Taking a closer look at Jamie Drysdale since he joined the Philadelphia Flyers
Later this summer, I will take a significantly more comprehensive look at Jamie Drysdale’s game with relevant clips attached.
At first, I planned on writing something like this in a more effort-intensive way. I also don’t know if I love the sample size of 14 games as far as breaking out the film study is concerned.
It’s not that the sample is insignificant regarding macro-level results. It’s still early there, but late enough to establish a trend. I don’t want to pick “one-off” plays out of a game and claim that they’re some kind of pattern.
But for now, I already have thoughts and as it happens, I was provided with a decent springboard.
Early Results: Jamie Drysdale in Philadelphia
Drysdale’s early results are bad. There’s no real need to couch that or to run from it.
The stats don’t look good. Let the very red numbers wash over you because they’re not fake. They weren’t just imagined from thin air.
However, I don’t think anyone is being fair to Jamie Drysdale if you were here for early results and poor expected goal data is hardly a death sentence, either.
Exhibit A: Year-over-year changes for Morgan Frost
Morgan Frost went from an on-ice disaster to a middling play-driver to an elite play-driver as measured by his impact on expected goals. His impact on chance prevention is near the 100th percentile, and his impact on chance creation is around the 70th percentile.
That’s an incredible year-over-year leap, and if his on-ice finishing tracked with the offensive and defensive impacts? That’s a 1C-caliber season.
And this isn’t some outlier, either. It’s fairly common. For another example on the same team from the same draft year? This is Owen Tippett’s year-over-year changes.
Year-over-year changes for Owen Tippett
Owen Tippett’s presence still means that the Flyers are likely to give up more scoring chances than they otherwise would. Still, he’s also responsible for an elite impact on the amount of scoring chances the Flyers generate. I get quite annoyed by how he creates this offense because I think his individualistic approach to creation hamstrings his impact on actual goal-scoring.
For that reason, his primary change didn’t have a better impact on expected goals. It was primarily improving his decision-making enough to have an actual impact on goals instead of merely expected goals.
Make no mistake, “Analytics” went from calling him abhorrent to awesome in record time
Rasmus Ristolainen may be the most famous recent story of the “rags-to-riches” analytics profile. He started as one of the worst defensemen in the league, and ended up posting… dare I say… top-tier playdriving results. Now, a lot of people will point out that he’s largely played third-pair minutes during this time.
But that doesn’t account for the times last year in which he was the partner most likely to drag Ivan Provorov into acceptability on the top pair. It also ignores that this is happening largely as a result of defensive depth, and not because of a lack of trust in the coaching staff.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Risto wasn’t secretly turned into an elite defenseman overnight. But he did go from one of the worst defensemen in the league by on-ice results to a cromulent middle-pair shutdown guy. That’s quite the feat for someone who was 26 years old at the beginning of the process.
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Without further ado, let’s talk about Jamie Drysdale
It’s worth first establishing how Drysdale is coming by these abhorrent expected goal results. A 40% share would properly be described as horrendous, but how are we coming by that number?
While Drysdale is on the ice, the Flyers are generating 1.94 expected goals per 60 minutes of play. For context, this number is abysmal. It’s no good. It’s very bad. Nic Deslauriers is putting up 1.43.
While Drysdale is on the ice, the Flyers are allowing 2.65 expected goals against per 60. For context, this is an acceptable number. To be sure, the Flyers are a strong defensive team and limit how much damage one player could do to the overall result. But Drysdale is not pulling a DeAngelo, and singlehandedly cratering the team defense with nearly or over 4 expected goals allowed per hour.
So the abysmal share comes from the fact that he allows a middling amount of chances against him while creating next to nothing. Given his skill set, it’s an interesting dynamic. But it’s also fairly easily explained.
To start, I want to talk about the parts of these results which Drysdale has little control over. His situation is not perfect. It isn’t optimized, or even particularly close.
After we talk about ways to improve these results by improving his environment, we’ll talk about what he needs to do differently to take the next steps.
Seven defensemen is an anchor on the underlying results of every single defenseman who is playing in this environment. Every single D-man is playing with one hand tied behind their back. The constant rotating of partners has made it impossible to read off of the other player, which makes things like setting gaps and breaking out pucks a herculean effort compared to usual.
Drysdale may be uniquely impacted by this because the Flyers want him to play an extremely high-risk style. They want to weaponize his assets and turn him into a zone entry machine from the back end. That means jumping up ice for every rush and setting intentionally bad gaps by putting yourself in a spot where you’re below the puck in the event of a turnover.
Walker and Seeler are stapled at the hip despite the 7 defenseman assembly, and that’s for good reason. Walker is being asked to play a similar role to what they want out of Drysdale. (As an aside, if you want a picture of Drysdale’s ultimate ceiling: think Walker on Captain America’s super-soldier serum.)
