Will Butcher has been one of the best parts of the New Jersey Devils this year. While he has cooled off a bit after his hot start, he’s still one of the NHL’s higher scoring defensemen. His offense is solid – but how good is he at defense?
Today we’re going to try to answer the question “How good is Will Butcher in his own zone?”
A couple disclaimers before we go any further:
Butcher is an offensive defenseman, and this is not meant to discount that. His primary duties are breakout passes and generating offense, not camping out behind the blueline. Many stat-heads recognize offensive defensemen are more valuable than stay-at-home defensemen, because getting pinned in your own zone all the time doesn’t make you that valuable. That doesn’t excuse being a sieve in your own end – it just means defense isn’t as simple as “don’t let the puck go in.” The question here is simply “how good is Butcher defensively?” This is not a drag on him as a whole – just an examination of one facet of his game.
Butcher being an offensive defenseman colors the way we need to interpret his stats. For example, Butcher is on record for only delivering seven hits this year, tied for second least on the team. Most New Jersey Devils defensemen have about 20 more or more. It shows he doesn’t play that physical a game. That said, it’s important to remember that teams on offense don’t deliver hits, they take them. This speaks to the fact that he’s used largely in a largely (and, as you’ll find out, almost entirely) offensive capacity.
Some stats that we’d otherwise use still aren’t available. We don’t have a big enough sample size to see much in the way of Quality of Competition and Quality of Teammate. Also, since Butcher is a rookie whose time on ice is the result of a lot of sheltering, we’ll be using stats per 60 minutes whenever possible.
We won’t be using save percentage, partly because he’s sheltered and partly because it’s a noisy stat.
We also won’t use +/- because that is a bad stat that we should have stopped caring about years ago.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.