Chicago Blackhawks Trades – Andrew Desjardins Good Fit for Hawks

It’s occurred to me that I made the mistake earlier this season of never quite getting around to discuss the trade of Andrew Desjardins for Ben Smith to the San Jose Sharks. And what better time to discuss it than in hindsight when things are pretty much laid out there for us?

It would seem the answer would be an obvious and resounding “Yes” to if the Desjardins trade ended up working out for the Chicago Blackhawks, as his name is now on the Stanley Cup for the 2014-2015 season. But how much of that run can be chalked up to the acquisition of ‘Desi’ in exchange for Smith?

Stats courtesy war-on-ice | all Scenarios | Players stats only include time with Chicago

Ben Smith is a 26 year old, right handed wing looking at $1.5 million/yr. Andrew Desjardins is a 28 year old, left handed wing looking at $750k/yr.

Although neither are meant to be high-scoring players being on the fourth line, we can still look at their production value as one indication of their contributions. You can see from above that they were deployed about the same amount of time per game, so looking at their per 60 values gives us a decent indication of their production. But perhaps the thing that would be most important to look at is how they effect the players they are deployed with.

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The most obvious player to look at for this comparison would be Marcus Kruger.

Stats courtesy war-on-ice | All Scenarios

I divied up his stats (from top to bottom: Total, With Ben Smith (1 October 2014- 27 February 2015) and With Andrew Desjardins (28 February 2015- 20 June 2015). It doesn’t quite divide Kruger’s time in half, but we’re able to get a better picture of what happened during these times. We can see a spike in Kruger’s Goals per 60 with Desjardins (up from his season average of 0.34 to 0.41) as well as his shooting percentage and Corsi For.

To get a closer look at that, I compiled WOWY (with-or-without-you) charts to take a look at the two player’s effects on Kruger.

It could be argued that Ben Smith was subjected to more penalty-kill time than Desjardins, which could skew both his CF% and Goals per 60 ratios. However, the charts below only account for 5-on-5 time, rather than all scenarios, which takes away potential skewing.

Stats courtesy Puckalytics | 5-on-5

The Corsi For just really illustrates what we already noticed in the charts above, but where I’d like to look is the Goals For percentage (GF%). What the GF% is is Goals For / (Goals For + Goals Against) multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. What this does, then, is allow us to examine both the offensive production as well as the defensive suppression success rates (with success being defined as a goal in the GF category, or a non-goal in the goals against category).

Stats courtesy Puckalytics | 5-on-5

In the case of the GF%, you want the percentage to be higher, as that means you are on the ice for more goals for than goals allowed against. Kruger’s numbers are going to be a little lower because of his defensive zone deployment, even at 5-on-5, but what this chart indicates is that together, Andrew Desjardins and Marcus Kruger were more successful at both scoring goals and preventing goals than Ben Smith and Marcus Kruger were.

To draw any significant conclusions, it would be better to have a larger sample size than Desjardins’ 34 games, but overall it’s safe to say Chicago should be happy with this trade.

Resources

Corsi: For those that are unsure of what Corsi even is, it is measured as Corsi For and Corsi Against (CA). Corsi is the total number of on-ice shot attempts (on goal, missed, or blocked) taken during a game/series/season. Corsi For is the amount of the total Corsi taken by one team or player on said team. Corsi Against is the amount of the total Corsi taken against one team or player on said team.
CA% : Corsi Against Percentage (of total) What this means is they’ve totaled up the Corsi Events that took place for both teams, and divided the individual team’s total by that number and multiplied it by 100 to get a percentage.
CP60 : Corsi Per 60. What this means is they’ve totaled up the Corsi events that took place for both teams and divided it by 60 to get an average Corsi Events per 60 minutes.
G+/- : Goal Differential. The total number of Goals For (GF) minus the total number of Goals Against (GA). If it is a positive number, the team is outscoring their opponents.
FO%: The percentage of Face-offs won.
OFOn%: On-Ice Unblocked Shot Attempts on Goal
OSh%: On-Ice Shooting percentage
OSv%: On-Ice Save percentage
PDO: On-Ice Save percentage + On-Ice Shooting percentage
ZSO%: The amount of Offensive Zone starts. The larger the number, the more often a team starts (with a Face-off) in their Offensive Zone

Sources

Stats and charts courtesy of war-on-ice.com and puckalytics.com

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