into question what the coaching staff’s motivations behind his deployment are. Are they convinced he cannot be an effective hockey player so they try to minimize the damage? Are they trying to make him appear better than he is in order to showcase him for a trade? A little of both?
Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that while Kindl is on the ice, the Red Wings are dominating play. Does that mean Kindl is a +15.0% relative Corsi quality player? No it does not. He won’t be able to maintain the numbers he has posted to this point over the course of the entire season. But still, he is playing well in the situations he’s asked to play and there’s value in that. Whether that value leads to an increased role on the Red Wings or a ticket out of town is certainly something to keep an eye on.