By The Numbers: Analyzing the Jets early struggles on defense

Suffice it to say, the Jets struggled thus far this season in many areas. The normally average-to-strong shot metrics is a new one for the Jets.

To determine why, we compare how each of the Jets performed relative to their historic norm.

In this article, we investigate the Jets’ blue-liners.

We use team performance with player on ice relative to the team with the player on the bench to diminish the impact of the team performing worse overall.

Off the start we see three extreme differences. Tyler Myers, who played 180 5v5 minutes, performed exceptionally well overall and relative to historical norm. Mark Stuart and Ben Chiarot, who played 81 and 285 5v5 minutes each, performed exceptionally poorly overall and relative to historical norm.

These two defenders have been huge drags on the team and their teammates. Stuart currently carries a 41.6 Corsi percentage, while Chiarot carries 40.4 Corsi percentage. To put this in perspective, 173 defenders played at least 680 minutes of 5v5 ice time last season, and Dan Girardi carried the worst Corsi percentage rating, with 42.8 shots per cent.

Hockey sustains a huge amount of permeable feedback effects that act as confounding variables. This makes hockey a tougher sport to analyze statistically than most other games. Large anchors sink the  that is difficult to account for.

The biggest negative impact has been Chiarot. While Stuart has been a well known negative impact player for many years, his ice time has been managed to limit potential influence on the Jets. Chiarot, though, has been on the ice more than any other defender other than Tobias Enstrom, Dustin Byfuglien, and Josh Morrissey. That is a problem.

Twenty five games and the Jets have not performed the best. They are 25th in standings points per game played, 25th in adjusted-Corsi percentage, and 24th by DTMAboutHeart‘s expected goal model.

The Jets normally have been around average out shooting team, and in their playoff season they were an elite outshooting team, but since then there biggest strength has failed them. Hopefully some players returning can improve upon things.