Five Reasons the Rangers Must Move Dan Girardi That Have Nothing to do With Advanced Stats

       Dan Girardi is a very polarizing figure among the Ranger's fan base these days. Many proponents of advanced stats feel that Dan Girardi is barely a replacement-level player. Other scoff at the stats an insist Girardi is a top-pairing defenseman. Others feel the truth is somewhere in the middle. In my opinion, all of that is just a bunch of noise which fails to get at the real issue which is: the Rangers need to move Dan Girardi and it has nothing to do with advanced stats. So for the sake of argument, let's assume for the rest of this article that Dan Girardi is what his fans say he is: a stay-at-home #2 defenseman. Here's five reasons the Rangers need to move that #2 defensive-defenseman.

1)Dan Girardi is too expensive. 

Girardi carries a $5.5 million cap-hit for the next five seasons, taking him through age 36. Even under the assumption that Girardi is a good first-pairing defensive-defenseman, he's still too expensive. Marc Edouard Vlasic makes $4.25 million. Chris Tanev makes $4.45 million. Karl Alzner makes $2.8 million. Travis Hamonic makes $3.86 million. Niklas Hjalmarsson makes $4.1 million. Anton Stralman makes $4.5 million. Good defensive defensemen who can play on the top pair but provide limited offense, simply don't make as much as Girardi does. Even at his best, he's still overpaid.

Girardi has been a huge problem for advanced stats
pundits, but that's not why the Rangers need to
part ways with him. 

2)Dan Girardi is getting old. 

Girardi turned 31 during the 2015 playoffs. His game is predicated on hitting and shot blocking. He would do anything to win and risks life and limb on the ice. While he doesn't miss many games, it's easy to assume that he plays banged up, and his high-impact game is going to start taking its toll. He's only human. If we throw out the stats and assume he hasn't declined yet, he will soon, and his best hockey likely doesn't last much longer. It certainly won't last until he's 36, which is when his contract runs out. If the Rangers don't move him now, there's a good chance they're paying out $5.5 million to an injured bottom-pairing defenseman in a few years.

3)He doesn't fit the system. 

Girardi made his bones and ascended to the league's elite among defensive players in many fan's eyes in a system which played to his strengths. Girardi is a shot-blocker, and in his years with the Rangers, John Tortorella employed a shot-blocking system which allowed Girardi to shine. It was during the 2011-12 season when the Rangers finished in 1st in the East playing this system that most fans started to consider Girardi a first-pairing defenseman. However, current Rangers coach Alain Vigneault likes to employ a mobile defense that can both move their feet and move the puck. Players like Ryan McDonagh, Dan Boyle, and Keith Yandle, like them or not, fit that mold. Dan Girardi does not. Even his biggest proponents will admit that Girardi does not move the puck or skate particularly well. Some would argue that he's simply not a puck-moving defensemen, and sometimes that's fine, but not when your system is predicated on puck-moving.

4)The Rangers defense is good enough to thrive without him. 

Let's say the Rangers get rid of Girardi and don't even bring in a replacement. Even then, most general managers would saw off a limb for a top 5 of Ryan McDonagh, Keith Yandle, Marc Staal, Dan Boyle, and Kevin Klein. The Rangers are loaded at defense and it's a mistake to be carrying an expensive contract at a luxury position. It would be like paying out a huge contract to a good goaltender when they have Henrik Lundqvist.

5)The Rangers need cap sapce

In the summer of 2016 Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes will hit RFA and be looking for raises. Keith Yandle will be an unrestricted free agent, and he is an absolute must-keep (read why here). Keeping in mind that Girardi is overpaid, aging, and plays at a position of strength, he should be the first candidate to be moved for a team that is starving for cap space.

       Moving Girardi won't be simple. His no-movement clause comes into play of course. That being said, I think many fans overstate the obstacle that a NMC poses. It doesn't make a trade impossible. A player is not going to stay where he isn't wanted. If the Rangers wanted to move Girardi, he would mostly likely submit a list of teams he'd waive to go to. This limited number of options hurts value, but again, it doesn't make a trade impossible. Many players with NMC's have been moved. It won't be the first time or the last time.
       The good news is that most fans still feel Girardi is a good player and so do most front offices. He absolutely has value and somebody will take him. Time is of the essence, though. Nobody is going to take him when he's 35. The Rangers would benefit from moving Girardi in my opinion, but it has to be soon. If not, say goodbye to Keith Yandle, or maybe Hayes or Kreider via trade. I'd rather lose a solid #2 defensive defenseman than any of those guys.

