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Winnipeg Jets By The Numbers: Jacob Trouba 2014-2015

By Garret Hohl

Jun 9, 2015, 14:10 EDTUpdated:

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The 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 defenseman extraordinaire Jacob Trouba.

The Basics

Numbers include all situations including non 5v5 TOI.

Some may think that Jacob Trouba suffered the sophomore slump. He played the same number of games while scoring three less goals and four less assists. It was unlikely though that a defender would repeat a 8.3 shooting percentage he carried in his rookie season.

Usage

Graph courtesy of WAR-on-Ice.

Rankings are out of the Jets 11 defenders with 50+ 5v5 minutes, except special team minutes are 4 players for power play and 7 players for penalty kill.

Trouba played big minutes and in all situations. He was on the ice for over 50 per cent of the Jets penalty kill time for games he dressed in, which is amazingly high.

Trouba also played some very tough minutes. Trouba was Paul Maurice’s favourite choice for defensive zone face offs. He also faced higher competition levels while playing significant minutes with the Jets’ weaker forwards.

It’s not unusual for fans to mistakenly evaluate the difficulty in a player’s usage. Media, management, coaches, and fans tend to be very competition and match-up centric. The truth is though that competition is a minimal factor. The fluid nature of hockey, line changes on the fly, and both coaches vying for their preferred match-ups causes the distributions in Quality of Competition faced quite similar.

For the Jets, many would think Myers had the tougher assignment due to his slightly higher QoC. However, what is more difficult: facing top lines 28 per cent of the time instead of 25 per cent of the time or playing with Mark Stuart for over 75 per cent of the time instead of Tobias Enstrom?

Underlying Numbers

The season started out rough for Trouba, but as the year went on Trouba got better and better.

Visual courtesy of Micah McCurdy.

Trouba spent his season attached to the hip of Mark Stuart. What’s impressive is how Stuart has performed with Trouba is even better than he did with Zdeno Chara. Not saying that Trouba is better than peak Chara, but that it’s a pretty impressive feat.

Outside of scoring, there is not much evidence of a sophomore slump here.

Trouba did not score very well. His per minute pace was below all except Jay Harrison, Paul Postma, and Mark Stuart. He did however excel everywhere else.

Despite tough minutes and playing with a known possession anchor, Trouba finished the season with the Jets best shot attempt differential, and second if you exclude blocked shots. The Jets performed significantly better with Trouba on the ice than on the bench, and dCorsi suggests Trouba far exceeded expected results given his usage.

Goals Above Replacement estimates that Trouba’s impact on the Jets goal differentials was only below that of Dustin Byfuglien and Tobias Enstrom.

Final Thoughts

Jacob Trouba is developing into an elite, all-minutes defensman. While anything can happen, all the signs are pointing in the right direction.

Trouba hasn’t shown that he can produce at exceptional levels like Dustin Byfuglien but he is not terrible there either given the forwards and defense partner he regularly skates out with.

His impact on the Jets two-way numbers are fantastic for someone who just finished their 21-year-old season. It is not outside of the realm of possibilities that Trouba has surpassed Byfuglien as the Jets best all-around defender.