Monday Review: It Is Time That Logan Stanley Experiment Ends
Jets weekly review and preview, prospects update, and trending news.
Welcome to The Five Hohl—the best (and only, as far as I know) newsletter entirely dedicated to in-depth, evidence-based analysis of all things Winnipeg Jets. If you're into hockey analytics in general, you’ll find some solid insights here too.
Like most Mondays, we’ll review last week, preview the week ahead, check out Jets prospects, and dive into trending topics.
Today’s trending topic is a big one. Some might say 6’7” big.
“Strap yourself in, boys.” —Starcraft
QUICK LIFE UPDATE
I’m mostly over the cold. Up some weight already with the holiday foods, and we haven’t even hit the actual holidays.
This has been your totally informative life update on Garret.
Sorry it’s kind of boring right now. Gearing up for lots of Christmas fun, though, with the little ones!
JETS WEEKLY REVIEW
Well, that was no fun. The Winnipeg Jets had a tough schedule this week, and they could not have done much worse, going 1-3-0 and being outscored twelve to nine.
The Winnipeg Jets technically no longer sit in first in the NHL. While they are tied with Minnesota in points (36), the Wild have a game in hand, so the Jets are below them in points percentage.
An 18-7-0 record is still pretty darn good, but this regression makes some wonder which version of the Jets is closer to the real thing.
The Winnipeg Jets also fell out of first place in goal differential last week, now with the Washington Capitals’ +32 being above the Jets by just one goal.
Evolving-Hockey.com data does not have Sunday’s games yet, but just prior, the Jets did still lead the NHL in goal differential relative to ice time. Here’s a look at where they rank (and how they’ve shifted) across key goal differential components:
18th in shot differential impact (down 1 spot)
14th in shot quality per shot impact (down 8 spots)
1st in finishing impact (no change)
3rd in goaltending impact (up 2 spots)
The Jets’ shooting relative to shot quality has cooled a bit, which helps explain why they’ve dropped three games over the past week. But the biggest change has been with the team losing the shot quality battles.
Losing Ehlers likely hurts the Jets in the shot quantity department, but losing Samberg hurts in both shot quality and quantity.
Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) adjusts for team strength and opponent quality. Here’s where the Jets stand:
Even Strength:
6th in goal differential (up 1 spot)
20th in expected goal differential (no change)
18th in Corsi differential (down 1 spot)
Power Play:
2nd in goal production (down 1 spot)
18th in expected goal production (down 1 spot)
24th in Corsi production (down 2 spots)
Penalty Kill:
20th in goal prevention (no change)
29th in expected goal prevention (down 3 spots)
26th in Corsi prevention (no change)
The HockeyViz model incorporates blocked shots, schedule effects, and coaching impacts:
5v5 Offense (top left): The Jets do not create many chances at even strength, and they are now no longer creating more chances than they are allowing.
Power Play (top right): The power play has dried up, and the Jets are now creating fewer chances than average.
Finishing (top middle): The one saving grace to the Jets’ offense has been their finishing, but that continues to fall back to earth with each game. The Jets are now scoring 130 goals per 100 expected goals, down from 135 two weeks ago and 143 the week prior.
5v5 Defense (bottom left): The Jets have been above average defensively, but—as previously noted—they have not been choking the opposition’s offense as much as their opponents have limited them.
Penalty Kill (bottom right): The penalty kill has been on a slow downturn since the solid start at the beginning of the season. The Jets are now allowing chances against in both quantity and quality, no different than in past seasons that caused issues.
Goaltending (bottom middle): At least they always have Connor Hellebuyck. The Jets’ goaltending has averaged 84 goals against per 100 expected. While this is extremely good, unlike their finishing, this is within sustainable ranges and consistent with previous years.
THE BIG PICTURE
The Jets’ numbers tell a consistent story, and the same story they’ve been telling most of the season:
The Winnipeg Jets are an average team with exceptional goaltending, just coming off a hot shooting spree that’s starting to cool down.
That’s not all doom and gloom; it’s simply being realistic.
The Jets have banked a slew of points. Simply going 0.500 from here on out guarantees 93 points, and the Jets are better than 0.500.
Average team performance would be closer to 0.540-0.560. That would push 98-100 points. This ignores Connor Hellebuyck, a goalie worth about 16 Standing Points Above Average just last season.
Altogether, that’s a soft prediction of around 112-118 points using some back-of-the-napkin math, assuming the Jets really are just an average-ish team with Vezina-caliber goaltending that’s banked some pretty points.
However, the Jets’ season hopefully doesn’t end at game 82.
Banking points is nice for positioning in the standings, but it’s the underlying numbers that represent real fundamentals to hockey. The Jets need to clean those up if they want to maximize their chances of making some noise in the postseason.
THE GAMES
Do I have to?