Digging Into Jarrett Stoll's Possession Numbers

Another benefit of the Stoll signing is giving Rangers fans a new
#26 to scream at in the absence of the retired Martin St. Louis

        I like Jarrett Stoll. I think it was a smart signing to get somebody who can really help this team on a cheap contract. He's good on faceoffs, a solid forechecker, good defensively, can kill penalties, and is a righty with a decent shot, all of which are needs for the Rangers, particularly another penalty killer after dealing Carl Hagelin. Moreover, I highlighted in my piece on Viktor Stalberg [read it here] why the Rangers need a possession driver, and Stoll at first glance seems to fit this need. Over the last 4 seasons, the Kings take 53.9% of all shot attempts (corsi) when Stoll is on the ice, meaning he sees a lot of the puck. But as with any stat, corsi alone doesn't tell the whole story. Corsi is measured like plus/minus, meaning it isn't really stat which measures anything an individual player does, but rather, it measures what happens when that player is on the ice. Therefore, it is highly dependent on the performance of your team as a whole. For a player on a great team, the team taking 51% of the shot attempts when he's on the ice might actually be very weak. Conversely, for a player on a very below average team, 47% might actually be a solid mark. How can we tell?
       Enter CF%Rel, or corsi-for percentage relative. This is a stat which measures possession metrics relative to one's own team to determine if a player's stats are inflated or dragged down by a very good or very poor performing team. It's actually a fairly simple stat. A player's corsi for percentage is the percentage of total shot attempts taken by his team out of all the shot attempts taken when that player is on the ice. For example, if a player is on the ice for eight shot attempts, and four are taken by his team, he has a CF% of 50. CF%Rel is the difference between a player's CF% and a team's CF% when he is not on the ice. So if that 50% player is on a team which is at 55% without him, his CF%rel is -5.
         Like I said, Stoll's raw CF% of 53.9 over the last four seasons looks pretty good, but keep in mind he plays for a great possession team. That appears to be inflating his numbers, because his CF%Rel numbers over the last four seasons are 0.67, -1.17, -2.80, and a very alarming -5.78 last year. This would indicate that Stoll is a positive possession player because he plays for a great possession team, but he's not the one driving possession for them, which is why many corsi proponents dislike the Stoll signing.
       Being I am someone who uses corsi as a player evaluation tool, why do I still like the Stoll signing? Context is always king, and although CF%Rel attempts to apply some context, it's still not a perfect stat. During the same four season time-frame, the Kings have consistently been a 55 or 56% possession team, the best in the league. I believe that when players play for elite possession teams, it becomes extremely difficult for them to impact that team's possession positively. In other words, the Kings are so good at this statistic, that Stoll can't help them.
       Here's a silly made up scenario which I think will help visualize the flaw in impact-based stats such as CF%Rel. Shea Weber has probably the hardest shot in hockey. But if I were up against Shea Weber and you gave me a puck to shoot, and you gave Weber and 20-pound weight to shoot, I guarantee you I'll beat him on a radar gun. And that's the issue with impact stats. Some players are impacting poor teams, some are impacting average teams, and others, like Stoll, are impacting elite teams and have trouble making their impact felt.
      Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Jarrett Stoll is a great possession player. A truly great possession player will positively impact their team regardless. But I do think he's a much better one than CF%Rel gives him credit for, and I believe he will positively impact an average possession team like the Rangers.

Could Keith Yandle Actually be a Comparable Player to Erik Karlsson?

       You'll always hear people talk a lot about "puck-moving defensemen" in the NHL, and what does that really mean? Generally when you talk about puck-moving, you're talking about going from offense to defense and this can be a very difficult skill to measure. There are of course assists, but assists don't always come in transition from defense to offense and don't really tell the whole story of moving the puck up the ice from your own zone. For example, a defenseman can get an assist on a long-stretch pass from his own zone which would be considered a transition play, but he can also get an assist from deflected shot from the point after a minute of possession, which would not be a transition play. Until now, we had little to go on other than assists. Enter the wonderful work by R.K. Stimp entitled The Passing Project as well as a great project by Ryan Stimson which you can read more about here. These projects compiled new data based on corsi which allows us to track and grade puck-moving. If you're completely new to advanced stats, corsi is just shot attemtps: any shot that is a goal, a save, blocked, misses the net, or hits the post. It's an effective tool to gauge how much offense a team is producing and who is producing.
        When this new data was applied to last season's blockbuster deadline acquisition Keith Yandle, the results were startling: his puck-moving metrics are almost identical to the league's undisputed best offensive defenseman Erik Karlsson.

All credit goes to Spencer Mann for the chart: http://public.tableau.com/profile/spencer.mann#!/vizhome/PassingDataDefense/Compare

Reading this thing is a bit of a handful so I provided a glossary below which explains it all. But the important thing is that Keith Yandle creates chances and shots for his team at a similar -and in some cases, slightly better- rate to Erik Karlsson.
        Now don't get me wrong. Am I saying that Yandle is the best offensive defenseman in the league? Well not quite if we're talking about offense as a whole. Again, a distinction must be made between offensive ability and puck-moving ability. In terms of offensive ability, raw production is still king. Karlsson, since joining the league in 2009-10, has a 0.77 points-per-game, about 62 in a  full season. This mark is superior to Yandle's 0.60 points-per-game (about 50 per season) during the same time frame. While their rate of assists is similar [42 a year for Yandle over the last five seasons versus 43 for Karlsson] Karlsson is a much better goal scorer, hitting 19 goals three times, while Yandle's career high is twelve. Factoring in goal-scoring ability and raw point production Karlsson is without question better offensively than Yandle and the best offensive defenseman in the league.
        However, that's not the issue here. Again, raw production, especially goals, is different from puck-moving, i.e. going from defense to offense. In terms of pure puck-moving ability, based on the metrics, Yandle is every bit as good as Karlsson, and Karlsson is the ultimate benchmark. I'm confident in saying there is no better puck-moving defenseman right now than Keith Yandle.

