Which Christian Ehrhoff Will the Kings Get?
- Updated: August 28, 2015
(Photo via Twitter User @Sportsnet )
After weeks of silence on the free agent market leading many to believe they were done making moves in a somewhat disappointing offseason, the Kings surprised almost everyone by this week by inking veteran defenseman Christian Ehrhoff to a 1 year, $1.5m deal. This is a low risk, high reward type move at a position of need for the Kings. Ehrhoff has been a very good player throughout his career, so why were the Kings able to get him at such a discounted rate? In short: injuries and declining performance. Just how much the former impacted the latter is what will likely determine how much of a steal the Kings got here.
So what type of player is Ehrhoff? Let’s take a 30,000 foot view at his performance over the past 3 years.
Data Courtesy of Domenic Galamini
Good start! Over the past 3 years, he has easily been a top 4 defenseman, and on most teams, he could be a top pairing guy. His CF/60 and FF/60 are excellent and seem to support his reputation as an offensive minded defenseman. But he’s not a one trick pony; his CA/60 and FA/60 aren’t too shabby either. He has been a legitimate 2-way defenseman. Let’s take a closer look at what types of shots he puts up and what types of shots he allows.
Impressive stuff, again confirming his reputation as a very good offensive defenseman. As a left shot playing on the left side, it’s not surprising to see him put up a huge number of shots above league average from the left point, but it is good to see that he manages to put up 2.38 shots/60 above average from the slot. He’s also no slouch on defense. If he were, the right graph would be a bunch of red dots as well, but it’s not. He’s slightly better than league average at shot suppression. If one were to nitpick, you’d wish that his shot suppression from the slot were a bit better, but he’s undoubtedly been helping his team while on the ice.
So why the heck were the Kings able to get a possible top-pairing defenseman for a rock-bottom price? Well, here’s one reason:
Ehrhoff, over the course of his career, has become increasingly injury prone, especially last year. One bad year wouldn’t normally be much of a concern, but it is when the player is 33 and has suffered multiple concussions.
The second reason is the more concerning one, and that’s his declining production, especially last season. For instance, let’s compare his shot differential charts from 2013-2014 (left) and from 2015 (right).
The difference between his last two years in Buffalo and his one year in Pittsburgh is quite stark. With Buffalo (top graph), he was an elite offensive producer (lots of red dots on left) who also made large contributions defensively (lots of blue dots on right). With Pittsburgh, he was barely average on both ends of the ice (lots of gray dots in both graphs).
To push the point home further, here are his WOWY graphs from the past 3 years.
What you’re looking for here is a general overall trend of how his teammates did with and without him over the past few years. It’s generally a strong indication that a player is pretty good when his WOWY graph has a bunch of red boxes in the upper left and black boxes to the bottom right, which is exactly what we see in the top graph (2013). He still seems to have a positive effect on teammates in 2014 (middle graph), though that effect is weaker. It’s in 2015 (bottom graph) where it all goes a bit haywire. He mostly had a positive impact on his teammates’ offensive performance, but he also negatively impacted their defensive performance.
When we look at the overall impact on his linemates’ shot generation and suppression, there’s no way to really sugarcoat it – 2015 was probably the worst of his career. That still means he was a decent player, but not really close to the top pairing guy he had been in previous years.
Data courtesy of Domenic Galamini
We see that as recently as 2012-2013, he was an elite player. The past two seasons have seen a decrease in usage adjusted corsi for per 60 and an increase in usage adjusted corsi against per 60, which reduced him to a rather average player in 2015 rather than an elite one.
Data courtesy of Domenic Galamini
Maybe possession stats aren’t your thing, so what about his point production?
Oof. In 2010-2011, he was an elite point producer as a defenseman, but has seen his offensive production really fall off since then. How much of that, however, is related to an inability to get off shots and how much is because of bad luck (shooting percentage)? Glad you asked!
This is very encouraging. Yes, he has had a drop-off in shots on goal since his peak 2010, but since 2011 almost the entirety of his decreasing point production has been because of a drop in shooting percentage, which is more related to bad luck than declining skill.
So how much of his decline is because of aging, how much because of injury, how much bad luck, and how much related to his usage? The Kings are making a reasonable gamble that at least a good portion of it is injury/luck/usage related. Injuries are unpredictable, and the Kings have used this fact to their advantage in the past by buying low on key contributors to 2 championship teams (Justin Williams, Jeff Carter, Marian Gaborik and Willie Mitchell all say hello!) They also seem to understand the fickle nature of shooting percentages, and are probably counting on a bit of a bounce back there for Ehrhoff. Finally, I mentioned usage as a factor because as I researched Ehrhoff’s performance, I noticed that he spent the most minutes last season with his least ideal defensive partners.
His two most common partners (341 minutes) were Olli Maata (#3) and Paul Martin (#7), whom you see in that red box to the left. This is despite the fact that his performance with these two was far worse than when he was paired with Kris Letang (#58) or Robert Bortuzzo (#41) (in the green box to the bottom right), with whom he only played 286 minutes. His performance may not have warranted a top pairing assignment with Letang – I can buy that – but why he was taken away from an effective pairing with Bortuzzo, I’m not entirely sure. When we look at his season performance strip, we see that his best play was clearly when paired with Bortuzzo or Letang.
The sample size isn’t enough to draw hard conclusions, but if I were Mike Johnston, I would have tried sticking with the Ehrhoff-Bortuzzo pairing a bit more. It also is pretty apparent that Ehrhoff never really had a chance to get comfortable with any defensive partner. The longest stretch he went with one primary defensive partner was 10 games with Olli Maatta. It’s hardly fair to expect much from a guy on a new team when he’s never given a chance to gel with anyone.
In the end, the Kings seem to be making a reasonable assumption that better luck, better health, and better usage will equal a bounce back year for Ehrhoff. Even if he doesn’t bounce back to what he was, barring a catastrophic injury or a further precipitous drop in production, Ehrhoff will still be worth $1.5 million, and an adequate addition to the 2nd pairing. If he’s anything like the player from 2013 or even 2014, and there’s a fairly decent chance that he still can be, this deal will be an absolute coup for a team that is still very much within its championship window.
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