Game 22: Winnipeg Jets at Minnesota Wild
The Jets won, despite not having anyone show up except the goaltender for the first 30 minutes of the game. It wasn’t until the Jets scored their second goal that they started to actually equal or exceed the Wild’s pace.
Game 23: Winnipeg Jets at LA Kings
It stunk that the Jets took half the game to arrive in Minnesota, but they never seemingly arrived in LA.
The Jets were handed a rough loss at the hands of the Kings. There were some moments of pushback, but it wasn’t enough. The Kings came with a fairly specific game plan, being extremely aggressive on the Jets’ defenders. The Jets generate significant offense from their blue line, and the Kings’ high wingers caused struggles in their cycle and low-to-high game.
Game 24: Winnipeg Jets at Vegas Golden Knights
This was a bit different than the last two. Sure, the Jets started slow, like in Minnesota. However, they were fairly decent overall, especially at 5v5. Part of this was simply that Winnipeg played better, but part was that the Golden Knights haven’t been great at 5v5 this season.
Game 25: Winnipeg Jets at Dallas Stars
I’ll be honest with you—I haven’t fully seen this game. I had to leave for parts, apparently the parts where the Jets played their best, according to the xG Worm graph. I’ll have to rewatch as I track the microstats for the Wednesday post for our premium-tier subscribers.
The Jets were shorthanded four times, and, well, three of them… we’ll get to that later.
JETS WEEKLY PREVIEW
Another four-game week! The Jets come back home for some much-needed R&R, only to head right back out on a two-game road trip.
Game 26: St. Louis Blues at Winnipeg Jets
The Blues haven’t been great this season. Their defense has been porous, and their offense nearly nonexistent. They haven’t had much of a new coach bounce either, at least in underlying numbers. They have experienced better goaltending as of late.
Buchnevich and Thomas are still really good, but Kyrou is the only other forward generating top-six-quality impact. Meanwhile, their blue line has been a mess, and little Perunovich is the only one really tilting the ice there.
Fun fact: I was commissioned by a single Jets scout to build a report on Perunovich the year he was drafted. My company was doing individual scouting reports for five NHL teams at the time, and this scout paid me out of pocket for a small five-game report, just to see if things matched their eye test or if it was a product they’d like.
(They did not come back. Not sure if it was my history with the Jets, my natural charm, our product, or what that dissuaded them.)
I wonder if the Jets would have drafted him if he fell to where they ended up picking David Gustafsson.
Game 27: Winnipeg Jets at Buffalo Sabres
The Jets like to play a low-event-style game, as do the Sabres. Yet, the model expects lots of offense. Last time that happened, I laughed, and then the Wild-Jets became a run-and-gun fest.
The Sabres are deep at forward; they have multiple forwards pacing at top-six-caliber value. Most are more second-line quality, aside from Tage.
Defense, though, has been basically Dahlin and then a whole bunch of meh. Byram, who was doing great at the very start when he was traded, seems to be struggling like he was in Colorado—maybe even worse.
So, I expect Byram to get a hat trick against the Jets.
Game 28: Winnipeg Jets at Chicago Blackhawks
Speaking of not very good…
Yeah, Chicago is bad. Bedard will be good, I think, but right now, he merely scores a lot. Then again, he’s surrounded by nothing and worse than that, so maybe it’s more the environment.
Still, I do wonder. The NHL is a very tough league. If anything, the quality has risen significantly as the analytics revolution and other modernizations have led to a much more efficient league. This means it’s taking time for very young players to adapt and reach NHL-productive and positive-impact levels.
Game 29: Winnipeg Jets at Dallas Stars
The Blue Jackets have been very streaky this season. Of course, you could say the same about the Jets.
They are an okay team, but most of their success has come from shooting. Unlike Winnipeg, another finishing team, Columbus hasn’t had much goaltending this year.
Good guy and former Jet Sean Monahan seems to be having a renaissance season. He’s actually performing like a legitimate number-one center. That’s kind of proving me wrong. See, Twitter—I do point out when I’m seldom wrong.
PROSPECT RECAP
MANITOBA MOOSE
The Manitoba Moose lost both games against Calgary, 6-1 and 3-2. They are now tied for dead last in the Central with… the Wild? Little brothers just like big brothers…
The Moose split their two games against the Wolves last week: a 0-5 loss and a 4-2 win.
Nikita Chibrikov: Scored a goal and is still leading the team in points.
Brad Lambert: Got two assists and is catching up to Chibrikov once again. Note: the two do not really play much together at 5v5.
Chaz Lucius: Day-to-day but supposedly avoiding significant injury for now. However, that day-to-day status has been ongoing for some time. It’s unfortunate, as Lucius provides much-needed scoring depth for the Moose as well as competency down the middle.
Elias Salomonsson: Continues to score, adding an assist this week. It’s wild to see how much he’s scoring in the AHL. Yes, power play usage helps, but he’s never been viewed as a scoring guy, and yet here we are.