Seeler is the kind of guy who makes it easy to take risks because he’s easy to read off of. He makes simple plays. He’s incapable of activating in the offensive zone and slipping down from the blueline at anything more than negligible volume. So someone like Walker has free reign to… well… live his best life.
Drysdale being with anyone and everyone means he has to read the tendencies of his carousel of partners throughout the game. York, another defenseman who loves to activate, is on the ice with him? He better stay back more often. Staal is on the ice and falls into the Seeler camp. I have the green light.
It’s a perpetual yellow light, and it makes Drysdale’s learning curve significantly more difficult. It also introduces conscious thinking into the game, which is bad for everyone. But especially for young defensemen.
This isn’t me doing a Zion Williamson tomahawk dunk on Torts, by the way. He knows. He’s practically said as much in less detail. He doesn’t have a choice, at the moment. What if he were sitting someone based on his on-ice performance? It’d be Drysdale or Zamula, and those are the last two guys he’s interested in sitting for an extended time. For developmental reasons.
This is why the trade deadline is critical. This is why I’m going to react harshly to even the whisper of doing something unsightly like keeping both Walker and Seeler because this is harming the development of Drysdale (and even Zamula.)
We can’t accept that as an organization. It would compromise this team for years to come. That’s one element that Drysdale can’t control. There’s one more, and I alluded to it last night while watching the Blackhawks game.
When analyzing players with expected goals data, there’s a reflex to essentially say: “Good team. Should lead to good results.” But it isn’t always quite that simple. The Flyers are a good team, but as much benefit as Drysdale is reaping from the system… he’s suffering even more from the team’s flaws as a defenseman who plays his kind of game.
The Flyers are very good at every aspect of team defense. That means that someone like Drysdale is precluded from the possibility of posting truly egregious raw defensive results. A negative effect on elite defense means very good defense, to put it crudely.
But the Flyers happen to suck at nearly every aspect of team offense. Their dearth of playmaking talent means that it’s nearly impossible for them to get good pucks to the point, which means Drysdale is rarely allowed to create.
This was his only opportunity to create an activation from the blue line all night. And it didn’t come intentionally. This wasn’t a puck he received from a pass. It bounced off of his skate because another Flyer mistimed and mistargeted their pass.
Through the sheer brilliance of his skating, he managed to corral that puck at the blue line and then turn on a dime to dive down the middle lane. He used some truly brilliant footwork to protect the puck from one Blackhawks checker and turn another other for a loop. Then he has the vision and passing touch to thread an absolute dime to Coots.
Drysdale should be getting opportunities like this several times a game. They should be getting the puck to the point whenever they can while he’s on the ice, not because he’ll spray hope wristers from the blue line. But because he can use his elite skating to get downhill and create highly dangerous looks.
But the Flyers are a team that prefers to cycle the puck behind the net and (try to) create offense from there. It’s one way you can see the team “preparing for Matvei Michkov,” who is one of the best players behind the net I’ve ever seen and he’s only 19.
Until Matvei gets here, however, we have to make due with other players who don’t have his uncanny balance and power through contact. Or his immaculate edgework in tight spaces. Or his elite vision. Or his uncanny passing touch. Man, I need that kid in this team’s life.
Anyway. Where were we? That’s right. The offensive zone disconnects.
At this point, the Flyers have somewhere around four forwards who I’m fairly confident can make plays behind the net. Konecny, Frost, Tippett, and Farabee. Coots used to be on this list, but he just–at this stage–doesn’t have the timing or the true protection abilities he used to. We’ll see if he joins the list again as he gets a full season under his belt.
If Drysdale isn’t playing with those four players, and three of them are on the same line, then he isn’t getting very many pucks filtered to his point. His opportunity to create is minimal. And therefore, he’s just going to stand up in the offensive zone blueline a lot. And that isn’t something he can control.
With a team who was better at making plays for each other, he may well be generating 3+ expected goals per 60. Suddenly, the new post would read like this: “What encouraging signs for Jamie Drysdale! He has a 53% expected goal share since the trade!”
The Flyers aren’t that team yet, though. Drysdale is a dormant weapon. The task for the front office is getting the kinds of playmakers in here that can get him the puck and “let Jamie cook.”
This isn’t to say that Jamie Drysdale is just wholly a victim of circumstance and that he’d already be an elite defenseman if not for the wicked machinations of the Flyers’ forwards and their constant stumbles with the puck. Don’t get me wrong, it plays a factor. But he could also help himself, a lot. And this is where we get to the “a lot to learn” side of the equation.
Jamie Drysdale plays defense wrong. I mean that in the most literal way possible. He defends as if he’s someone in a different body. This kid thinks he’s an underwhelming skater but is 6’4″ and 220 pounds. At least, that’s how it looks watching him set gaps in the neutral zone.
