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.