Dmitry Kuzmin: One of the few to have a solid week, scoring both a goal and an assist.
Jaret Anderson-Dolan: Seven games in and finally has a point. So much for the guy pushing for an NHL roster spot.
Fabian Wagner: Previously, I said he “technically played an SHL game.” Now we can update that to “technically played an AHL game.” It’s the small things.
Kaapo Kahkonen & Thomas Milic: Both are struggling and are probably a big (though not the only) reason for the Moose’s struggles.
Domenic DiVincentiis: Undefeated since moving to the ECHL but currently sporting only a 0.907 save percentage.
AROUND THE WORLD
Some quick notes:
Kristian Vesalainen: Scored a goal and two assists in two games.
Dmitry Rashevsky: Scored two goals and an assist. He’s finally started to heat up and return to his old scoring ways.
Kieron Walton: We have a new NHLe for junior prospects leader! Walton scored three goals and three assists in two games.
Kevin He: Finally hits number twenty, scoring a goal over his three games this week.
Brayden Yager: Heating up just like Walton, with four assists in two games.
Connor Levis: Continues to be one of the Jets’ most consistent forward prospects, scoring a goal and an assist over two games.
Alfons Freij: Tallied a point for the second week in a row.
Markus Loponen: Scored a goal and two assists over three games.
Zachary Nehring: Played two games but did not score.
Colby Barlow: Scored a goal over two games.
Jacob Julien: Recorded two assists over three games.
Garrett Brown: Did not play.
Prospects need to score. If they’re good enough for pro hockey, they should dominate at junior levels or risk losing ground in their development curve. It should be noted, the same is not true for those in European pro-leagues.
Usage relates closely to point production but it is not the same. This is why in a league like the NHL, the two can differ greatly, but in junior leagues where the bulk of players never play pro, let alone the NHL. It’s a bit different.
CURRENT NEWS:
The Logan Stanley Experiment
The Logan Stanley experiment in the NHL continues into its fifth edition, and the results are fairly conclusive: failure.
Let me state this right off the top: the Winnipeg Jets did not lose last night because of Logan Stanley, and scratching him for Heinola falls miles short of fixing what’s been ailing the team during their 3-6-0 skid.
He hasn’t single-handedly sunk the team. However, he hasn’t helped either, and he actively hurts the team’s chances of winning games.
Scratching him for likely better players isn’t the solution, but it should be part of an overarching strategy to address the Jets’ struggles and maximize their chances of winning the cup.
The Background
For those of you new to following me, before I went private and started working more exclusively for actual hockey teams, I ran the Jets fan blog Jets Nation. Eight years ago, just before the draft, I heard that the Winnipeg Jets were interested in drafting Logan Stanley.
I wrote a piece called Logan Stanley Could Be A Good Player, So Don’t Draft Him. I followed it up with additional pieces answering questions and rebutting criticisms of the original.
The overarching theme of all those pieces can be summarized as:
Low-scoring junior defenders seldom work out very well.
The few that do generally score very well the following season, suggesting their earlier low production was due to bad luck or usage rather than a lack of skill or a specific player type.
Scouts overvalue low-scoring defenders relative to high-scoring ones—by several draft rounds.
The best approach is to stratify based on scout rankings but then heavily adjust defenders' rankings based on scoring, especially when factoring in adjustments like my old SEAL model (Situation, Era, Age, and League).
Players considered "safe" due to size, defensive skills, and development paths often turn out to be less safe than high-scoring defenders. This is because there’s a surplus of skaters vying for depth roles. High-scoring defenders are less likely to end up as depth players compared to low-scorers, and almost no low-scorers become better than depth players.
Given this, I suggested that while Stanley was a decent prospect likely to become a solid third-pairing defender, drafting him would leave a lot of value on the table.
My SEAL model for top public scouting rankings highlighted Samuel Girard as the best choice:
He turned out to be an amazing player.
I also suggested on Twitter and in podcasts that the Jets could draft Alex DeBrincat instead if they preferred a forward:
He also turned out to be an amazing player.
This wasn’t hindsight. I made these points before the Jets drafted Stanley—or even traded up to draft him. In doing so, they could have had both DeBrincat and Girard instead.
To be fair, neither player was guaranteed to become this good. My recommendation wasn’t based on certainty or preminition but on their potential to reach this level.
This led to arguments from fans who blindly supported the team’s decisions like religious zealots. In response, I highlighted where their evidence fell short, making the selection a bit of a hyper focus. Every time he did well, because players develop, the arguments reared up once again.
I became known as a "Stanley hater," despite predicting he’d likely become a solid third-pairing defender and could even peak as a #4. I even ranked Stanley above Sami Niku in my last prospect ranking for Jets Nation.
Ironically, he ended up much worse than I projected.
