At the end of each season, PensBurgh does a terrific in-depth evaluation of each prominent Penguin. For yours truly, one of the most fascinating features is a set of charts that display a player’s WAR, short for Wins Above Replacement.
WAR is a stat you may be familiar with from baseball. In the simplest of terms, it measures a player’s contributions (or wins) for his team, while at the same time providing a method of comparing a player to his peers based on position and role, which in hockey is determined by TOI.
You’ll notice in the following table that in some cases, a player’s role doesn’t necessarily line up with the way he’s actually used. For example, Marcus Pettersson is categorized as a depth defenseman when he’s often cast in a second-pairing role.
WAR can be expressed as a number or in this case, a percentage, with 50 percent being the break-even mark between being better than a replacement player or worse. It takes into account factors such as even-strength offense, even-strength defense, power-play offense, short-handed defense, penalties taken and penalties drawn, as well as finishing, strength of competition and teammates.
That cursory description aside? I don’t have a clue as to how WAR is actually calculated. I looked at a couple of in-depth articles explaining the intricacies of WAR and my brain immediately froze. (I barely passed college calculus and still have no idea how I pulled it off.)
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to put together a table displaying WAR data for all our prominent Penguins, including newcomers Jeff Petry and Ty Smith. I’ve also included our unsigned free agents and recent tradees Mike Matheson and John Marino. No data was available for Josh Archibald.
Likewise, in some cases values for the ’21-22 season weren’t available.
I’ve only displayed overall WAR, along with even-strength offense and defense percentages. Kind of the equivalent of a 20,000-foot flyover.
A few shockers to point out, namely the even-strength defense values of Jake Guentzel, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. Smith, too (yikes)!
On the flip side, the extremely impressive overall and offensive WARs of Guentzel, Malkin and Sidney Crosby. Chad Ruhwedel’s remarkably strong numbers, too.
Data is courtesy of JFresh Hockey and TopDownHockey.
| 3-Year Weighted Average WAR (%) | 2021-22 WAR (%) | ||||||
Forwards | Pos | Role (TOI) | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. |
Crosby | C | 1st Liner | 95 | 99 | 65 | 92 | 99 | 48 |
Guentzel | LW | 1st Liner | 90 | 99 | 2 | 83 | 98 | 1 |
Rust | RW | 1st Liner | 76 | 63 | 26 | 69 | 63 | 23 |
Malkin | C | 2nd Liner | 93 | 95 | 11 | 97 | 94 | 16 |
Rakell | RW/LW | 2nd Liner | 33 | 70 | 16 | 70 | 78 | 43 |
Carter | C/RW | 2nd Liner | 38 | 56 | 34 | 24 | 38 | 22 |
Zucker | LW | 3rd Liner | 71 | 58 | 52 | 43 | 73 | 74 |
Kapanen | RW | 3rd Liner | 59 | 34 | 27 | 40 | 32 | 49 |
Blueger | C | 3rd Liner | 53 | 14 | 90 | 59 | 31 | 89 |
McGinn | LW/RW | 3rd Liner | 57 | 23 | 78 | 42 | 26 | 65 |
Poehling | C/LW | 4th Liner | 11 | 34 | 16 | NA | NA | NA |
| 3-Year Weighted Average WAR (%) | 2021-22 WAR (%) | ||||||
Defense | Pos | Role (TOI) | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. |
Letang | RD | No. 1 D | 75 | 84 | 14 | 74 | 74 | 15 |
Petry | RD | Top Pair | 79 | 89 | 48 | NA | NA | NA |
Dumoulin | LD | 2nd Pair | 54 | 17 | 72 | 50 | 15 | 68 |
Rutta | RD | 3rd Pair | 33 | 41 | 54 | NA | NA | NA |
Smith | LD | 3rd Pair | 6 | 41 | 4 | NA | NA | NA |
Pettersson | LD | Depth | 75 | 41 | 96 | 74 | 29 | 97 |
Ruhwedel | RD | Depth | 85 | 62 | 94 | 97 | 73 | 93 |
Friedman | LD/RD | Depth | 91 | 93 | 48 | NA | NA | NA |
| 3-Year Weighted Average WAR (%) | 2021-22 WAR (%) | ||||||
Unsigned | Pos | Role (TOI) | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. |
Rodrigues | F | 3rd Liner | 62 | 72 | 76 | 65 | 90 | 88 |
Heinen | LW/RW | 4th Liner | 55 | 50 | 68 | 75 | 77 | 78 |
Boyle | LW/C | 4th Liner | 45 | 12 | 44 | 53 | 12 | 60 |
| 3-Year Weighted Average WAR (%) | 2021-22 WAR (%) | ||||||
Traded | Pos | Role (TOI) | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. | Overall | EV Off. | EV Def. |
Marino | RD | 2nd Pair | 78 | 35 | 80 | NA | NA | NA |
Matheson | LD | 3rd Pair | 70 | 79 | 49 | NA | NA | NA |
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View Comments
Rick
Even though I'm not a numbers job this was very interesting and if I'm reading it right I can now
see why the Pen's / Sullivan like Zucker on Malkin's line.
Also, i just saw were the Pen's re-signed Heinen for 1 year at 1 million. To get him for a million
per is huge and really starts to give our bottom six a different look.
GO PENS
Hey Mike,
I saw that signing and I do think it is a good signing. If you remember, I wanted all the RFAs signed so that we would not lose anymore players for free. However, it makes me wonder how they will get Cap compliant. They were already well over the limit before the signing and needed to be creative to get close, now they are further above the Cap.
The Other Rick
I think their plan is to deport a couple of players back to WBS that do not require them to clear
waivers and I still see them trading a Defenseman.
I also think the signing of Archibald was a waste of 900K. Especially now that they signed Heinen.
Go Pens
Agree, signing Archibald was a mistake. Not to knock him but at his age and his skill set, it made no sense.
I have no problem with risking certain player on the waiver wire, I am wondering who?