Detroit Red Wings

What the Quant Says

230 goals, 25th in the league, off 2.446 expected goals per 60 at even strength — 25th.

At five-on-five it scored 159 against an expectation of 157.4. The finishing was 19th in the league and almost exactly neutral. This offence was not unlucky; it was thin.

Dylan Larkin had 69 points in 71 games with 2.85 even-strength points per 60, the 92nd percentile among forwards, and only 19 per cent of them on the power play. Tyler Bertuzzi scored 30 goals from a median of 18 feet — the 33rd-closest shot chart of the 393 qualified forwards — at 16.7 per cent.

Lucas Raymond had 57 points at 19, with 32 per cent of them on the power play, the highest dependence of any Detroit forward.

Below those three the shooting was near the floor. Adam Erne scored six on 108 shots at 5.6 per cent, the 7th percentile. Filip Zadina scored ten on 154 at 6.5 per cent, the 10th. Pius Suter scored fifteen on 166 at 9.0 per cent, the 29th.

The additions are all shooters. David Perron scored 27 at 15.3 per cent with 46 per cent of his points on the power play — the 5th-highest share of the 393 qualified forwards. Andrew Copp scored 21 with a career-high 53 points and only 19 per cent of them on the man advantage. Dominik Kubalik scored 15 on 161 shots from a median of 28 feet, two years after 30 on 157.

What the Scout Says

Larkin is not a net-front centre; the goals come off the rush. Bertuzzi scores from the paint and nowhere else — the closest shot chart on the club — and he holds the puck in traffic and pays for it, at the 30th-most giveaways of 393 forwards.

Raymond is careful with the puck and he does not take it off anyone, which at nineteen is the expected half of the ledger.

The bought forwards each do one thing. David Perron is a perimeter shooter who converts at a high rate, which is an unusual combination and the reason the goal total keeps arriving from unlikely places. Alex Chiasson stands in front of the net and tips things, which is a specific job and he is genuinely good at it. Dominik Kubalik is a perimeter shooter, and that is the mechanism — the 30-goal season came off the same 28-foot median that has since produced 17 and 15.

Andrew Copp's career-best offence was not manufactured on the man advantage, which is the most transferable shape a 53-point season can have.

Below them the shot charts are right and nothing goes in. Pius Suter's places are right and the conversion is not. Filip Zadina shoots from the outside, often, at a low conversion rate, which is what a shot chart looks like when a scoring winger is not scoring. Michael Rasmussen scores from two feet out and does not shoot often enough for it to matter.

What the Quant Says

312 goals against, 30th in the league — off 2.947 expected goals against per 60 at even strength, 31st. Only Columbus was worse.

At five-on-five it conceded 203 against an expectation of 189.0 — fourteen more than the chances promised, which is the goaltending and is dealt with below.

The blue line's most interesting figure is not in any box score. Moritz Seider played 23:02 a night for 50 points, and every Detroit forward took a worse share of the chances with him on the ice than without: Dylan Larkin 45.4 against 52.1, Lucas Raymond 45.4 against 50.1, Tyler Bertuzzi 47.8 against 50.9.

Filip Hronek reads exactly the opposite: Larkin 53.5 with him and 46.6 without, Bertuzzi 53.0 and 47.7, Raymond 50.6 and 46.6.

The two men started 45.1 and 46.0 per cent of their shifts in the attacking end — near-identical deployment — and Hronek spent less of his even-strength time in the attacking zone than Seider did. The 50-point rookie won the attention and the pair data says the other man carried the blue line. Neither figure settles it and both belong in the file.

Hronek finished with the 20th-fewest blocks of the 202 qualified defencemen at 22 minutes a night, and a minus-29, the 7th-worst of the 611 skaters who played 40 games.

Ben Chiarot arrives at 22:51 a night and 2:58 short-handed, the 96th percentile — with the 19th-worst penalty ledger of 202 qualified defencemen. Olli Maatta arrives with the best five-on-five share of any Detroit defenceman at 51.8 per cent, one goal, and four penalty minutes in 66 games. Robert Hagg arrives with 5.97 blocks per 60, the 19th-most of 202.

