Winnipeg Jets By The Numbers: Matthew Halischuk 2014-2015
By Garret Hohl
8 years agoThe season has been laid to rest.
Fans have completed their lamenting of the Anaheim Ducks sweeping the Winnipeg Jets. The healing process has begun.
But, before full closure can be completed, an autopsy of the Jets season must be initiated.
We turn our evidence-based breakdown of the Jets depth forward, Matthew Halishcuk.
The Basics
Numbers include all situations including non 5v5 TOI.
Matt Halsichuk put up his lowest point totals since his rookie season for the New Jersey Devils. This was in part because Halischuk played the lowest minutes per game of his career, but also from shooting about half his career norm.
Usage
Graph courtesy of WAR-on-Ice.
Rankings are out of the Jets 17 forwards with 50+ 5v5 minutes, except special team minutes are each out of 11 Jet forwards.
Halischuk received a gentle offensive zone push. He took some even strength minutes, and the odd penalty kill shift. Halischuk didn’t not face much in competition nor did he play much with the Jets best.
Underlying Numbers
Compared to fourth line and pressbox depth forwards, Halischuk posted pretty decent shot metrics. Of course, so did Anthony Peluso and Chris Thorburn thanks to the Jets being a pretty strong team.
Visual courtesy of Micah McCurdy.
Despite averaging fourth line minutes, Halischuk mostly played on the third line with Adam Lowry.
Historically Halischuk has been a decent scorer but a bit of an anchor in shot metrics. This season was (a bit) of a reverse.
Halischuk paced the typical point production of a fourth liner. As noted previously, Halischuk’s goal production was about half his norm due to a uncharacteristically low shooting percentage. Normalize this and we’d expect about a 1.5 points per sixty pace, which would be above Jets other depth forwards like Peluso, Thorburn, Jim Slater, and T.J. Galiardi.
dCorsi suggests that Matt Halischuk’s decent shot metrics (relative to the other depth forwards) was still an underperformance relative to expectations given his usage. He out performed Drew Stafford and the previously mentioned depth forwards in both Corsi and scoring chance differentials, but not by much.
Final Thoughts
Matt Halsichuk’s point production was disappointing relative to his typical pace, but shooting percentage variance could be the cause to his repressed numbers. Still, his point production was average for a depth forward. His shot metrics, while not great like effective lower pieces (see Marcel Goc or Lee Stempniak), was still better than most of the players the Jets cycle on the fourth line.
It will be interesting to see how Halischuk is deployed next season, if he is a Jet again.
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