Season Preview: Flames Defense Reasonable Expectations

 

 

This is the companion piece to my reasonable expectations for Flames forwards. We’re talking about point totals here which are even worse at capturing a given players true value when it comes to defenders, but it’s an interesting line the sand nonetheless.

I repeated the process I used for the forwards here: averaging each guy’s scoring rate at both ES and on the PP from the last three seasons and then making some educated guesses about his ice time and extrapolating from there. Like the previous posts, I assumed about 48 ES minutes per game broken up between the six primary skaters, as well as six minutes on the PP.

– With Regehr gone, I fully expect Giordano and Bouwmeester’s ES ice to get bumped a bit, even if they don’t play on the same pairing. I downgraded Sarich to the third pairing with Babchuk and then guessed Hannan and Butler would land somewhere betweent he two extremes.

– As you can see, Bouwmeester’s scoring rate is underwhelming at both ES and PP. That was true of him in both FLA and CGY. Of course, he has always played against pretty tough opponents in less than ideal circumstances, but with his skillset and at his price range, that level of output remains underwhelming.

– Giordano projects to be the blueline leader in points again. Last year was his lowest ES point pace in the last three, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him back at the 0.8-0.9 rate again.

– Although he has some obvious faults, Anton Babchuk has certainly scored at a high rate throughout his brief career in the NHL. If he was good enough to play more than 13-14 minutes at ES, he could be a 50 point guy. As it is, though, he can still probably do some damage if the team continues to shelter him as much as possible.

– Not sure what to make of Chris Butler’s expected point total. Mostly because I still don’t know what to make of Chris Butler. 

Unless JayBo comletely outperforms his last three seasons and gets more PP time than I assume here, he’s going to be a object of scorn again due to his big contract. Giordano is the best bet to match or exceed the numbers listed here since his ice time is likely to go up, he boasted the best scoring chance ratio amongsts the regulars last year and had some of the worst luck. If the bounces reverse for him, he should easily meet or beat 44 points.