2014-15 By The Numbers: #7 T.J. Brodie
By Ryan Pike
8 years agoT.J. Brodie had two seasons.
The first was 61 games playing almost exclusively with Mark Giordano, Norris trophy front-runner. The second was 21 games, playing primarily in tandem with either Deryk Engelland or David Schlemko. He was downright fantastic with Giordano. He was pretty darn good otherwise, but he was less impressive with non-Giordano partners.
In other news: water is wet. And Brodie is a really good, rapidly improving defenseman.
As usual, 100 even-strength minutes together qualifies for WOWY analysis. As the player who logged the most even-strength minutes on the entire team, Brodie spent time with basically every regular on the club.
| Player | Together | Apart | Diff. |
| Giordano | 48.9% | 43.2% | +5.7% |
| Monahan | 46.1% | 45.2% | +0.9% |
| Jones | 44.8% | 43.0% | +1.8% |
| Bouma | 42.7% | 40.7% | +2.0% |
| Hudler | 46.6% | 46.3% | +0.3% |
| Gaudreau | 48.1% | 45.8% | +2.3% |
| Glencross | 47.5% | 44.7% | +2.8% |
| Backlund | 45.8% | 45.4% | +0.4% |
| Engelland | 36.4% | 42.5% | -6.1% |
| Colborne | 41.6% | 43.1% | -1.5% |
| Jooris | 46.3% | 47.8% | -1.5% |
| Raymond | 46.5% | 41.7% | +4.8% |
| Byron | 47.6% | 46.1% | +1.5% |
| Stajan | 41.8% | 46.4% | -4.6% |
| Granlund | 46.2% | 39.1% | +7.1% |
| Bollig | 39.5% | 42.2% | -2.7% |
For the curious? Brodie without Engelland had a 47.7% Corsi For rating, while together he drops LIKE A STONE to 36.4%. (We’ll discuss this in more detail when we look into Engelland’s numbers.)
In terms of counting statistics, Brodie had a career year with 41 points in 81 regular season games – an improvement of 10 points over last season, his previous best. And he added 5 points in 11 playoff games. An impressive 29 points came at even-strength.
Long story short: T.J. Brodie, good defenseman, makes the vast majority of the 16 regular Flames players he played alongside better in terms of their possession stats. Those that had worse numbers with Brodie? Deryk Engelland, Joe Colborne, Josh Jooris, Matt Stajan, and Brandon Bollig. In other words: the fourth line, his substitute defense partner, and Joe Colborne.
Brodie’s deployments were a teeny, tiny bit softer than Giordano’s, but not appreciably so. His performance in terms of his possession stats were a teeny, tiny bit worse than Giordano’s, but not appreciably so. He’s still quite young, and he’s improving.
Here’s the same graphic, but with Brodie versus Brodie over his career.
He’s gotten tougher and tougher assignments, and more and more ice-time, and he’s remaining strong at his position. Now imagine how good he could be if the Flames could figure out a way to (a) keep Mark Giordano healthy for a full season and (b) strengthen their depth pairings so the team can balance out their attack a bit.
Long story short: T.J. Brodie had a good year. He’s a good hockey player. He may become even better than he is, considering he’ll be only 25 years old when next season begins.
2014-15 BY THE NUMBERS
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