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Taylor Chorney: 2015-16 Season Review

By Patrick Holden

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May 24, 2016 10:58 am

Taylor+Chorney+Washington+Capitals+v+New+Jersey+GgASNHYdBhgx

Photo: Elsa: Getty Images

Say my name, say my name.

Actin’ kinds shady in callin’ me Titus/Tito/Theo/Thor etc

Say my name, say my name.

The name’s Chorney. Taylor Chorney. Over the last year we’ve all learned a few things about the man who this name belongs to:

  1. He’s a real person
  2. He’s an NHL player
  3. This guy we now call Chorns is a perfectly suitable seventh defenseman who can hold his own at the NHL level when called upon.

By the Number

55 games played
13:11 time on ice per game
1 goals
5 assists
50.3 5v5 shot-attempt percentage
57.1 5v5 goal percentages

Visualization by Hockeyviz

history-1516-WSH-chornta87

About this visualization: This series of charts made by Micah McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows various metrics for the player over the course of the 2015-16 season. A short description of each chart:

  1. Most common teammates during 5v5
  2. Ice time per game, split up by game state
  3. 5v5 adjusted shot attempts by the team (black) and opponents (red)
  4. 5v5 adjusted shooting percentage by the team (black) and opponents (red)
  5. Individual scoring events by the player

Pat’s Take

I’m happy to say that I was wrong about Taylor Chorney. Before the season started, I was concerned about the Caps’ defensive depth and thought they should seize the opportunity to bring back Steve Oleksy as their seventh defenseman. While I’ll maintain that the added defensive depth Oleksy would have brought would still have been welcome, I was wrong about that Chorney couldn’t hold down the job of a seventh blue liner on an NHL team.

If you had asked me before the season whether, at the end of the season, Chorney was more likely to have played in over 40 games or be off the team completely, I’d have chosen the latter. But Chorney, who had appeared in more than 12 games in a single season just once (42 games with the Oilers in 2009-10) suited up for the Caps 55 times and performed so well that the organization gave him a two-year contract extension during the season.

This extension was well-deserved.

While Chorney ranked seventh among the team’s seven blue liners in puck possession with a 50.3 percent score-adjusted shot attempt percentage, just about every team in the league would take a puck possession number above 50 percent from a seventh defenseman who was called into duty as often as Chorney was in 2015-16. Defensively, Chorney’s 50.4 shot attempts against per 60 at 5-on-5 was second only to teammate Dmitry Orlov.

Oh, and he also logged over a minute per game on the penalty kill.

Generally, anything better than “horrible” is fine enough from a seventh defenseman. But Chorney was better than that during his first season in red. He proved himself completely adequate as an NHL defender and the Caps can be comfortable penciling him as the seventh guy on their depth chart as they outline their offseason plan.

Tobias on RMNB

  • In happier times, in March Chorney scored his first Caps goal and his first overall since 2011. That goal came just days after Chorney’s first child Turner was born.
  • Turner is a great name, though I’m 80 percent sure we used that one in our “we can’t remember Chorney’s first name” bit.

Your Turn

Are you as satisfied as I am with Chorney as the team’s seventh defender moving forward? Were you pleasantly surprised or did you somehow see this revelation coming?

Read more: Japers’ Rink