The Puck Stops Here
Robyn Regehr Has A Poor Adjusted Corsi
by PuckStopsHere on 08/15/11 at 03:52 PM ET
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Last week I published the worst 20 players by team and zone adjusted Corsi ratings in 2010/11. Perhaps the most significant player on the list is Robyn Regehr, then of the Calgary Flames and now a Buffalo Sabre. Regehr has represented Canada internationally in both the Olympics and the World Cup, so he must have been a top player at one time. Regehr is 31 years old, so perhaps he is starting to slow down - though many players remain at all star level at much higher ages than that.
Regehr had a relatively poor raw Corsi, which was the worst on his team. Calgary had a better than average team Corsi so this makes his team adjusted rating worse. Regehr played against a tough quality of opposition. He had the third toughest quality of opposition of any defenceman who played a significant number of games last season (behind Nicklas Lidstrom and Brent Seabrook), but he was not used preferentially in his own zone.
As a result in this study, Regehr’s tough quality of opposition has not been taken into account, but his zone starts have. This is not to say that Regehr was not used defensively by Calgary. Regehr had one more defensive zone start than offensive zone start. This is second on the Calgary Flames team. Calgary had a significant imbalance of offensive zone starts over defensive ones. This is largely because in general Miikka Kiprusoff does not freeze the puck for a faceoff. This gives Calgary few zone starts in their own zone as other team’s goalies freeze the puck for faceoffs and Kiprusoff doesn’t. Regehr didn’t have as many defensive zone starts because there were not as many available.
Regehr is not a particularly good player in terms of puck possession. Regehr was a 17 point scorer. Essentially his value is to shut down the opposition, because he doesn’t score much. Regehr was less successful at this last year than he had been in years past. His +/- has been consistently dropping since the lockout.
Calgary is seeing the beginning of a decline and hence moved Regehr while his value still is relatively high. They got Chris Butler and Paul Byron in return for Regehr, Kotalik and a 2012 second round pick. Regehr is probably the best player in the deal, which was partially forced by the salary cap.
It is clear that Regehr is not as good a puck possession player as many in the league. This is partially explained by the fact that Regehr played against a tough quality of opposition, although that is not enough to explain things. In fact of the seventeen highest quality of opposition players only Regehr winds up on this worst adjusted Corsi list.
Robyn Regehr is slowing down from a good career. It is entirely possible that he will bounce back in a new environment in Buffalo, but he has not been an all star calibre defenceman for a few years and was often a liability for the Flames last season. Calgary didn’t get a big return, due to salary cap constraints, when they traded him; hence I think Buffalo has a good chance to win the trade. Even while winning the deal, I think it is quite likely that Buffalo will be disappointed with Regehr and he won’t be worth his slightly over $4 million a year salary cap hit.
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The Puck Stops Here was founded during the 2004/05 lockout as a place to rant about hockey. The original site contains over 1000 posts, some of which were also published on FoxSports.com.
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