Canucks Army Year in Review: Troy Stecher

Let’s imagine a scenario here. A young offensive defenceman surprises everyone at training camp and makes the NHL team after three unheralded seasons in the NCAA. Said defenceman goes on to lead the backend in scoring as a rookie en route to winning the Walter Pratt award as the fan’s choice for best defenceman. Next season, this blueliner takes an unexpected step back offensively; failing to crack 20 points.

If you haven’t caught on by now, that tale actually entails the career path of two Canucks’ defensemen– Troy Stecher and Ben Hutton. The former has seen his stock plummet this year, but peel back the layers of Stecher’s season and you’ll soon realize how effective he’s been in his sophomore season.

Stecher’s boxcar stats certainly don’t inspire much confidence, though the results appear a lot more respectable when considering the contextual factors at play.

Last season, Stecher spent the bulk of his even-strength ice-time alongside Alex Edler on the top pairing. While Edler remained Stecher’s most common defence partner this year, they spent 361 fewer minutes together compared to last season– many of Stecher’s minutes instead shared with a vastly inferior partner in Michael Del Zotto.

What’s interesting is that Stecher faced off against discernably tougher competition this season in spite of receiving fewer top pairing opportunities. Worse, is that he shared those tougher responsibilities with lesser quality teammates by his side.

These circumstantial differences definitely come into play when looking at Stecher’s mediocre underlying numbers.

The raw on-ice data doesn’t look great, but it’s actually remained pretty consistent relative to his rookie season. That in itself should be considered an achievement given some of the aforementioned situational discrepancies this season.

Adding further merit to Stecher’s success is the positive impact that he had on his teammates’ ability to control possession. This point is significant because it means that Stecher’s teammates controlled shot attempts better with him on the ice, even if his deployment came attached with tougher competition. The shot control benefit was particularly felt by his defence partners; with all of Alex Edler, Michael Del Zotto, and Ben Hutton performing substantially better with Stecher on their pairings.

Particularly impressive is the fact that Stecher was able to drag Del Zotto into respectability when deployed as a pair.

The pairing struggled defensively but came away with a net positive goal differential due to their prolific on-ice goal scoring rate. Looking at their numbers away from each other, it’s clear that Stecher was the chief driver of the pairing’s success.

Even-strength deployment wasn’t the only change that Troy Stecher experienced under new head coach Travis Green. After leading Canucks’ blueliners with nearly 200 minutes of power-play time last season, Stecher saw fewer than 20 minutes on the man advantage this year. This factor alone assuages much of the concern expressed over Stecher’s paltry offensive output.

On the flipside, many of those special teams minutes were recovered on the penalty kill– a facet of the game that Stecher had little experience with to that point. I devoted a full 1300 words towards analyzing his performance on the penalty kill, but in a vacuum, it’s fair to argue that Stecher was not only one of the best penalty killers on the team, but one of the best penalty-killing defensemen in the entire league.

Stecher killed penalties at an elite level this season, though it remains to be seen if he can maintain that same level of play moving forward. At the very least, the Canucks know that they have a reliable right-handed penalty killing option should they decide to move Chris Tanev in the offseason.

While Stecher’s raw offensive production was underwhelming, microdata suggests that he did more than his fair share for generating shot attempts and chances. One area in particular where Stecher excelled was with his ability to lead possession exits into the offensive zone.

Stecher finished 6th among NHL defensemen in possession entries per hour. Controlled offensive zone entries are crucial given that they’re twice as likely to produce shot attempts compared to uncontrolled entries.

Another area where Stecher dominated was at contributing towards shots on goal.

Primary shot contributions are counted either when said player takes a shot on goal or when he makes a pass that directly leads to a shot. Once again, we find Stecher with some elite company when looking at the data.

The caveat is that the graphs above feature just 13 games that tracked Stecher intermittently throughout the season. It’s a small sample size, though it’s fair to mention that the eye test supports the results.

Finishing ability at both an individual and team level is why Stecher was unable to collect points in spite of the shots and chances created. Individually, he shot under 1.2% at five-on-five this season. There’s certainly room for improvement there based on luck, but likely not much given Stecher’s inaccurate and weak wrist shot. Improving that poor shot should be one of the top priorities for him this summer.

From a team perspective, Stecher should wind up with a boost in point production given an improved forward group to capitalize on his controlled entries and shot assists. That much shouldn’t be an issue given the expected arrivals of Elias Pettersson, Adam Gaudette and Jonathan Dahlen among others in the near future.

Fans are wondering whether Troy Stecher is starting to establish himself as a bonafide top-four defenceman in the league, but if you were to ask me he’s already done that.

Stecher had a positive effect on his teammates’ ability to control possession, performed at an elite level killing penalties and held his head above the water in tough minutes despite being tied to Michael Del Zotto for much of the season.