Glossary

CC - Corsi contribution: individual shot attempt (taken by the player himself) or a primary or secondary pass leading to a shot attempt by another player (just like assists)

CC% - percentage of a team's shot attempts resulting from that player's corsi contributions.

SAG - shot attempts generated: primary pass leading to a shot attempt

SG - shot generation: primary pass leading to a shot on goal 

SC SAG - shot attempt generated from a scoring chance area

SCC - scoring chance generated: primary pass leading to a scoring chance

Composite SAG - all attempts generated from passes

Entry assist - shot attempt generated from a pass before the offensive blueline.

Stalberg the Answer to Ranger's "Pouliot Problem"

Benoit Pouliot, A.K.A. "Captain Taco," was
Captain Possession for the Rangers in 2013-14.

        In 2014-15 the Rangers had statistically, their best regular season in franchise history, finishing with a franchise-record 53 wins and 113 points, and tied an NHL record with 28 wins on the road. The team finished in the top 5 in both goals scored and goals against and led the league in goal differential; an elite team by all counts. However, many fans couldn't help but feel something was missing from the 2013-14 version which won fewer games but was able to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. What was missing was possession. The Rangers saw a lot less of the puck in 2014-15, taking only 49.5% of all the shot attempts in their games this season, ranking 20th in league. It was a clear weakness compared to other elite teams around the league such as Chicago and Tampa Bay who ranked in the top 5. It was also a significant downgrade from the 2013-14 team which took 52.4% of the attempts and ranked 8th in the league.
        Looking at the roster, what the Rangers lacked was a legitimate possession driver; a player who's primary strength is that his team takes most of the shots when he's on the ice. In 13-14 that player was Benoit Pouliot. The Rangers took a sterling 54.9% of the shots when Pouliot was on the ice, indicating that when he was on the ice, the Rangers usually had the puck. This has been true for Pouliot -who sports an average CF% (shots attempted %) of 52.2 over the last eight seasons- during is entire career. Pouliot was even a positive (50.4%) possession player in 2014-15 despite being on an Edmonton team that was horrible at possession, posting a team mark of 48.1%. Because of his mix of speed and size, Pouliot is an outstanding player along the boards, contributing significantly to the team's possession. Although the Rangers were able to withstand losing Pouliot's production, scoring 252 goals in 2014-15 versus only 218 in 2013-14, their possession game never recovered from losing one of  their biggest possession drivers.
        Fast-forward to the 2015 offseason, and a cap crunch has prevented the Rangers from spending a great deal on free agents. However, that does not mean they did not make a significant signing. Enter Viktor Stalberg, who most Rangers fans don't see as a significant signing. After all, he only averages 32 points per season which is third-line production. Production however, is not the main thing Stalberg is bringing to the table, and coming into his stint with the Rangers, Pouliot was only a third-line producer. What Stalberg will bring, is that same strong possession game. Over the last eight seasons, Stalberg is a superlative possession player, with his team taking 54.0% of the shots when he's on the ice. The argument one might make is that Stalberg played for Chicago, who have been an elite possession team every single year since winning the Cup in 2010. However, Stalberg's most common linemates during his tenure, including Bryan Bickell, Andrew Shaw, and even Chicago's talisman Duncan Keith saw significant drops in possession metrics away from Stalberg. The stats show that Stalberg was helping the Blackhawks, not the other way around. At 6'3", 203 pounds, Stalberg sports an identical build to Benoit Pouliot and like Pouliot, is one of the fastest big men in the league. As such, much like Pouliot, Stalberg is a dominant player along the boards and gets his team the puck. I'd go so far as to say that if Benoit Pouliot was born in Sweden, he'd be Viktor Stalberg.

Stalberg could be the answer if he returns to his Chicago form.

        Since leaving Chicago, Stalberg has faltered, which had lead many to believe he was simply a product of Chicago's greatness, and it's why most Rangers fans are not as excited about the signing as I am. In 2013-14 Stalberg posted just 18 points in 70 games, and what was really shocking is that he was a 48.8% possession player. However, in 2014-15 Stalberg battled injury, but in a short season was a 52.2% possession player and posted 10 points in 25 games, perfectly in line with his career totals. It appears 2013-14 was an outlier.
        There is some risk involved in the signing. There's no guarantee Stalberg returns to his Chicago form. But if Stalberg were a sure thing, the Rangers wouldn't have gotten him for $1.1 million. When a team is short on cap space, it is up to management to maximize what little value they have to work with. In his first test in this situation, I believe General Manager Jeff Gorton has passed with flying colors with the Stalberg signing. All the numbers indicate that 2013-14 was a fluke season for Stalberg and he should return to his Chicago form. If he does, the Rangers are getting a good hockey player and one who will play a significant role on this team; one that hasn't been filled since Benoit Pouliot left last summer.