The Skinny on the Value of Franchise Defensemen

(Thanks to Kevin Dexter- former WRHU Isles voice, and now with 1010 WINS and others for the idea)

With this week's signing of Johnny Boychuk, the Isles now have three cornerstone defensemen locked up into the next decade.  That's a good thing, because the Isles have been a totally different team when the three of them are in the lineup and when they are not.

The Isles have played 71 games - Nick Leddy has played 68 of them, Travis Hamonic and Johnny Boychuk have each played 61.  Since Boychuk and Hamonic were out together for a bit in December, including the back-to-back games where the Isles blew 3-0 leads, all three defensemen have played in 54 of the first 71 games.  

The records with (all of) them and without them are significantly different:

	Games	Record	GF	GA	Shots for	Shots Vs
Missing at least 1	17	8-9-0	43	53	519	472
All 3 in	54	35-15-4	171	143	1878	1513
Totals	71	43-24-4	214	196	2397	1985
Goal totals exclude shootout goals

It takes a lot of things for a team to be succesful, including health!

 

 

Forever1940 is the nom de plume of Eric Hornick, statistician on Islander home telecasts since January 21, 1982. Visit my blog: NYISkinny.com and follow me on Twitter @ehornick