Categories: PenguinPoop

Goin’ to WAR with Our Penguins (’24 Edition)

In what’s become a rite of summer at PenguinPoop, I decided to publish my annual Goin’ to WAR with Our Penguins article, vintage 2024. Following last summer’s format, I’ve organized the tables into three separate groups…Forwards, Defense and Departures.

Before we get to the numbers, a quickie review of WAR, short for Wins Above Replacement. Just so I’m not reinventing the wheel, I’m going to pirate my explanation from last summer’s article.

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 his role.

You’ll notice in some cases a player’s role doesn’t seem to line up with the way he’s actually used. For example, Michael Bunting is categorized as a third liner even though he’s often been utilized in a top-six role. The same goes for Drew O’Connor.

In hockey a player’s role is determined by his position and ice time (TOI).

WAR can be expressed as a number or in this case, a percentage, with 50 percent being the break-even mark. 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 haven’t 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.

For the sake of simplicity I’ve listed four categories of WAR…overall, even-strength offense, even-strength defense and finishing, since that was a hot-button issue for last season’s bunch.

The equivalent of a 20,000-foot flyover. 

Data is courtesy of JFresh HockeyTopDownHockey and AllThreeZones.

It’s important to note the numbers in most cases represent a three-year weighted average, with the obvious exceptions being rookies and players who’ve played less than three seasons.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the tables.

FORWARDS WAR
Player Role Overall EV Off. EV Def. Finishing
Crosby 1st Liner 95 99 15 83
Rust 1st Liner 63 82 31 47
Rakell* 1st Liner 47 79 31 29
Malkin 2nd Liner 91 93 24 86
Bunting 3rd Liner 42 77 8 43
Eller 3rd Liner 36 32 92 38
O’Connor 3rd Liner 24 62 26 15
Smith 3rd Liner 49 63 48 30
Acciari 4th Liner 26 44 72 11
Bemström 4th Liner 34 37 65 31
Harkins 4th Liner 34 29 91 23
Nieto* 4th Liner 54 43 91 37
Puljujärvi 4th Liner 14 46 86 4
Puustinen 4th Liner 32 64 89 8
* WAR Based on ’23 Chart

 

I found it fascinating that the WAR numbers pretty much defined who we were as a team…and vice versa. We were paced by the high-profile core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni MalkinErik Karlsson and Kris Letang, a group that generally produced strong overall and offensive results, coupled with subpar defense.

On the flip side of the coin, our no-name bottom-six generally had solid defensive impacts, but produced little in the way of offense due in no small part to poor finishing.

In particular, rookie forward Valtteri Puustinen stood out as a player who was good offensively and defensively, albeit one who struggled mightily to tickle the twine. Given that Puusti actually possesses a pretty good shot, I’m hoping he’ll improve in that regard this season. Ditto fellow Finn and former fourth overall pick Jesse Puljujärvi.

Note the lack of second-liners for WAR purposes.

DEFENSE WAR
Player Role Overall EV Off. EV Def. Finishing
Karlsson Number 1 93 100 1 98
Letang Number 1 55 82 6 90
Pettersson Top Pair 89 87 83 7
Graves Third Pair 49 60 31 57
Joseph* Depth 56 92 11 67
Ludvig Depth 38 56 33 97
* WAR Based on ’23 Chart

 

On defense, it’s hard not to be impressed by Marcus Pettersson’s strong numbers across the board…except for finishing. Our dearth of second-pair defenders is both instructive and revealing. It was, indeed, a case of Karlsson, Letang and Pettersson and then hold your breath and hope for the best. And the former pair weren’t exactly pillars of stability, defensively.

We definitely need to rethink the way we construct our blueline corps. The Panthers, for example, employ a mobile puck mover in Gustav Forsling, three hard-to-play-against all-arounders in Aaron Ekblad, Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson and a pair of rugged stay-at-home types in Niko Mikkola and ex-Pen Dmitry Kulikov.

Along those lines, physicality among our rearguards is a trait we neither possess nor fully seem to appreciate. Again, I cast an eye toward (and a stone at) coach Mike Sullivan, who seems all too eager to forget that competitive stay-at-homers like Ian ColeRon Hainsey and Olli Määttä were an integral and undervalued component of our Cup winners.

DEPARTURES WAR
Player Role Overall EV Off. EV Def. Finishing
Guentzel 1st Liner 73 98 0 47
Carter 4th Liner 17 25 46 35
Ruhwedel Depth 75 48 84 44

 

As for the departures, Jake Guentzel’s obvious offensive impacts were offset by a ghastly defensive rating (0!!!) and a surprisingly low finishing WAR of 47. Perhaps we didn’t err as much as people think when we dealt the plucky, popular free-agent-to-be.

Fellow trade-deadline departure Chad Ruhwedel’s WAR numbers are surprisingly solid. Going by the eye test, I thought his play slipped quite a bit this past season. An impression backed up by poor underlying metrics.

At any rate, looking at the black-and-gold in aggregate, POHO/GM Kyle Dubas has his work cut out for him as the business part of the summer approaches. Let’s hope he’s up to the considerable task of remaking this team in a better image.

Rick Buker

View Comments

  • Hey Rick,

    You know I am a stat guy. Stats are very objective, they are nothing more than a record of what happened - no feelings involved, just very clinical. However, WAR is not a stat I look at that often, even though the WAR numbers you cite line up with a lot of my season ending grades (particularly Crosby's abysmal defense, but not Pettersson's WAR vs my grades - I would trade out the entire LHD if I could).

    I do find it interesting that according to the WAR gods (Ares/Mars?) the Penguins only have 4 top 6 forwards with Rust and and Rackell listed as 1st liners and Malkin 2nd. Personally, with the loss of Guentzel, I don't really consider any Winger on the Penguins 1st line and only Rust as a possible 2nd line player (more of a middle 6 than a top 6). Nor do I see Pettersson as a top pairing - however, I would try and parley that stat into a decent trade. (What did PT Barnum say about suckers?)

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