Dylan Reese.
I’d never heard of the guy, I’ve never seen him play, but his name popped up in two places of note: a spreadsheet, and this particular tweet:
Hey @camcharron RT @nolanknowsbest: ESPN Insider reporting Canucks might sign NYI defenseman, Dylan Reese for depth.
— Thomas Drance (@ThomasDrance) June 20, 2012
There’s a reason Thom forwarded me that tweet.
Dylan Reese is a defenceman who played for the New York Islanders and Bridgeport Sound Tigers who has 74 career NHL games, and 3 goals, to his name. He is an unrestricted free agent this season.
Vancouver ought to sign him as a depth guy.
When I was just scrolling through some names haphazardly, I came across Reese’s name as a player with good possession (Corsi) numbers and decent enough quality of competition and zone start ratios. Check this out:
| Year | GP | TOI/60 | Corsi Relative | Corsi Rel QoC | Off Zone Start % |
| 2012 | 28 | 15.74 | 7.3 | 0.347 | 48.6 |
| 2011 | 27 | 12.84 | 2.5 | -0.013 | 49.5 |
| 2010 | 19 | 13.2 | 0.8 | 0.269 | 43.2 |
He plays so little, yet last season he had a very good campaign, although just got into 28 games. He wasn’t really hurt, even. He missed 11 games to a strained MCL in February but returned. He was sent down and called back up twice, and six times in 2011.
Now he’s an unrestricted free agent. How do his numbers stack up against other New York Islanders defencemen?
| Year | Corsi Rank | QoC Rank | Ozone Rank |
| 2012 | 2 of 7 | 4 of 7 | 4 of 7 |
| 2011 | 3 of 10 | 9 of 10 | 9 of 10 |
| 2010 | 4 of 8 | 4 of 8 | 1 of 8 |
He’s steadily improving, and is the type of player you can send out against moderate competition and see him control possession. Somehow. When he’s on the ice, the play is primarily in the offensive zone.
Look how he’s helped out his teammates and restricted his opponents. I filtered the goalies out of both lists and took his top 50 opponents:
| With Reese | Without Reese | |
| Teammates | 0.501 | 0.479 |
| Opponents | 0.488 | 0.505 |
Reese’s teammates are much better off with Reese on the ice over three seasons by zone-adjusted Corsi rate. Pretend that that’s just the amount of time spent in the opponent’s end of the ice. Reese’s teammates are much better off with him on the ice, and Reese’s opponents are much better off with him not on the ice.
Just one of those things. I’ve never seen the guy play, but he’s worth a look going into free agency. Robert Vollman of ESPN Insider also brings it up as a possibility in the ESPN Insider piece (paid link) calling Reese “an ideal low-risk upgrade over Ballard, Alberts and Rome on Vancouver’s third unit.” It doesn’t specifically say, like the tweet above did, that the Canucks were interested in Reese, but maybe they ought to be.
he has some fights to his name too, including this one against giroux
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZtoR93NcEo
6’1″ with some toughness. his lack of highlights would indicate he isn’t known for high end offensive skills. this was all i could find
http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?hlp=8470798
1 of his 3 goals was vs luongo.
I live in NY and watched him play a few times, he is pretty average, not very physical and, although the Islanders are not a good team and terrible on the back-end, he might be a nice addition to the Wolves, he is not a solution for the big club.
An under-the-radar guy like this would be super cheap. Absolutely perfect for a 6/7.
Wish he was a lety, he’d be a cheaper option than Ballard. Other than zone starts, he played tougher minutes than Ballard this yr (albeit in few games played) – and had better results.
“I filtered the goalies out of both lists and took his top 50 opponents”
To make life easier, just look at the TM and OPP stats on his player page: http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/showplayer.php?pid=1301
TM stats are TOI With weighted average of teammates stats when team mate is not playing with Reese and OPP stats are TOI Against weighted average of opponents when opponents are not playing against Reese. I use when not playing with/against Reese so that Reese’s abilities don’t influence his teammates/opponents stats when comparing.