Jake Walman is the roster's oddity: the 5th-hardest shot, 6th-most ground covered and 7th-most shots per 60 of the qualified defencemen, at the fifth-lowest ice time of any of them.

What the Scout Says

Seider is the whole question. The tracking file has top speed and ground covered, and everything the eye admires in him — the gaps, the pivots, the reach — is not in it. What is in it is a turnover ledger better than anyone else's on the blue line and a chance share every forward beats without him. He is twenty-one. Both numbers will move.

Hronek is at his ice time the file of a man who is either standing in the wrong places or is not being asked to defend that way, and the repo has no column that separates the two. Every one of Detroit's top three forwards had its best defensive pairing when he was on.

Ben Chiarot brings real contact, at real minutes, without being at the top of the league for either — and he is a first-pair defenceman who hands the other side a power play more often than almost anyone at his position and almost never earns one back.

Olli Maatta is the quiet one: nothing happens around him in either direction, and for a third-pair defenceman that is very close to the job description.

Robert Hagg is a defenceman who cannot skate and defends by arriving, which is a defenceman who has to guess right, and nothing in the repo measures how often he does.

Jake Walman covers more ground, faster and more often, than almost every defenceman in the league — at the fifth-lowest ice time of any qualified defenceman. One of those two facts is going to change.

What the Quant Says

25th in the league at minus-14 goals against the chances faced — on a club that conceded the 30th-most goals and allowed the 31st-worst rate of chances.

Alex Nedeljkovic went 20-24-9 with a .9009 and a 3.31 across 59 games on 1,796 shots — 39th of the 53 goaltenders who played 25 games or more. That workload was the 6th-heaviest in the league, behind the second-worst even-strength chance suppression in it.

The record is two different goaltenders. He went .9321 on 648 shots for Carolina in 2020-21 and .9009 on 1,796 here. The larger sample is the worse one, and that is the sentence that matters.

Ville Husso arrives from St Louis with a .9191 across 40 games and 1,236 shots — 7th of the 53, ahead of Juuse Saros, Linus Ullmark, Andrei Vasilevskiy and Thatcher Demko. It is also his only good season: .8935 on 460 shots the year before, and 1,696 career shots in total.

St Louis conceded 242 goals. Detroit conceded 312. He has never faced anything like the workload in front of him and the repo has no figure that speaks to whether he can carry it.

Thomas Greiss has gone to St Louis, Magnus Hellberg to Ottawa, and Calvin Pickard is off the roster.

What the Scout Says

Alex Nedeljkovic is 6-0 and 205, which is small by the standard the position now sets — one of nine goaltenders in this book at six feet or under.

Nothing here measures rebound control, lateral push or how deep he plays. What the repo has is shots and goals, and .9009 on 1,796 shots is a genuinely large sample and a genuinely poor number. Four shutouts on a club that conceded 312 goals is an odd pair of facts, and it is the shape of a goaltender who has very good nights and very bad ones.

Ville Husso is 6-3 and 205, at the size the position now selects for, and the .9191 is not a surprise on its face. 1,236 shots is a real sample and it is one season, and the difference between those two statements is the whole question about him.

Read the record either way and it is honest: .8935 on 460 shots in 2020-21 and .9191 on 1,236 in 2021-22.

Nothing in this repo measures a goaltender's glove, his rebound control, his push or how deep he plays. What it can say is that Detroit is handing a starter's job to a 27-year-old with 57 career games, behind the 31st-ranked chance suppression in the league. The bar is low and the sample is one season.

What the Quant Says

23rd in the league at 5.86 expected goals per 60, over 4:49 a night — 20th in power-play time and 23rd in what it produced.

Moritz Seider took 2:53 a night from the point, the 92nd percentile among defencemen, and 42 per cent of his points came there, the 93rd. Twenty-one of his fifty points. Filip Hronek took 1:53 with 18 per cent of his — the same unit, a very different dependence.

Lucas Raymond took 2:48 at the 80th percentile among forwards with 32 per cent of his points on it, and Dylan Larkin took 2:52 with only 19 per cent — the club's leading scorer is the least power-play-dependent forward on it.