Drysdale’s gaps are often set with the intention of giving the opposing forward a wide berth. There’s often more than a full stick length or two between him and his check. He arrives at these gaps with backward skating, and while he’s a marvelous skater in every direction, he is increasing the difficulty of his blue-line stands threefold. If not more.
Some defenders come by marvelous results with this method of defending their blueline. Noah Dobson, for example, has realized that this style comes very naturally to him. It’s a big reason for his leap this season. But Noah Dobson is 6’4″. Factoring in the sticks they use, it may not be a stretch to say that Noah has double Jamie’s reach. Therefore, when Noah sets a “loose gap,” it’s a trap. Because that gap will close a lot sooner than you think.
Jamie Drysdale, of a height that is sub-six feet, is not blessed with Dobson’s reach. Therefore, the object is not closer than the mirror makes it appear. He is, however, blessed with somewhere around three times Dobson’s mobility. He might be able to beat Dobson in a skating competition going backward while Noah goes forward.
The key is to weaponize that. Don’t set gaps by going backward and affording your check the space to dictate. Close on your check from the moment that pass is thrown, and be on top of them before they have the chance to breathe. Unlike Noah Dobson, Jamie Drysdale doesn’t have the mass to absorb forwards who have built up momentum already. People don’t bounce off of him like he’s a brick wall.
But Drysdale does have the skating ability to close on forwards before they’ve ever built up their momentum. Force is mass times acceleration, right? So it doesn’t matter if Jamie is giving up mass to the other player when he’s the one with an acceleration multiplier.
My guess is he’s been taught to defend this way ever since his earliest days in bantam hockey. It wasn’t going to be coached out of him in a day.
And while he is defending this way, he’s only slightly less permissive than an open door when an opposing forward has the puck coming across his blueline. I say “slightly,” because I want to give this kid his flowers. Someway, somehow, he makes some stops while making this endeavor as hard for him as humanly possible. And I’m quite impressed by that.
Through the raw strength of his tools, he will occasionally kill a rush play with the excellence of his skating and his surprisingly sturdy frame despite approaching the situation with one hand tied behind his back. And wow. It’s pretty awesome.
It gives you a glimpse into what he could be if he learned the proper way to defend someone of his abilities. It’ll take time to get there, but I believe he can get there as he corrects his habits.
I think the way defensemen acquit themselves in retrieval scenarios will tell you a lot about their processor, and Jamie acquits himself very well. Especially because this is something that generally comes with a lot more experience in the league. He’s poised, but clever. He’s very aware that his ability to escape is an asset here and he weaponizes it.
He’s a smart kid. He just learned the wrong things and built the wrong muscle memory at a very young age. It’s going to take time to cleanse him of those habits, but the potential for what he can be when he cures himself of those bad habits? It’s sky-high.
Stay patient. This kid is less than two years younger than the prospect they traded for him, and he missed one of those years with a severe injury. For the moment? Flashes of potential should and will suffice.
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Mandatory Credit: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images
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Great article – very in depth and analytical toward supporting your premise (at least with focusing on Drysdale for now).
I think there are a number of things contributing to his sub-par play (you pretty much touched on all of them but here they are from another perspective):
1) New Team – obviously I do not have to get into this in depth. He is a young kid and is finding his way in a new city, blah blah blah, etc… I do think he is pressing as well which should diminish with time.
2) He is still young – as you know Defencemen can take quite a while to really mature and develop into the players scouts foresee. I think what is most important, given his age, is watching for glimpses of that raw talent being displayed at the NHL level. Next comes consistency, and so forth…
3) You touched on it – the Flyers offense is just lacking. They REALLY need a superstar to tie this whole thing together (Come on Matvei!!). They play hard, fast and physical while possessing some interesting young pieces who could blossom one day. But for now its been a raw, rugged, getting pucks to the net and crashing sort of style. And this style does not compliment Drysdale. Its gotta be a tough adjustment, especially given his age.
4) Confidence – He clearly lacks confidence – as mentioned above, new team, young kid, injured all of last season… trying to prove himself. I truly think once he procures his confidence and swagger he will be fine.
Now with that being said – I do appreciate the importance of analytics. But eye test is key here. We need to see that he understands and applies the basics of his position at the NHL level. You said it best, “He’s poised, but clever. He’s very aware that his ability to escape is an asset here and he weaponizes it”. I’d say watching him on a consistent basis, he does everything well (at least above average). Yes he’s not cracking bodies like Risto (though he ostensibly tries). And sure he may be a bit weak on the boards currently while forcing plays every now and then, but he does have at his disposal all of the tools needed to craft a top line D man. This kid is literally oozing with talent and the Flyers have to find a way to efficiently develop him (maybe we can start with having 6 D men on game rosters and not 7, Torts).