It certainly feels like The Athletic’s resident statistical gurus don’t like the Red Wings very much, but The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn might give the Wings a little bit of credit here as he reports that Moritz Seider’s not earning as many tough minutes on the Wings’ top defensive pairing:
The Red Wings have been unbelievably hot under new coach Todd McLellan with a 15-4-1 record that has the team in a playoff spot. A run like that feels almost miraculous given where the team was when he was hired and McLellan obviously deserves a lot of credit. It also makes you really question some of Derek Lalonde’s decisions when he was coach.
One of those decisions was the bafflingly difficult burden placed on Seider. Lalonde gave him the absolute toughest matchups in the league and it did a number on his numbers. McLellan has eased things considerably and it’s made a difference.
Lalonde had Seider facing opponents with an average Offensive Rating of plus-3.0, 2.5 higher than the remaining team average (excluding his primary partner). Under McLellan, that burden has eased to a plus-2.5 opponent Offensive Rating faced, just 1.1 goals higher than team average.
That’s made a big difference for Seider, who leads the team’s defensemen in xG under McLellan at 49.7 percent. Under Lalonde, he was middle of the pack at 45.4 percent.
Continued (paywall); there are a lot of people who are questioning what coach Lalonde was doing…
And this speaks to the emergence of Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson as a reliable defensive pair under coach McLellan.
The Wings can spread their match-ups around these days, and being “freed up” a bit from the “only shut-down guy on the D” role has helped Seider excel both defensively and offensively speaking.
