Edmonton's Defense - Worse than Switzerland?

by Hawerchuk on Mar 4, 2010 12:11 PM EST Comment 9 comments

Edmonton rolled six "defensemen" last night, presumably because they couldn't find a 7th one inside the organization. Here's the painful truth:

Name	TOI	NHL GP	Age	Draft	+/- per 82
Gilbert	26	239	27	4th	-4.9
Strudwick	24	612	34	3rd	-8.4
Peckham	23	22	22	3rd	-16.6
Chorney	21	25	22	2nd	-40.2
Motin	14	1	20	4th	-9.3
Arsene	10	3	29	N/A	-3.5

The +/- is either their career NHL +/-, or their AHL +/- over the last two seasons. Not a lot of NHL experience and lot of negatives...

And here's who Switzerland played on D against the US last week:

Name	TOI	NHL GP	Age	Draft	+/- per 82
Streit	29	342	32	9th	-3.2
Blindenbacher	21		26	9th	10.3
Seger	20		32	N/A
Sbisa	12	47	20	1st	-12.5
Furrer	11		25	6th
Weber	11	8	21	3rd	14.8
Diaz	10		24	N/A

Mark Streit's abilities are well-known and Severin Blindenbacher is the #1 defenseman for Farjestad in the Swedish Elite League. Switzerland clearly outclassed the Oilers with their top pairing. I don't know a lot about Mathias Seger, but he seemed to go out for a lot of D-zone draws against the Americans. The Swiss league doesn't seem to like +/- so we can only assume he's the best defenseman in Switzerland, and better than Theo Peckham. If Taylor Chorney, he of the ridiculously bad +/- in the AHL, was on the Swiss team, we can be sure he'd play less than 23 minutes. Hell, he'd play less than the 12 minutes Luca Sbisa - who has a better case to be in the NHL - played.

The bottom of the defensive crew is a toss-up. Johan Motin obviously has room to improve, but he was a pretty marginal player with Farjestad last season. Yannick Weber falls in the same boat. I know very little about Switzerland's other two D, but I can only assume that they wouldn't get abused any worse by Jonathan Toews than Dean Arsene did last night.

Bottom line: the Edmonton Oilers managed to put together, for one game at least, one of the weakest defensive corps imaginable. With Jonas Hiller in goal and a slight edge on defense, I'd imagine that Team Switzerland could beat last night's Oilers 60-70% of the time.

A word to the wise: when your defense is either racked with injuries or not very good to begin with, it's a bad idea to trade away your top two defensemen and have to spend a day waiting for their replacement (Ryan Whitney) to show up. Ouch!

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For what it’s worth, the talk from the Swiss media at the World Juniors was that Roman Josi was actually the best d-man in the Swiss league at 19 years old, but I don’t know if that was hyperbole or not. Josi missed the Olympics due to injury, not sure which of Ferrer or Diaz was his replacement. Josi vs. Seger for top D in the league, you’d have to think. Josi did look better than Sbisa, which surprised me. And both were playing hurt in the tournament before pulling out for good.

Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.

by saskhab on Mar 4, 2010 12:37 PM EST reply actions

I didn’t see anything about Josi. (I already don’t read the Montreal papers…Reading the Swiss papers seems even less likely…) I’d want to give it to Seger just because he’s 32 and so I assume he plays better defense than a 19-year-old, no matter who he is.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 4, 2010 1:09 PM EST up reply actions

I’d have to agree. I don’t see how a 19 year old could be the best player at his position in a league as good as the Swiss league without there being tons of hype backing him up. Something might have been lost in translation, like he was a top D on his team or something. They spoke decent English but when you speak like 5 different languages sometimes points get half-made as a result.

Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.

by saskhab on Mar 4, 2010 1:28 PM EST up reply actions

Hi there from Switzerland ;-) Great blog!

The stats coverage for the Swiss league is awful indeed. But a few clubs at least collate some things on their own.

Seger ist at +16 in 45 games for the ZSC Lions, who are just average overall and defensively even quite poor this season. They don’t do TOI, but Seger is surely out there a lot, up to 25 minutes, I’d guess.
Diaz is at +10 in 48 games for EV Zug, who are a pretty good and defensively very solid team. He logs 24:17 minutes per game.
No stats for Furrer.

The three leagues are very hard to compare in terms of +/- of course. But a good idea might give us the career stats of Goran Bezina . He would have played at the Olympics, if he had been healthy. He’s surely pretty close to Seger’s level, would have been the number-four defenseman at the Olympics probably. He’s at +21 in 47 games this season for Servette, a top-team – but had no success whatsoever in North America. I anyway think the Swiss league is even worse than most of the people think… And especially for offensive D it seems to be quite easy to put up good numbers. Another example might be Justin D Forrest, who joined the Swiss league in November and has been quite good with 7 goals, 20 assists, +10 in 27 games for the average Kloten Fylers. But he struggled a lot in North America (mostly for not being big enough probably, but anyway), too.

So, not sure after all if the Swiss defense is better. Streit should surely be the number one of all these guys. But then I’d have Gilbert and Strudwick way above Blindenbacher, even Peckham a bit probably. And the other Swiss defenders might almost struggle as much in the AHL as Edmonton’s. However, both are really poor…

by BenHasna on Mar 4, 2010 9:01 PM EST reply actions

hi – thanks for posting. This is good info. Jason Strudwick is pretty bad – no offense, can’t play the PP, typically a #7 or #8 D, often a healthy scratch. I have to believe Blindenbacher could pull that off…

by Hawerchuk on Mar 5, 2010 2:06 AM EST up reply actions

Only if he can seduce coaches with his affable demeanor like Strudwick seems to do. Studwick’s best talent isn’t hockey, it’s convincing hockey people that he’s a useful hockey player. Frankly, it’s how a lot of the 7th-8th d-men stay in the league.

by Scott Reynolds on Mar 5, 2010 12:06 PM EST up reply actions