In the midst of a playoff race for the Calgary Flames, we are a few weeks away from a good chunk of Flames players’ contracts functionally ending. There are seven Flames who could test unrestricted free agency after this season who are on NHL contracts.
If the Flames did not retain _____, what would they lose?
Today, we will look at one pending UFA from each skater position (forward, defender). To decide which player to write about, I used a random number generator using last names to order the options per position. The UFAs selected for this article are Kevin Rooney and Joel Hanley.
(Statistics cited are through Saturday’s games.)
UFA Forward: Kevin Rooney
- Centre
- 31 years old
- $1.3 million cap hit
- Role: bottom-six
Box score statistics tell us that Kevin Rooney is having a sub-par season with Calgary, playing just over 9 minutes per game in a bottom-six role, with 8 points through 59 games and sitting at minus-6. He’s dressed a lot for the Flames this year, ranked 9th in GP among forwards and having accumulated 425 5v5 minutes, which is a good sample to analyze statistical impacts.
When looking to understand the complete picture of Kevin Rooney’s play, we must understand who he’s deployed with in a bottom-six role. The top-3 most common lines for Kevin Rooney this season are (via MoneyPuck):
- Lomberg-Rooney-Duehr (69 minutes)
- Lomberg-Rooney-Kirkland (67 minutes)
- Lomberg-Rooney-Klapka (48 minutes)
Kevin Rooney is playing with players who share his role (bottom-six), but it’s important to consider this context when evaluating how his season’s gone. Rooney is not expected to reach a specific scoring level, nor is he supposed to empower his linemates to be exceptional at offense. His role includes most of the following: taking faceoffs and suppressing shots (being a ‘neutralizer’).
Has the expected identity of this role been achieved by Kevin Rooney this season? Let’s understand the two pieces to Rooney’s role: face-offs and shots.
Kevin Rooney: Faceoffs
Believe it or not, Kevin Rooney has taken the third-most face-offs among Flames skaters this season (352) behind Kadri (1237) and Backlund (1,236). Of note, no Flames skater to take more than 100 faceoffs is over 50%, meaning every time Calgary lines up for a face-off, there is a greater chance they lose the draw than win. Kadri is at 46%, Backlund is at 48.1%, and Rooney is at 47.7%. In “face-off plus-minus”, Kadri is minus-99, Backlund is minus-46, and Rooney is minus-16. Despite the lack of apparent team strength at face-offs, the action of taking a face-off is an individual contest, meaning that we cannot say, “because Kadri and Backlund can’t win face-offs, this makes sense that Rooney can’t either.”
Kevin Rooney is a career 46% on face-offs, so one could argue this year has been better than most for him. However, using a player as a centre in the bottom-six when they lose more face-offs than they take seems counter-intuitive.
Compared to a division foe who is also competing for the playoffs, the Vancouver Canucks, the Canucks have top-six centres in Elias Pettersson at 47.5% (minus-48) and Pius Suter at 43.4% (minus-91), who will probably both play centre regardless of face-off ability (same as Kadri on our end). However, Vancouver’s bottom-six consists of Teddy Blueger at 50.1% (plus-1) and Aatu Raty at 57% (plus-27).
When looking for reasons to support Kevin Rooney’s play in his role, face-offs do not support his case.
Kevin Rooney: Shot Suppression
Even when you lose more face-offs than you take, perhaps you’re doing a fair job at suppressing shots, whether that’s blocking shots, having good on-ice shot numbers, etc.
For blocked shots, Kevin Rooney is actually frequently blocking shots, with 33 blocks in 58 games and 3.62 blocks per 60 minutes, which ranks 34th among 441 forwards to have played 20+ games this year. However, blocked shots can be a controversial stat for promoting a player’s value, as the more you block shots, the less that you or your team have the puck. For more context, we can look at 5v5 shot stats when Rooney is on the ice.
When looking at skaters who have played over 250 5v5 minutes, here are the ranks for Kevin Rooney among Flames forwards (12) and league forwards (421):
5v5 Statistic | Rooney | ||
Corsi For % (CF%) | 45.28% | 12 | 362 |
Fenwick For % (FF%) | 46.41% | 11 | 339 |
Goals For % (GF%) | 37.50% | 12 | 383 |
Expected Goals For % (xGF%) | 41.29% | 12 | 395 |
High-Danger Corsi For % (HDCF%) | 41.80% | 12 | 387 |
High-Danger Goals For % (HDGF%) | 41.18% | 9 | 330 |
Based on these on-ice shot-related statistics, one could argue that Kevin Rooney has been one of the worst-performing NHL forwards this season. For those worried about using team-based stats when comparing against the league, I have attached Rooney’s “relative” stats compared to his peers below:
5v5 Statistic | Rooney | ||
Corsi For % Relative (CF% Rel) | -6.87% | 12 | 407 |
Fenwick For % Relative (FF% Rel) | -5.27% | 11 | 382 |
Goals For % Relative (GF% Rel) | -11.58% | 12 | 363 |
Expected Goals For % (xGF% Rel) Relative | -7.63% | 12 | 395 |
High-Danger Corsi For % Relative (HDCF% Rel) | -4.58% | 11 | 349 |
High-Danger Goals For % Relative (HDGF% Rel) | -3.53% | 9 | 262 |
If each of the relative stats league ranks were higher than the regular advanced stats league ranks, then we would know that Calgary as a team has specifically had more shot-related troubles than others, and Rooney’s numbers wouldn’t be as bad as they seem.
