Every good-to-great team has a Matt Roy, who himself is good-to-great, just not particularly exciting.
By the Numbers
3
Goals
21
Assists
69
Games played
20
Minutes per game
On-ice percentages
49%
Shot attempts
50%
Expected goals
53%
Actual goals
Isolated Impact by HockeyViz
About this visualization: This image by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple blobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties. The number at center is Synthetic Goals: a catch-all number for the player’s impact.
Player Card by All Three Zones
About this player card: This image from Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones shows how the player compares to league averages in different microstats in the defensive, neutral, and offensive zones. Blue bars mean the player has a higher rate in that statistic compared to league average, and orange means a lower rate. The numbers are Z-scores, also known as standard deviations, indicating how far the number is from league average, where more than two standard deviations means the player is on the extreme edge of the league.
Player Card by Evolving Hockey
About this player card: This card from Josh and Luke of Evolving Hockey compares the player to league averages based on their impact on on-ice statistics. GAR means “goals above replacement,” where “replacement” means an average player called up from the AHL. xGAR is the same figure but assuming league-average goaltending. The numbers at top are the player’s percentile ranks overall and then for offense and defense alone.
Player Overview by NHL Edge
About this visualization: The NHL’s advanced statistics program, Edge, tracks player and puck movement. At left are the player’s numbers in various statistics along with the average number for that same stat among players of the same position and the player’s percentile rank in it. At right is a radar chart for various statistics, where the bigger the shape the better the player performs in those measures.
Fan Happiness Survey
About this visualization: At three times during the season, RMNB conducted an open survey with readers, asking the following question for each player: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?” The numbers above show the average score for the player in each survey period.
Slavoj Žižek on Roy
Why do we say “defensive defenseman” but not “offensive offenseman”? This is ideology at work!
Peter’s Take
After years of delighting in sassy, personality-heavy offensive superstars, I have mellowed and matured. I have developed a taste for boring defenders who are good but oh god so boring.
Roy is physical but not too physical (second highest hit rate among defenders), disciplined but not too disciplined (third of six defenders in minor penalty rate), slightly shoot-y but not overly so (12.1 attempts per hour, third behind Carlson and Chychrun), and surprisingly good at offense (a very high entry-with-control rate) without himself being a common scorer.
Roy was the least offensively deployed defender on the team — starting the smallest share of his non-neutral shifts in the opponent’s end of the ice. His job was to get the puck back and get it moving the right way again – which he was great at – but then to get out of the way, which is boring. So he’s great and boring. This is not damning by faint praise. He’s great! Teams need boring. If he played forward, if had a nasty wristshot and if he had a spit curl, he’d be Nic Dowd. But he doesn’t, so he’s Matt Roy. He’s going to be here forever, and we’re probably going to overlook him for the duration.
Note: I updated how I phrased Roy’s deployments to be less confusing. He was not offensively deployed, but that does not mean he was defensively deployed; he was not.
Matt Roy on RMNB
- Roy signed a six-year deal at just under 6 mill per.
- As an ex-teammate, Roy was the first to stick up for PLD.
- Just days in, Roy suffered a lower-body injury. He went on LTIR and missed “a decent amount of time.”
- He returned one month later.
- I admire the hell out of Linsey and Matt for this. God bless them:
Your Turn
I defy you to say something interesting about Matt Roy’s on-ice performance. I will Venmo you if you manage it.
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