Digging into the BrouwerPlay and the PenalTroy Kill

When you write about the Calgary Flames, you get a lot of good questions posed to you on Twitter. Arguably the most common of them these days – given the Flames’ challenges with their special teams – is some version of “Why is Troy Brouwer on the power play?” (There are usually some four-letter words peppered in here and there.) We also get frequent questions about Brouwer’s presence on the penalty kill.

(“PenalTroy Kill” pun courtesy of @TheBigOgle on Twitter.)

In the interest of solving these burning questions, we dug into the numbers to figure out what’s going on.

There are two explanations, neither of which really overrides the other. The first is that Glen Gulutzan relied upon Brouwer as a power play contributor last season and the coaching staff’s perception that Brouwer’s contributions helped them be successful. The second is that he’s a right-shot forward and the team doesn’t have very many of those – even before you factor in the long-term absence of arguably the best right-shot forward on the team, Kris Versteeg.

The right shot aspect of the PP is important because you can set up right shots on the left side of the zone and get rapid one-timers (and vice versa with the left shots on the right side).

Once again, Gulutzan used him last year and the perception is that he was effective; he played with Matt Stajan on the secondary kill unit for almost the entire season. The right shot aspect also weighs in, as it’s potentially easier to suppress zone entries with a right-shot forward on the PK and chip pucks out more rapidly.

Since the “effectiveness” perception plays into the reasoning for Brouwer’s usage, let’s dig into that.

If you dig into Brouwer’s underlyings on the PP, the overriding message is thus: “He’s been fine.”

Last season, he was one of the better first-unit players in Corsi and bottom of the first unit pack in every other metric (Fenwick, shots, scoring chances, high-danger chances). He was better than the second unit players, but arguably didn’t drag down everybody else on the first unit. His contributions to the first unit were primarily one-timers and/or blocking the goaltender’s view with his body. But hey, the first unit scored many goals so it arguably worked.

(Rankings are out of players with 40+ PP minutes in 2016-17 and 15+ in 2017-18.)

This season, he’s one of their better Corsi and Fenwick players and is again bottom of the first unit pack in every other metric. He’s been fine. Interestingly enough, Brouwer’s “per 60” performance has been better than the Flames’ power play as a whole this season in every metric except high-danger chances – and that’s factoring in that the Flames have improved their overall “per 60” performances in every possession metric. He’s improved from last season, and his improvement is partially explained by the entire team’s overall improvement, but you have to attribute at least some of Brouwer’s uptick to Brouwer himself.

Brouwer’s performance on the PK arguably hasn’t been quite as effective as his contributions to the PP.

Last season, he was towards the bottom of the pack among PK regulars for Corsi, Fenwick and scoring chance suppression. He was worst among regulars for shot suppression, but (paradoxically) one of the best for high-danger chance suppression. Considering the team values scoring chances above all else, the assessment of his 2016-17 performance on the PK was likely positive.

This season, he’s been among the best regulars for Corsi, Fenwick and Shots. For scoring chances and high-danger chances he’s been among the worst regulars. For the things the coaching staff seems to care about, his performance has really degraded.

(Rankings are out of players with 40+ PK minutes in 2016-17 and 15+ in 2017-18.)

That said, the entire team is noticeably worse on the PK than they were last season and it comes through in their underlying numbers. When you compare Brouwer’s numbers to the whole team’s, he’s been average on the PK and more or less emblematic of the team’s general malaise while killing penalties.