FanPost

Promoted Fanpost: Defensive TOI and Pairings

Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

So It was pointed out the other day that Dougie Hamilton seems to be getting less ice-time than perhaps some people (me included) expected. As usual, that developed into a debate about the merits, or lack there-of depending on your particular view, of Kevan Miller.

It did get me to thinking, though, whether there might've been a reason that Miller might've seen the ice more than Hamilton in Game 3. My first thought was that, with the Bruins spending so much time ahead, Claude maybe favoured the 'stay-at-home' guys rather than the more attacking players when trying to defend a lead. Or maybe he was just trying to rest his 'better' players a little when it looked like the game was pretty much over.

Whatever the reason, it led me to consider how much guys played in various situations. So I created these tables to show how much time they spent on the ice as a percentage of the total time available in that situation. A quick example - in game 1, the Bruins spent 4 minutes shorthanded, Boychuk played 3 of those minutes, so he's shown as 75% here. Hopefully that makes enough sense that we can look at some tables now:

Game 1

Player Total 5v5 5v5 close PP SH
Potter 28.2 29.0 28.8 0.0 40.0
Hamilton 29.0 30.7 31.0 55.0 0.0
Chara 36.8 36.2 37.3 40.0 25.0
Meszaros 32.8 32.6 32.4 5.0 60.0
Krug 31.7 32.2 32.2 40.0 0.0
Boychuk 41.0 40.7 39.8 5.0 75.0

Game 2

Player Total 5v5 5v5 close PP SH
Hamilton 23.7 24.7 31.8 36.4 7.7
Chara 43.5 34.2 37.9 65.9 83.3
Meszaros 27.8 31.1 25.8 0.0 16.7
Krug 30.7 35.6 34.8 47.7 1.3
Boychuk 38.2 35.8 24.2 0.0 69.2
Miller 33.2 39.5 45.5 0.0 24.4

Game 3

Player Total 5v5 5v5 close PP SH
Hamilton 26.8 27.0 31.5 39.6 25.9
Chara 42.7 36.9 34.7 60.4 63.0
Krug 28.7 29.6 32.3 60.4 0.0
Boychuk 36.0 37.4 37.9 0.0 53.7
Miller 32.5 36.3 35.5 0.0 20.4
Bartkowski 31.0 34.3 29.0 0.0 37.0

Overall

Player Total 5v5 5v5 close PP SH
Potter 9.4 10.7 21.0 0.0 9.3
Hamilton 26.5 27.6 31.1 41.0 11.6
Chara 41.0 35.8 36.9 59.0 63.4
Meszaros 20.2 21.6 26.0 0.9 21.5
Krug 30.3 32.4 32.4 52.1 0.6
Boychuk 38.4 38.1 38.0 0.9 65.7
Miller 21.9 23.9 10.6 0.0 17.4
Bartkowski 10.3 11.1 5.1 0.0 11.6

So there you go, there are some tables. For those people who, somehow, haven't had enough tables yet, I've put together an exciting bonus additional table! This one shows how often each defensive pairing combination was used through the first three games and overall. These are 5v5TOI only and are expressed as a percentage of the total amount 5v5 in each game (or the series as a whole for the final column).

D-Pairings

Pairing Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Total
Boychuk - Bartkowski 0.0 0.0 25.1 8.1
Chara - Hamilton 28.4 24.0 24.2 25.7
Krug - Miller 0.0 26.5 18.6 14.1
Miller - Bartkowski 0.0 0.0 9.5 3.1
Boychuk - Krug 5.3 8.2 7.8 7.0
Chara - Miller 0.0 8.7 7.3 5.0
Chara - Boychuk 4.5 1.1 5.0 3.6
Krug - Hamilton 0.2 0.0 2.8 1.0
Chara - Krug 0.6 1.1 1.9 1.2
Boychuk - Miller 0.0 0.0 1.1 0.3
Boychuk - Meszaros 31.1 26.3 0.0 19.5
Krug - Potter 26.9 0.0 0.0 9.9
Meszaros - Miller 0.0 4.8 0.0 1.5
Chara - Meszaros 2.3 0.0 0.0 0.8
Chara - Potter 1.9 0.0 0.0 0.7
Hamilton - Potter 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.3
Hamilton - Meszaros 0.4 0.2 0.0 0.2
Boychuk - Hamilton 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.3
Hamilton - Miller 0.0 0.9 0.0 0.3

I'm not going to do any analysis of these, I just thought the numbers might be of interest. Let me know if this was a complete waste of time, but if anyone actually found any value in this I might update it throughout the rest of the playoffs.

For now, though, I must nap - stupid timezones mean Game 4 starts at 1am so I need to sleep before the game rather than after. #BecauseIt'sTheCup

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