However, based on both tables above, it seems that when Kevin Rooney is on the ice, his team does poorly on shot and goal shares, and Calgary is actually better when he’s off the ice in all ‘relative’ categories.
Being a bottom-six centre in general, and on a team that isn’t a Stanley Cup contender, is a tough role to thrive in, so Kevin Rooney may have been dealt a tough hand. Similarly, there is more that goes into contracts and NHL decision-making, but we can only work with what is publicly available. We can use stats to understand how effective hockey players are, and it seems that Kevin Rooney has unfortunately not provided much value for the Flames this season.
Human elements aside, the statistics above demonstrate that if the Flames did not retain Kevin Rooney, someone else may do better in his role in both faceoff-related and on-ice shot-related capacities (hypothetically).
UFA Defender: Joel Hanley
- Left defence
- 33 years old
- $787,500 cap hit
- Role: Anything and everything
Box score statistics tell us that Joel Hanley is having a good season with Calgary, playing over 17 minutes per game (now in “top-pair” minutes with Weegar) and currently at plus-8 on a team with a minus-21 differential. If you’re not a fan of base stats, the 5v5 advanced statistics tell us the following (with ranks among 8 Flames defenders to play 100+ 5v5 minutes, via Natural Stat Trick):
- 2nd: 52.5% Fenwick (unblocked shot attempts with Hanley on ice)
- 2nd: 50.9% Expected Goals For (shot quality with Hanley on ice)
- 2nd: 51.4% Scoring Chances (scoring chances with Hanley on ice)
- 5th: 47.3% High-Danger Corsi For (shot attempts in the slot with Hanley on ice)
- 1st: 62.5% High-Danger Goals For (goals in the slot with Hanley on ice)
Of note, Hanley doesn’t fare well in the High-Danger Corsi category compared to his peers, but the fact that the High-Danger Goals For % is so much higher than Corsi implies that a lot of shots occurring when Hanley is on the ice are getting blocked or not turning into scoring chances/goals. While having a strong Corsi percentage can suggest that a player is good, you don’t have to have a high Corsi (all shot attempts) to be a good player if none of those attempts make it to the net. Stats like Fenwick (excludes blocks) and Expected Goals (focuses on shot quality) tell us more about Joel Hanley at 5v5, and he’s been great in those aspects.
Is this player an exceptionally desirable option because he’s on a budget contract? Perhaps. However, Hanley has excelled in full-time NHL minutes with the simple play-style that previous clubs like Dallas coveted, and is providing immense surplus value on his current deal with the Flames. Of note, Hanley has been living most of his career near the league-minimum salary and practically working paycheck-to-paycheck (2 years or less on each deal). Maybe it is time to give the defender a contract that would allow him to settle down in Calgary. In the current state of the salary cap and Calgary’s competitive situation, if you’re a fan of Joel Hanley’s play, does 3 years times $1.35 million seem reasonable? The following questions may guide your thinking:
- Would you rather have Hanley than Tyson Barrie ($1.25 million)?
- Who is not on Calgary’s NHL roster that will need a full-time spot next season?
The Flames have better on-ice impacts with Joel Hanley on the ice. He is not the biggest ‘fish’ to worry about in the off-season, so just like his playstyle, if we keep things simple and retain an effective defender, the team over the next few years will benefit as a transition period continues on defence (Parekh, Brzustewicz, etc.).
If the Flames did not retain Joel Hanley, the team would lose a reliable, simple player who does well at 5v5 and has shown great numbers alongside players like MacKenzie Weegar. Joel Hanley also has a history of spending a long time in the press box, followed by coming in cold for a critical game/moment and playing well, which is a trait that some hockey players don’t have and may be valuable to the Flames in any of the next few seasons.
Conclusion
Overall, using statistics, we have analyzed two cases on the Flames that reveal vastly different scenarios. On one hand, Joel Hanley seems like a bargain at his current contract, and retaining him based on his statistical impacts (and how he looks in-game) seems like a no-brainer. On the other hand, Kevin Rooney seems like a player that the Flames enjoy deploying, but has not fared well in his minutes, so a decision must be made considering his 2024-25 results.
Hockey players are human, with up-and-down seasons all the time, which is why more goes into contract decisions than single-season stats. Fortunately, an area of certainty for both players used in this article is that both are over 30 years of age. Choosing to retain these types of players is typically an easier decision for an organization than deciding how to pay a younger player who may be more unpredictable. We know what we’re getting from both Rooney and Hanley based on multiple seasons of info/reputation. It will be interesting to see what happens to these players over the next few months.
What would you do with Kevin Rooney and Joel Hanley? Let us know in the comments!
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