Pk subban
While not highly-dramatic, Subban’s high-end offence was clearly based on the power-play.
This includes 24 of his 38 points in the 2012-13 season and 41 percent of his goals in the same six-year stretch. While he was a terrific talent, 43 percent of his points between 20 came on the power-play. Subban’s ability was, really, thin-veiled. There had to be something else nagging Subban. It was a horrendous, bottom-of-the-barrel level year and one that, truly, couldn’t be chalked up to simply a short-term injury.
#Pk subban full#
After a terrible four months following the injury and a full summer to recover, Subban had the worst season he’ll likely ever have this year. The fall-off didn’t stop with the 2018-19 season, though. It gave him a grand total of 31 points on the year, a career-low. He came back from injury and finished the season with only 19 points in his final 45 games. It was on pace with everything he had set up in the prior seven seasons: he was an all-star playing as well as anyone could have expected.Įven though he only missed just over a month with the injury, it clearly changed Subban. Prior to the injury, Subban netted 12 points in 18 games. In mid-November, 2018, Subban was placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury. With that said, injuries are definitely a factor and the most famous factor in many’s eyes. While injuries are the easy answer, such a jump down can’t entirely be blamed on injuries. What Happened? InjuriesĪnswering what happened is an uphill battle. By the numbers and the chart, Subban completed an uncanny 180, tallying a 11.4 GAR in 2017-18 and a 10.1 GAR in 2019-20. It’s a stretch to be incredibly proud of, followed by a dive steeper than The Palisades. He became an elite defenceman almost immediately after joining the league and stayed that way for years. Subban’s career WAR and GAR charts, courtesy of Evolving Hockey.īoth graphs show Subban’s immediate explosion onto the scene.
While it’s easy to list off numbers, Subban’s career GAR/WAR chart perfectly puts the decline into picture: P.K.
It was one of the biggest – and considering Subban’s fan-favourite personality: most upsetting – falls from grace that the NHL has ever seen. Only two seasons removed from truly elite company, Subban fell to the company of players like Johnny Boychuk, Mike Green, and Jack Johnson three of the league’s biggest has-beens. This is a heavy load of stats but every single advanced stat point towards Subban being one of the worst defencemen in the league this year the worst when using GAR, WAR, and SPAR which are common determinants in the advanced stat-community. His CF/60 was in the bottom-45, his CA/60 was in the bottom-15, and xGF%/60 was the fifth-worst in the league. Looking outside of these above-replacement stats, his xGF/60 ranked 94th among the 141 defencemen to play at least 800 minutes this season. His WAR and SPAR were also the worst among the league’s defensemen. After a 2018-19 season that would put any Chicago Blackhawks veteran to shame – looking at you Duncan Keith – Subban went on to etch his mark as one of the worst in the league this season.įollowing the GAR logic established, Subban effectively ranked 298th in the league… out of 298 defensemen. 2019-20īut Subban wasn’t done with his stark decline… not even close. It was a tremendous dive off of a cliff, a terrific fall from league-elite to nearly-perfectly replacement level. Thanks to an injury that held him out of six weeks of play, Subban was held to replacement level. Subban’s GAR, WAR, SPAR, xGF/60, xGA/60, CF/60, CA/60… they all balanced Subban out to the perfect-neutral. It was all-in-all a very… replacement level season. His on-ice performance and shooting was also balanced out, with a slightly-above-average 2.68 xGF/60 and a slightly-below-average 2.55 xGA/60. Joining Subban’s replacement level GAR is an almost-perfectly replacement level wins-above-replacement (WAR) and shots-per-above-replacement (SPAR) – 0.1 and 0.2 respectfully – as well. This was in the company of players like Xavier Ouellet, Cody Ceci, and Christian Djoos far from the elite company he was among only a year prior. In terms of GAR, Subban was nearly perfectly replacement-level, albeit slightly below, with a -0.6 GAR. He still scored an admirable 31 points in 63 games but the advanced stats all pointed towards a very scary backdrop. The 2018-19 season was completely unheard of for Subban. He was solidified as a truly top-end talent, bringing great scoring ability, strong defence, and admirable size to the table.
While it certainly wasn’t the season to ink Subban as elite, it served to emphasize his great ability. This performance was simply par-for-the-course – his fourth career season of over-50 points through only eight career years.