Which Brings Us to the Now
Bluntly, Logan Stanley has not performed at the level of an NHL regular.
Coach Scott Arniel said, “He’s not going to get any better sitting in the press box. He needs to be in our Top 6.”
The press box, however, is exactly where he belongs. He’s never produced results worthy of a top-six role, especially on a team aiming to excel in the playoffs.
Yes, he’s unlikely to improve in the press box, but he’s equally unlikely to improve on the ice.
Stanley has been heavily sheltered throughout his career and consistently poor across the board.
And he’s not young anymore. The average peak performance age is 24–26. While late bloomers exist, there’s no evidence to suggest Stanley is one. You cannot assume the less likely result is more likely.
There’s a misconception that larger players peak later, but this has been disproven. Bigger players tend to differ only in that they decline from their peak faster, due to their more physical playstyles rather than their size alone.
Stanley’s size and physicality are only means to an end: creating advantages to outshoot, outchance, and outscore opponents. But those traits alone don’t lead to success.
There are big and physical players in the ECHL. Heck, I’m physical and slightly above league average size, but I’d make Stanley look like Paul Coffey.
Brenden Dillon and Colin Miller are physical players who help the Jets outshoot and outscore. Stanley, however, is more akin to Nathan Beaulieu or Joe Morrow—players who hit a lot but hurt their teams on the scoresheet.
Adjusting for usage, Stanley’s RAPM Corsi and expected goal differentials resemble Beaulieu’s and Morrow’s but are even worse. He’s outshot and outchanced at a rate similar to Anthony Bitetto and Jay Harrison.
SIze and physicality are only useful in ptentially making a player better than they would without those factors. A gritty and big player doesn’t magically make his teammates bigger or more physical.
“But wait, there’s more… and it sucks” - Billy Mays, probably.
And then there’s the penalty problem.
Mike McIntyre also quoted Arniel as saying, “He needs to stay out of the box.”
But Stanley doesn’t. Over the past two seasons, he has the worst penalty differential in the league. At the Jets’ current 80% penalty kill rate, that translates to nearly a free, extra goal against every 60 minutes he plays.
That’s huge.
I would bet though the biggest reason the Jets’ play the Stanley over Heinola is actually because he “kills penalties.”
The only issue is that has killed penalties is different than should kill penalties:
Stanley’s supposed role as a penalty killer is also questionable. Among Jets defenders with at least 50 minutes of penalty-kill time, Stanley has the worst goals-against rate.
The Solution
The solution is to avoid playing someone who causes the Jets to struggle offensively at 5v5, is porous defensively at both 5v5 and on the penalty kill due to footspeed, and gives the opposition a free goal every 60 minutes because of frequent penalties (which are often related to that lack of footspeed).
Sure, someone like Ville Heinola might be just as bad. Heinola could be legitimately bad. I’m not guaranteeing that Heinola is better than Stanley, just as I didn’t guarantee that Girard would be better than Stanley.
However, if you’re going to play the odds, they heavily favor one direction.
It’s been nine seasons since the Winnipeg Jets drafted Logan Stanley. He is now in his fourth season as a Jet, with 152 games in the NHL. The experiment has failed; he will not become the next Chara—who, at the same age, was in his third year of receiving Norris votes and had already attended the All-Star Game.
I want to once again emphasize that I do not blame Stanley. Stanley is trying to do the best he can, and he’s still a better hockey player than 99% of the world. I have no ill will for what he’s done. This is on the decision makers on the Jets.
The decision makers are the ones that chose to draft Stanley over alternatives like DeBrincat and Girard. The decision makers are the ones that chose to protect Stanley and expose Appleton and DeMelo. The decision makers are the ones that chose to waive better defenders like Declan Chisholm and Johnny Kovacevic over Stanley. The decision makers are the ones that scratched a better Nate Schmidt and placed Dylan Samberg on his offhand side in order to play Stanley. The decision makers are the ones that chose to dress Stanley over Heinola, and early in the season over Hayden Fleury.
Stanley actively hurts the Jets’ probability of winning. Yes, sitting him won’t solve all the Jets’ problems—they have more than one leak in the boat—but this one is 6’7” tall.
PAID-SUBSCRIBER WEDNESDAY PREVIEW
Wednesdays at The Five Hohl are where we publish and analyze the Jets’ performances using manually tracked microstatistics. We also conduct weekly analytical deep dives and discuss the theory and utility of analytics in hockey.
We continue to look into the Jets’ performance in different microstats, adding in puck recoveries in each zone to the already large number of things with zone exits, entries, entry denials, retrievals, scoring chances, scoring chance passes, and forechecking.
I’ve seen some outlets do some letter grades for the quarter mark and I’m going to put those to the test and see what the results say for player performance, improvement, and such.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Thank you once again for reading this week’s Monday Review.
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