Bultman discusses the reasons why Filip Hronek was scratched

The Athletic’s Max Bultman examines the reasons why the Red Wings have scratched Filip Hronek for two straight games, and, while Bultman cautions that everyone from the Red Wings’ own coach on down cautions against overexamining small sample sizes, the advanced stats regarding Hronek’s play aren’t very good:

Hronek’s on-ice expected goals for percentage at five-on-five was at 41.5 percent after his first four games, according to Evolving Hockey, and that mark is the lowest of all Detroit defensemen so far. The same is true by the on-ice scoring chances share, where, according to Natural Stat Trick, Hronek’s 33.93 percentage was at the bottom of all Red Wings blueliners. Again, I don’t think those stats are what have Hronek out of the lineup, and the samples are disconcertingly small, but they do tell a bit of a story about what Detroit’s results have been like with Hronek on the ice so far this season.

It’s also worth noting that many of Detroit’s other defensemen have turned in quite good underlying numbers. Again, the same caveats apply, but Stecher, Staal, Lindstrom, Leddy and Seider are all over 58 percent by Evolving Hockey’s expected goals model thus far. For Stecher that’s in just two games (a sample small enough to be effectively irrelevant), but it’s a grain of context as to how things have gone so far for Detroit’s defensemen.

On-ice stats, of course, do not assign responsibility for those results, and they don’t give any context to the level of competition. They merely indicate what happened when a player was out there. And Hronek and partner DeKeyser (who naturally is Detroit’s next lowest-ranking defender after Hronek by both xGF% and SCF% through his six games) tend to play some of Detroit’s toughest minutes.

In the Red Wings’ home games so far (where Detroit has last change and can better pick its matchups) DeKeyser and Hronek received a steady diet of Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov against Tampa Bay, Elias Pettersson and Nils Hoglander against Vancouver, Patrik Laine against Columbus, and Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk against Calgary.

Obviously, those minutes and matchups are not created equal to the ones played against other lines, often by other defensemen. That matters.

Continued (paywall); as Bultman suggests, Hronek’s raw data over the course of only four games played isn’t good, but it’s hard to say whether Hronek’s struggles are part of a larger trend when the Red Wings have only played in six games total.