Columbus Blue Jackets

Looking at the defence through micro stats, impact of Ryan Murray’s injury
March 20, 2017, 11:12 AM ET [2 Comments]
Paul Berthelot
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Ryan Murray blocked a shot last weekend against Buffalo which resulted in a broken hand. The Jackets defence group has been very good this season and have for the most part remained relatively healthy. Seth Jones and David Savard each missed a small chuck of games and that has been it. Murray’s injury is the first real significant one on defence.

The Jackets prepared for this with the acquisition of Kyle Quincey. He was brought in to be a player who would play a couple games here and there and be able to step in and be a regular if someone were to get injured. Well a significant injury has happened so Quincey will be seeing lots of ice time down the stretch. So far it’s only been four games but it’s been very successful, with the Jackets picking up four wins.

The third pair of Ryan Murray and Markus Nutivaara has had their ups and downs this season. Both players are young and have shown flashes of their potential but game to game consistency has been an issue. It hasn’t helped that both are left-shots which means one of them (usually Murray) has played on their off-side. Quincey is also a left-shot so nothing changes on that front, though he did play a little bit on the right-side in New Jersey. What Quincey does bring is that consistency to his game, he's a veteran and you know what you are going to get from him night after night. Whether that means better than Murray remains to be seen.

In terms of offensive production there is no change. Murray has two goals and nine assists in 60 games, Quincey has four goals and eight assists in 62 games. Neither player is relied upon for their offensive contributions. Looking at their possession numbers they are close but a slight edge could be given to Quincey. Murray’s had a poor 46.15% Corsi for per Natural Stat Trick, the worst number among the Blue Jackets regular defencemen. Relative to the team he is -6.41% the worst mark on the team outside of the nine games played by Quincey.

Quincey has struggled in nine games with Columbus with a horrendous 42.52% Corsi. He was much better in New Jersey with a 47.64%, giving him a full season mark of 46.97%. He's not much better than Murray but he is a slight improvement and considering New Jersey is not the team that Columbus is (Quincey ranked third among Devils defencmen in CF% and had a positive Corsi Rel) it makes Quincey look a little bit better.

This is all fine and dandy but turning our attention to micro stats it will show how Quincey varies from Murray from a stylistic and systematic perspective. Micro stats are great because they can help give context and explain for example why a players possession stats are good or bad. I have used micro stats before, notably in this piece on David Savard. In that post I was able to look into what was making Savard successful this season and found that he was the best Blue Jacket defencemen at breaking up plays at the blue line and allowed the fewest shots against when targeted.

This will be somewhat of a follow up to that, as Corey Sznajder (@ShutdownLine) the man responsible for tracking all of this data has added two more Blue Jacket games to his database, plus the new data that has been collected for Quincey. Corey does tremendous work and without his effort pieces like this would not be possible. He posts all the data he tracks at his website The Energy Line so check that out if you want to see more. He also has a link (as well as in his twitter bio) to his patron page if you wish to support him and the work he does.

There is still not a large sample, were dealing with 8-12 games but it does provide some good insight and can help show potential differences between Murray and Quincey. Corey has been tracking more Blue Jacket games and has said he will post the data this week. There will definitely be a follow-up post to this in the near future.

We will start with blue line defence.

Quincey in his nine games with the Jackets has seen most of his ice time come with Nutivaara and with that comes plenty of offensive zone starts. John Tortorella likes to do this because of Nutivaara’s offensive upside but also to shelter him. By starting in the offensive or neutral zone it means that you have to defend opposing players as they attempt to gain entry into your zone. The better a player is at defending that, and preventing opportunities, the better possession stats the player will have and the better the team will do.



Quincey’s data includes nine games from his time in New Jersey and one game as a Jacket. His targets per game should drop down as he plays lower in the line-up. I also feel like teams will respect Quincey more as he is a more well-known player than Nutivaara. Teams may try to go at the rookie and try to expose a young player. If that happens it does play into the Jackets favour. Nutivaara has been the best Blue Jacket at breaking up entries. In that one Jacket game we have data on Quincey, he was targeted twice versus seven times for Nutivaara.

I would expect Quincey to continue to be targeted with carry-ins. He isn’t the best of skaters and teams do try and take advantage of that. He doesn’t break up as many plays as Murray does, but he does allow fewer shots per entry.



Murray allowed the most shots per entry on the team, as well as the second most passes, behind Quincey. Quincey will allow more passes than Murray but it comes with the benefit of allowing fewer shots, which is trade-off I think every team makes. We know that passes tend to lead to better scoring opportunities but they have a risk involved. Over the rest of the season this won’t make a huge difference. They Jackets should see fewer shots against with Quincey but it likely only to be a couple shots over the rest of the season. Not a huge difference.

There is a significant difference though when looking at zone exits, and this is an area where Quincey should make an impact.



Murray and Nutivaara both have had their problem’s exiting the zone. They are two of the four players to fail to exit the zone on at least 20% of their exit attempts. That is due to the fact that they both struggle at carrying the puck. You see Seth Jones and Zach Werenski carry the puck and they make it look easy, it’s no surprise to see them leading the way in carry out percentage. Murray and Nutivaara are the two lowest, and while Quincey isn’t a superstar here like a Jones or Werenski, he is an improvement over Murray. Quincey has the lowest fail percentage of the group. He succeeds at getting the puck out of the zone with possession. He is second behind Jones in pass% and while it’s not shown on this chart Quincey is also second in possession exit percentage, again behind only Jones.

Quincey does dump the puck out more than you might like to see but you take that when it comes with all the good things he does. We need to keep in mind the team differences here. The Devils have always played a systematic game and you never really know how players will do when out of that system. Personally I think Quincey should be fine. He’s clearly confident with the puck on his stick and has enough vision to find a lane to pass it out or to take it and skate. He should help the Blue Jackets already strong transition game, making them that much harder to play against.

It’s never a good thing to see a player go down with an injury, especially Ryan Murray with all he’s dealt with since joining the NHL. His broken hand opens up a spot for deadline acquisition Kyle Quincey to step in and see regular playing time. Quincey is comparable to Murray in how well they defending the blue line. Where Quincey stands out in his zone exits, he tends to get the puck out of the zone with possession, which helps alleviate pressure and create offense. Both Murray and Markus Nutivaara struggle with this so Quincey will be a big help. Kyle Quincey was a pretty minor pick-up for the Blue Jackets at the trade deadline, but the injury to Ryan Murray has given him a spot and the trade has potential to pay off in a big way.