Rasmus Dahlin and the Buffalo effect
Life isn't easy for an offensive defenceman on one of the NHL's most pathetic offensive teams.
For all his hype out of the draft, Rasmus Dahlin hasn’t been nearly as involved in discussions about the NHL’s top young defenceman as we would have expected when he was taken first overall in 2018.
Not good! With the help of InStatHockey, I decided to investigate. And— surprise!— it didn’t take long to realize that Dahlin’s troubles aren’t nearly as much a result of his own play but rather a consequence of the absolutely pitiful “hockey team” that is the Buffalo Sabres. Frankly, I’m not sure anybody outside of Buffalo— hell, probably anybody at all— would even notice, nevermind give a crap, if the team completely ceased to exist overnight. It would probably be a favour to us all, and especially to Dahlin.
Dahlin is excellent in transition— he is utterly unfazed by forecheckers and is able to evade them without looking troubled in the slightest. It’s impossible to rush this guy into a bad play. We’re just gonna roll some clips, I don’t think I need to spend too long convincing anybody that Dahlin can handle the breakout.
Holds a checker on his back, sweet little backhand outlet through traffic.
Love how Dahlin curls towards the middle of the ice, drawing F3 up in NZ off the near wall, then goes against the grain to the near-wall winger.
Two forecheckers try to check Dahlin behind the net, guess which one emerges with the puck.
Aaaand the stretch pass is very much in his bag.
What’s more impressive, the ankle-breaker or the pass after?
He beats the first forechecker before he even takes a single stride with the puck.
Seals off the forechecker to get to the inside lane, outlet pass, aaand his forwards make a mess of the entry. Here come the Sabres!
That sequence there is a nice transition point into the purpose of this piece— if Dahlin commands the neutral zone so effectively, why don’t his on-ice impacts grade out all that well? Here’s my hypothesis (tldr: the Sabres suck sooooo bad):
Dahlin does very well generating controlled zone exits and entries. On a good team, a controlled exit flows into a controlled entry which flows into a sustained offensive possession (when things go well, which is much more frequent on a good team than on a bad one). On the Sabres, a controlled exit flows into a controlled entry which flows into an outside rush shot, a rebound that is collected by the opposing team, and the puck heading back the other way. I suspect that Buffalo’s shot attempts per controlled entry is amongst the lowest rates in the league (I have access to no numbers of the kind to support this, but it’s intuitive that good teams will generate more shots per offensive opportunity than the bad teams, i.e. the Sabres). Dahlin has also struggled to defend the rush, so when the puck does head back towards the Buffalo zone, it is likely that the opposing team will successfully gain the offensive zone and generate shots of their own. Essentially: Dahlin is good at driving play towards the offensive zone, but his forwards do a poor job of sustaining offensive possessions, which doesn’t just kill Buffalo’s attack but also allows the opposing team to produce their own offence.
Because Buffalo’s offence is so bad, there is little opportunity for a defenceman to influence his team’s shot attempts for. Among the team’s six regular defencemen, on-ice shot attempts for per sixty minutes (CF/60) ranged from 51.10 to 44.46. It is hard to express just how dismal it is for a team’s defenders to top out at a number like 51.1— most teams with even a semi-functional offence will have at least one player above 55 attempts, and the best offensive defencemen on the best teams (mostly Colorado) above 65. Buffalo’s woeful forward group places a cap on the value that its defencemen can bring through transition play, where Dahlin excels. A defenceman that is effective in transition creates offensive possessions for his forwards. A low-offence team makes less out of those possessions, diminishing the value of those defencemen. A high-offence team makes more out of those possessions, making the defenceman who creates them more valuable. Put Dahlin on a team with a better offence, and he becomes more impactful and more valuable.
If I were Dahlin, I’d probably try to get out of Buffalo. And I would definitely stay out of an eight year deal with an organization that hasn’t been to the playoffs in ten, and hasn’t really taken any steps forward in that entire decade either. And if I were Buffalo, I’d probably try to, you know, suck a little less.