Previously on “The CBJ Tomorrow,” we took a look at problems with depth forwards on the 2014-15 Blue Jackets. The short version: the CBJ fourth line is bad, it’s a poor choice to surrender a depth battle with bad choices in roster construction, and the team shouldn’t give coaches a chance to use bad players in the first place. One key caveat to that entire issue? Injuries.
Injuries are the story of #thisseason, and Columbus can’t seem to catch a break. Finally free of the dead weight cost of the Horton contract? Here, let’s lose the salary replacement just as quickly. Would you like to see how that #2 overall pick is doing? Not happening. It’s almost like you couldn’t sit Boll if you wanted. (Only almost.)
One of the nice things about the increasing use of hockey statistics is the growth of hockey data visualization. Twitter’s LW3H is one of my favorite follows and shares a heat map of injured player cap hits for each team every week. His most recent one is below, and be sure to visit his blog Springing Malik for an in-depth look at the details. It’s well worth your time.
Heat map representation of per-game CHIP through March 22 pic.twitter.com/n4eLfmkRyN
— LW3H (@LW3H) March 23, 2015
CHIP stands for cap hit of injured players. In the figure, each rectangle is a game. The left side is the season’s start, the right is the latest game (as of the 3/22 update). Green means healthier, red means more injured. The Columbus takeaway: the Blue Jackets have been decimated all year long. I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone reading a Columbus blog, rather it’s the magnitude of the problem that is shocking. The depth and length of team-wide injury is hard to fathom.
The Specific Picture
I think a fair question to follow presentation of the obvious injury problem is, “So what?” How exactly does this kind of injury information lead to solutions for next year? Part of the answer is the sheer volume of injuries impacting key players. Taking one step further from the cap hit and time on ice starting points, let’s take a look at the players with the CBJ.
Using War On Ice: there are 16 players on or still with the Blue Jackets organization that have positive relative CF% this season (as of this writing, prior to the Ducks game 3/24). Columbus had played 72 games so far, giving us ½ and ⅔ benchmarks of 36 games and 48 games, respectively. Of those 16 players, 9 have played at least half the CBJ season and only 6 have played at least two-thirds.
If you’re screaming “small sample size” and “manipulative data selection” you’d be right. Starting with the later issue: Rychel, Dano, and Anderson are in the positive count and fall below either threshold thanks to prospect status. (This could lead down a different trail to roster optimization and understanding prospect readiness -especially with Dano- but we won’t deal with that today.)
Connauton misses the ⅔ mark thanks to his late arrival to the team. We can also drop Morin for the same reason to be extra conservative (although his injured status is a huge reason for lost time in Columbus). Even excluding those guys (now down to 11 players), we still only find 8 out of 11 playing half the year, and 6 out of 11 with two-thirds. It’s a bit less horrifying this way, but still not an ideal situation for a team.
As for that small sample size: are we really sure the missing positive CF% Rel guys are good? Here’s the list of the sub-⅔ (excluding Rychel, Dano, Anderson, Morin, and Connauton): Dubinsky, Jenner, Anisimov, Murray, Gibbons. All five players have at least some history of productive possession ability and (in a few cases) reasonable offensive input.
The Big Missing Pieces
I’d like to key in on two guys in particular: Dubinsky and Anisimov. Brandon Dubinsky is the easiest starting point because he’s so good. Again from War on Ice, he’s been a positive CF% Rel player every year in his career. Or maybe you’d rather check on adjusted measures? Domenic Galamini’s HERO charts show his usage-adjusted Corsi % at 1st line levels (his talents being exceptional in both offensive and defensive respects).
Even one more check on Dubinsky’s value: take a peek at WOWYs from Hockey Analysis. 18 of the 20 skaters he’s spent the most time with (2012-present) get a CF% boost from playing with Dubinsky (including all of the first 12).
It’s so easy to love Dubinsky. He scores at a solid rate, he’s driving the play the right way, and he boosts the overwhelming majority of his teammates. Dubinsky was probably the best all-around player moved in the Rick Nash trade (and that includes Nash).
As for the other big name: we can walk through the same steps with Anisimov and reach similar conclusions. He’s only had one negative relative CF% year (WOI). Arty shows up as a 2nd line talent in usage adjusted CF% (which comes with high-level shot suppression ability and elite goal-scoring rates per 60 minutes, via Galamini). Anisimov’s WOWY results are also pretty impressive (14 of the 20 most common skaters with Arty get a CF% boost).
Perhaps the biggest thing to consider for both players: they aren’t usually linemates. The implication? Two Columbus lines suffered massive losses this year by missing out on Dubinsky and Anisimov. For a team that (when healthy) should get an advantage from forward depth, severely weakening two of four lines is a huge deal.
A Part of the Solution
A final point: a healthy forward set doesn’t cure all the Columbus ills. We’ve already talked about the fourth line as a usage problem. Should the coaches or management not deploy four good lines, the depth advantage goes away. Similarly, poor save percentage or terrible defense might undermine even the best of forward units (two topics we’ll be talking about in the future).
What about the chances for injury next year? Is this an epidemic? Although the IR list has been huge, we must consider that this is all (unfortunate) coincidence. In fact, that’s probably more realistic than anything. In October, the Dispatch reported on the long list of Blue Jackets with abdominal injures. To my knowledge there haven’t been additional comments on the problem. If the Blue Jackets determine (internally) that some training program or style of play has led to many injuries? Then a new direction or new staff might be in order.
The more likely scenario? This is just some unlucky mess of a season. Waiting for a summer of recovery and starting the 2015-16 season anew might do wonders for the health of key players. That’s probably not enough to completely save the team. It is a nice start to consider a full year of Dubinsky, a reason to build some hope for next year.
(Featured image of Brandon Dubinsky via Wikimedia Commons and user Michael Miller)
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