David Perron arrives having taken 46 per cent of his points on the man advantage, the 5th-highest of the 393 qualified forwards — twenty-six of fifty-seven. That is the single most transfer-sensitive number on the roster: St Louis's power play was 16th in the league and this one is 23rd.

Alex Chiasson arrives with 45 per cent of his points on it, the 6th-highest of 393, and the 14th-closest shot chart of any qualified forward. He is a net-front tip specialist at eleven and a half minutes a night, and that is a specific answer to a specific problem.

Neither Andrew Copp nor Dominik Kubalik is a power-play addition — 19 and 28 per cent of their points respectively.

What the Scout Says

The first unit is Seider at the point with Larkin, Raymond and Bertuzzi, and the addition of Perron is meant to change what it does.

Perron is a perimeter shooter who converts at a high rate, and forty-six per cent of his points last season came on a St Louis unit that was seven places better than this one. Everything about him depends on the delivery mechanism, and the delivery mechanism has changed.

Chiasson stands in front of the net and tips things. On a unit ranked 23rd, a man who takes 64 per cent of his shots from the slot at a median of seventeen feet is a real and cheap answer.

Seider's forty-two per cent power-play share is the number to watch on the other side of it. Twenty-one of his fifty points came there, and if the unit does not improve, the point total that made his name comes down with it.

Raymond's thirty-two per cent is the same exposure one rung down. Larkin's nineteen is the reassurance: the club's best forward does not need this unit.

Hronek takes 1:53 with eighteen per cent of his points on it and is the second-unit point man by default. Walman's shot would be the argument for changing that — the fifth-hardest of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, taken from eleven feet closer than a point man's.

What the Quant Says

24th in the league at 7.00 expected goals against per 60, over 4:30 a night — 20th in short-handed time, which is the one mercy in it.

On a club that was 31st at suppressing chances at even strength, a 24th-ranked kill is roughly consistent with everything else.

Ben Chiarot killed 2:58 a night, the 96th percentile among defencemen, and arrives to do it here. Andrew Copp killed 2:17, the 97th percentile among forwards — more than any Detroit skater took last season. Between them they are the club's whole answer.

Pius Suter killed 1:42 at the 80th percentile and Oskar Sundqvist 1:48 at the 85th. Sundqvist is one of the slowest, least-sprinting, least-covering forwards the league measures — 27th-lowest top speed, 25th-fewest sprints and 22nd-lowest ground covered of the 365 the tracking follows — and he is being asked to kill penalties.

Michael Rasmussen blocks 3.36 shots per 60, the 97th percentile among forwards, and Robert Hagg 5.97 per 60 among defencemen, the 19th-most of 202. Bodies in lanes are the plan.

Chiarot's discipline is the risk. Drawn minus taken at minus-0.64 is the 19th-worst of the 202 qualified defencemen, and a club that kills at the 24th-best rate cannot afford a first-pair defenceman who hands out power plays.

What the Scout Says

Two men arrive to fix a 24th-ranked kill and both of them do it the same way.

Andrew Copp is not a contact player, which for a man who kills more penalties than almost anyone is worth noticing: the kill is done with position, not with the body. Almost nothing happens around him and he is on the ice for the most dangerous minutes of the game — the 21st-fewest penalties drawn of 393 forwards and sixteen penalty minutes in seventy-two games.

Ben Chiarot is the other half and the discipline is the risk. The workload he can do; he has done it for three years. The penalties are the number that will cost the club games and the one nobody puts in a summary.

Oskar Sundqvist is one of the slowest, least-sprinting, least-covering forwards the league measures, and he takes the fourth-most short-handed minutes on the roster.

Michael Rasmussen blocks at the 97th percentile among forwards and Robert Hagg is near the top of the league for hits and blocks at sixteen minutes a night — the plan below Copp and Chiarot is bodies in lanes, and the cost of it is that Hagg takes 0.94 penalties per 60 doing it.

Pius Suter is a small, slow, non-contact centre who wins the puck back with his stick, and he is the one man on the unit whose method is not contact at all.