How should the Flames match up their lines and defensive pairings?

Sometimes it probably seems like being a National Hockey League coach could be easy. Occasionally I picture it like Mr. Burns telling the Major League Baseball ringers what to do in the classic Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat” – Darryl Strawberry hits a home run and Burns smugly tells his assistant, “I told him to do that.”

But deployments, where and how you use your players to maximize results, are a challenging thing to get right. If you’ve been watching games this season, you’ve probably heard a familiar refrain (or shouted it yourself): “Why is the fourth line out there with the third pairing??”

We dug into the deployment data for the first 12 games to see if that combination was in any way a logical decision.

The assessment process here is pretty simple, and is based on a simple premise: getting the most out of the team’s best players. Starting with the top line and moving down to the fourth, what defensive pairing produces the best results? (Unless otherwise noted, all data here is five-on-five and was culled from Natural Stat Trick.)

Sean Monahan played 67:10 with T.J. Brodie (with a 46.38% Corsi For) and 63:37 with Travis Hamonic (50.00% CF), starting 70.27% of their shifts in the offensive zone. That’s basically what you’d expect and the heavy offensive zone tilt is consistent across the top line’s usage with all pairings.

Dougie Hamilton (56:31) and Mark Giordano (53:54) spent the second most time with the top guns, with markedly better results – 62.61% CF with Hamilton and 66.96% CF with Giordano.

Michael Stone spent 27:58 with Monahan’s line and had a 48.7% CF.

The team’s most dangerous quintet last season was Mikael Backlund’s line with the Giordano and Hamilton pairing, and that success has probably led to their heavy usage: Giordano (74:36) and Hamilton (72:16) have spent more time with the 3M Line than with any other forward group. The results are pretty strong (53.99% CF for Giordano, 55.69% CF for Hamilton), but you’ll also note that the top defensive pairing had similarly strong results with Monahan’s group.

Brodie (57:24) and Hamonic (53:07) have also spent a lot of time with the 3M Line, with good results as well – 58.72% CF for Brodie and 59.60% CF with Hamonic.

If you’re about to conclude that Glen Gulutzan can put anybody with the 3M Line, start ’em in the defensive zone and have success, you’re unfortunately wrong. Stone (24:33) has a woeful 37.50% CF with 3M with pretty similar zone starts to the Brodie/Hamonic pairing.

The third line is basically whatever group Sam Bennett is with. They have universally been given zone starts tilted towards the offensive zone. The third line has played fairly similar minutes with all three pairings, with fairly similar results:

In short: seemingly it doesn’t matter who you put Bennett’s line with, because aside from a slight drop off with the third pairing, they’re similar with all three pairings.

Using Troy Brouwer as a proxy for the fourth line, since he’s played in every game, we now come to our major question: why does Gulutzan keeping playing the fourth line with the third pairing? Well, of the three pairings that have played with the fourth line, Stone’s pairing has played the most by a slight margin (41:33) but also has the best results (51.19% CF).

Brodie (42:28) and Hamonic (41:07) have the second most minutes and the second best results (45.74% and 44.19% CF, respectively).

Giordano (28:14) and Hamilton (25:52) have the fewest minutes and the worst results (40.32% and 38.98% CF, respectively).

The majority of the fourth line’s shifts, regardless of defensive pairing, begin in the defensive end.

If you’re trying to maximize puck possession, here are the best bets in terms of players to use without relying entirely on one group to play the entire game: