Brian Dumoulin and John Marino both look to be set to return to the Penguins' lineup this evening against the Senators at PPG Paints Arena.
Both are officially 'game-time decisions,' according to Mike Sullivan, but after both have skated with the team for a full week now, a Tuesday return seems likely.
Their returns can't come soon enough.
If both do indeed return to the lineup on Tuesday, the defense pairs look to be as follows, based on the pairings used in Monday's practice:
Brian Dumoulin — Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson — John Marino
Jack Johnson — Justin Schultz
It should go without saying that getting Dumoulin back on the top pairing is just massive.
Regardless of your feelings on what Jack Johnson does or does not bring to the team, I think that most people can agree that he has no business playing top-line minutes, and it's a wonder that the pairing stayed together as long as they did.
Looking at all defense pairings in the league, there are 54 different pairings that have played at least 400 minutes of five-on-five this season. The Johnson-Letang pairing is among the worst of them.
Defensively, the pairing allowed shot attempts at a rate of 62.23 for every 60 minutes, ranking 49th out of the 54 pairings. When you narrow that down to actual shots on goal, the pairing was on the ice for 36.11 shots on goal for every 60 minutes, the second-most of any of those 54 pairings.
Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz.com creates isolated impact charts that aim to show the individual contributions of a player or pairing separate from the effects of their teammates, the level of their competition, and deployment. In the offense charts, the red areas are where player or pairing causes shots to be taken at a larger rate than league average, blue areas less. So, more red is good, blue is bad. The defense charts show the impact a player or pairing has on their team’s shot suppression. Red means more shots while blue means fewer, so for defense, you want to be seeing more blue than red.
The isolated impact chart for the Johnson-Letang pairing's effect on the Penguins' defense shows that opponents were able to take a high amount of unblocked shot attempts from the areas around the net, and that as a whole, opponents' offenses were 16 percent more effective when they got to play the Johnson-Letang pairing:
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HockeyViz.com[/caption]
The offense dried up, too. When the Johnson-Letang pairing was on the ice, the Penguins only attempted 53.15 shots for every 60 minutes, which ranks 40th of the 54 pairings. This comes in spite of the fact that the Johnson-Letang pairing was being deployed in a way that should have resulted in more offense than it did. Of their shift starts, 57.24 percent began in the Penguins' offensive zone, the eighth-highest offensive zone start percentage of those 54 pairings.
When the Johnson-Letang pairing was on the ice, we can see that the Penguins' were getting fewer unblocked shot attempts from the points relative to the rest of the league, and significantly fewer attempts from the high-danger areas of the ice, which are often rebounds or redirections of those point shots. All of it boils down to the Penguins' offense being 11 percent less effective with the Johnson-Letang pairing:
[caption id="attachment_965315" align="aligncenter" width="551"]
HockeyViz.com[/caption]
The pairing managed to be deployed in their offensive zone more often than most of the pairings in the league, with minimal actual offense to show for it and a lot of shots allowed, leading to goals like this one:
The argument some used for keeping the Johnson-Letang pairing together during this recent stretch was that with the Penguins' injury situation being what it was, was there even a better option? Well, with results like those, shouldn't another option have at least been tried?
Before Dumoulin's injury, the top pairing was actually an asset.
The Dumoulin-Letang pairing allowed shot attempts at a rate of just 45.17 for every 60 minutes. That's 17.06 fewer than the Johnson-Letang pairing allowed. The Dumoulin-Letang pairing allowed 25.21 shots on goal for every 60 minutes, or 10.9 fewer than the Johnson-Letang pairing allowed.
Looking at the defense charts, we can see that the Penguins are especially strong on the left side of the ice when Dumoulin is out there with Letang. That's a ton of dark blue on that side, showing that the Penguins allow significantly fewer unblocked shot attempts from that area. As a result, opposing teams' offenses are 16 percent less effective:
When Dumoulin and Letang were together on the ice, the Penguins attempted a nice 69.07 shots per 60 minutes, or 15.92 more than the Penguins saw with the Johnson-Letang pairing. The Dumoulin-Letang pairing accomplished this despite having a lower rate of offensive zone starts. They only started 49.35 percent of their shifts in the offensive zone, 7.89 percent lower than the Johnson-Letang pairing's offensive zone start percentage.
The Dumoulin-Letang pairing's effect on the Penguins' offense is clear when we can visualize it in chart form. The Penguins produce a high volume of high-danger unblocked shot attempts, with a lot of the offense coming from the right point. That's Letang's side. He has a much easier time creating offense when paired with Dumoulin. As a whole, the Penguins' offense was 25 percent more effective:
[caption id="attachment_965318" align="aligncenter" width="518"]
HockeyViz.com[/caption]
So not only was the Dumoulin-Letang pairing wildly better than the Johnson-Letang pairing, they were deployed in a way that should have made it more difficult for them.
Of course, the top pairing's struggles in Dumoulin's absence was clear with the "eye test," and without the fancy numbers and charts backing it up. But looking at it this way makes it just that much more unmistakeable how much the Penguins need Dumoulin back on the top pairing.
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