Challenging "the analytics" & defending Detroit Red Wings star Moritz Seider

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."

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.

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.