Challenging "the analytics" & defending Detroit Red Wings star Moritz Seider
In today's world, people love to debate on social media. But recent comments about Detroit Red Wings defenseman Mortiz Seider are ill-informed and just blasphemous.
It's been quite infuriating to cope with the number of haters and clout chasers on social media lately, especially regarding the Detroit Red Wings and defenseman Moritz Seider. Perhaps the most infuriating has been Andy & Rono of @ARHockeyStats on X, formerly Twitter.
Their disdain for Moritz Seider has seemingly been put out there for everyone, and it speaks right to the people who only look at data. Lately, they're all flocking to the Detroit Red Wings and Seider. I consider myself a supporter of statistics, and they're extremely valuable to evaluation and can help tell the story of what a player can do, who a player is, etc. But they're not always perfect.
Also, I will not call them "the analytics," and if I do, it's satirical. "The analytics" is what Don Cherry would use to describe Corsi, Point Shares, or expected goals. It's like Mickey Redmond being fascinated that the game has a replay review nowadays. It's just silly. The phrase "the analytics" gets thrown on social media far too often. These "analytics" do not always tell the story. Advanced statistics can be great, but need to be taken with a grain of salt.
On paper, a player can be graded as the greatest hockey player ever to touch the ice, but when you tune into a game, the player cannot score a goal. Robby Fabbri and his PDO ratings over the years speak to this. At times in his career, he's had incredibly high PDO ratings, indicating that he's manufacturing offense and getting "lucky," as PDO is a measure of "luck," very relatively speaking. But his goal totals did not always reflect this.
The point is that the eye test and simply watching games are equally important as these metrics because they do not always agree. The metrics and eye test can differ, which is why you need both, to paint a more accurate picture. The more information you have to make an informed decision, the better. In the case of Andy & Rono and their horrendous take on Seider, it just pushed me over the edge to see all this negativity about Seider based on their model.
Detroit Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider does not deserve the hate.
I'll cut right to it. The thread from AR Hockey Stats makes some really shocking comparisons. Drawing similarities between Ivan Provorov of the past to Seider. Per their own tweet, they say, "But, not only by our model & eye-test, he hasn't been good since the last season."
No offense, those Red Wings fans who so much defend Moritz Seider (and it's absolutely understandable) remind me (Rono) when I defended Ivan Provorov a few years ago. He also played a lot of minutes & against best lines. So I also thought he's so good.
— Andy & Rono (@ARHockeyStats) January 25, 2024
I'd love to know how many games they have watched of the Detroit Red Wings. Hats off to them for knowing enough about Seider's usage and that he often faces off against the top talent on the other end of the ice. But, to sit here and point fingers that he's "not good" just because one model says so is ludicrous.
A few analysts warned me that he’s not that good. That playing a lot of minutes & against best lines automatically doesn’t mean he’s good. They were right in the end. Provorov really wasn’t good in that role.
— Andy & Rono (@ARHockeyStats) January 25, 2024
Open the eyes up and watch Seider's game. He may not be on as big of a roll as he was in his rookie campaign; heck, he took home the Calder Trophy in 2021-22. But, in year three, Seider played 48 games with six goals and 18 assists for 24 total points. He may not surpass his career bests, but it's not all about points.
Moritz Seider is the Detroit Red Wings best defenseman, undisputed.
Seider is the team's top defenseman. Regardless of what the metrics show or what screenshots/player cards on Twitter show, he's the team's best defenseman. He may make mistakes, miss coverage, or find himself in a defensive lapse from time to time, but to suggest he is not good is just beyond me.
Being so engulfed in a model or numbers, overlooking what Seider does night in and night out as a whole, is just baffling. He stepped up and defended against Jason Robertson when Dallas took it to Detroit. Robertson was quiet. Sure, Detroit lost with a blow-up second period, but Robertson was quiet.
Against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, arguably the best duo on a line in all of hockey, while they were scorching red-hot, Seider was able to hold them. The team lost in overtime & Seider was not on the ice. McDavid scored (again, not while Seider was on the ice), and when Hyman scored, it was another player who missed his responsibility. Seider had done his job.
Those are just two games; there's plenty more to the season. As is the times when Seider has not played perfectly, but when you look at it overall, Seider's been great for Detroit. He's averaging 22:23 this season for the Red Wings, which is down a minute from his last two years, and he STILL leads the team in ATOI in 2023-24.
Throw out the book on Moritz Seider; challenge the metrics.
You can sit here and pitch me on these advanced metrics, which are not always that advanced but rather new metrics in this golden age of data collection. I'll gladly listen and like what these bring to the table, but the book out on Seider is wrong.
All of this negativity about Seider and how he is "not good," as Andy & Rono suggested, is ludicrous. Apparently, a defender who's going to get a massive eight-year contract around the Miro Heiskanen level of payday is actually not good, and basically, Ivan Provorov. It's a real bold statement/comparison if you ask me, regardless of how similar their seasons may have been in the past. I'm just not buying that under any circumstances.
Post all the player cards and claim Seider is deficient, but when you tune into the Red Wings games, it's easy to see why Seider brings value to this team. It's easy to see why he is a great player, and it's easy to see why Steve Yzerman made a great decision to draft him sixth overall in 2019, even if it was unpopular at the time.
Mortiz Seider is a great hockey player and will be great for a long time. He's the number one defenseman on this roster and will cement that role for years to come with the Detroit Red Wings. As I opened, I love advanced metrics or any metrics at all, but this narrative that Seider is bad just because the metrics suggest it, save it.