Tomas Jurco Needs To Play

After making the Red Wings out of training camp and playing in each of the Red Wings first 12 games, Tomas Jurco has spent the last three games watching from the press box. After just two assists and no goals in 12 games, Red Wings coach Mike Babcock elected to scratch Jurco citing his inconsistent offensive play and the need for a lineup change.

The problem is that by taking Jurco out of the lineup and slotting in guys like Daniel Cleary, Andrej Nestrasil and Joakim Andersson he is making the team worse.

While Jurco is not scoring points at the rate that was expected of him coming into this year, he is producing well in areas that we know will lead to point scoring over time. I am talking about shot suppression and shot generation.  While a player’s Corsi For% can be taken as a measure of his team’s possession of the puck while that player is on the ice, breaking it down in to Corsi For and Corsi Against we can evaluate a player on how well they are at suppressing opponents’ shots and generating shots for their team.

One narrative this year has been that Jurco has been inconsistent or ineffective offensively. The Shot Generation graph below shows three different shot generation rates (all 5-on-5): Jurco On-Ice in 2013-2014 (in blue), Jurco On-Ice in 2013-2014 (in darker red) and the team with Jurco Off-Ice in 2014-2015 (lighter red).

Here we see that not only has Jurco improved from last year up until this point but we see that the team generates significantly more shots with Jurco on the ice than they do without him on the ice. This is true in both shot attempts (Corsi) and shots on goal.  In fact, Jurco’s On-Ice Corsi For/60 and Shots For/60 are both the best on the team among forwards who have played in at least half of the team’s games.

What about defensively? I have prepared the same graph for suppression of shots using the same colors.

Again, we see that not only has Jurco improved from last season but that the Red Wings are doing much better with Jurco on the ice. Jurco is also leading the team in both On-Ice Corsi Against/60 and On-Ice Shots Against/60.  Since he is leading the team in both generation and suppression of shots then it goes without saying that he also leads the team in Corsi For% and Shots For%.

How about context? Is he playing easy minutes?  Sheltered zone starts?  There is a graph for that:

There is a fairly sharp drop off in offensive zone starts from last year to this year indicating that he has started fewer shifts in the offensive zone and more shifts in the defensive zone.   His minutes this season are tougher than last season as he’s being deployed in a more defensive role. This makes his improvements in shot generation and shot suppression even more impressive.

If a player’s underlying numbers are so impressive, why is he not scoring?

He said himself last week:

“It’s just a little different; last year it went in for me and this year it’s not going in.”

Despite the underlying numbers showing Jurco performing at a relatively high level, the pucks just aren’t going in the net.  It is that simple.  He has hit at least three posts so far already this season, it is not as if his shooting percentage will stay 0.0% for the entire season if he continues generating shots as he is now.  When you add that his teammates are shooting just 4.2% with him on the ice, it is quite easy to see why the points aren’t coming.  But they will.  When shooting percentage is extremely far from the league-wide mean of about 8.0%, it will always regress towards the mean.  The pucks will start going in and he will start getting points.  All he needs to do is keep doing what he’s doing because it will lead to goals soon enough.

Unfortunately, the “scoring slump” narrative may very well drive him out of Detroit for no good reason.  Would this narrative exist if one or two of those shots off the post were an inch to the left and went in?  What about if his teammates were shooting better than 4.2%?  Does anyone really think the characterization of a player’s performance should rely so heavily on factors over which the player has so little control?

Jurco is not struggling, he does not deserve to be scratched and he does not deserve to be sent to Grand Rapids in lieu of waiving a player like Nestrasil or Cleary.  The Red Wings are going to be fighting for their playoff lives this entire season and they can’t afford to have their best players playing anywhere but Detroit.

All statistics cited are used courtesy of war-on-ice.com.