Quoting: Shibbal18
Rofl what? Montour is a 2 way dman who drives possession. Montour excels in the defensive end and can hold his own if the offensive end. Hes literally the partner Chabot would need. You dont even know who Montour is or what he does, you just want to complain because you saw your teams logo.
That's okay. I know who Montour is! Used to watch him play for Waterloo so I've followed him very closely. Have his Black Hawks jersey hanging in my office! Usually my answer for "who's that one player you have a weird thing for". Him, or Freddie Claesson. Thing is, I know I like bottom pairing D (Montour) or guys who can barely crack into the league (Claesson). You're just making up fictional defensemen.
So here we go...Buffalo's
xGA/60 with Montour was 2.61, and without was 2.38. His +0.23 GA/60 is behind only Bogosian (+0.25) and Dahlin (+0.28) for 3rd worst on the entire Sabres blueline. Conversely, his offensive
prowess had Buffalo demonstrating an earth-shattering
xGF/60 of 2.17 with vs. a 2.26 without. His -0.09 xGF/60 is behind Bogosian (-0.12), Pilut (-0.67; in a short sample size), and Risto (-0.21) to rank for the 4th worst on the entire blueline at generating offense. That means he was the 3rd worst defensive D and the 4th worst offensive D on a blueline that saw 10 bodies move through it. Not a great showing at 5 on 5. He saw only 65 total minutes on the PK and 36 minutes on the PP, so he's not used particularly often on special teams one way or the other.
It's hilarious you say he drives possession. He did, once upon a time. He may look like he does.
However, nearly every player that played with him got notably better when away from him (red boxes moving up and to the right). This in addition to the fact that his CF% relative was -2.8, and his PDO was 103.6 so he's riding some higher numbers that'll come down, namely an incredibly high save percentage while he was on the ice. His 10 most common players he played with at 5v5 were, in order, Risto, Eichel, Reinhart, Dahlin, Vesey, Larsson, Girgensons, Skinner, Johansson, Olofsson. In absolutely
every single case except for the legend himself Jimmy Vesey, they all had their xGF% go up when away from Brandon Montour compared to playing with him. Every single one. You can check the numbers if you want. They're all at natural stat trick. But for ease of access: Risto (40.6% with, 48.3% without), Eichel (42.7% with, 50.6% without), Reinhart (41.8% without, 49.2% without), Dahlin (43.5% with, 51.3% without), Vesey (51.2% with, 50.0% without), Larsson (49.2% with, 52.4% without), Girgensons (45.2% with, 48.4% without), Skinner (44.1% with, 52.0% without), Johansson (48.5% with, 48.8% without), Olofsson (36.7% with, 49.1% without). In fact, he lowered the xGF% of every player he played with outside of 4 guys (Simmonds, Vesey, Jokiharju, McCabe) when he played more than 30 minutes with them. The same can be echoed with high danger chances for, another important stat. Montour absolutely negated any ability to generate offense, but the fun part is that those stats also count for his ability to neutralize it in his own end. He did very little of that too in an effective way.
Here's a fun exercise. Rasmus Ristolainen is the known whipping boy and "defensive trainwreck" of the Buffalo community. He played 1181 minutes this year and had 44.9 xGA with an xG% of 45.13%. He allowed 211 high danger chances, and 28 high danger goals off of those. So every 5.6 minutes, he bled a high danger chance, and every 42 minutes, he allowed a high danger goal. Known bad defender and absolutely god awful mess Cody Ceci played 953 minutes and amassed 34.93 xGA with an xG% of 50.87%. Sort of decent numbers, actually. He allowed 164 high danger chances, and 22 high danger goals off of those. That's a high danger chance every 5.8 minutes, and a goal every 43 minutes. Then our little summer child Brandon Montour played 920 minutes. He had 35.75 xGA and a 44.54 xG% (ouch). He allowed 170 high danger chances and 23 high danger goals. That's a chance every 5.4 minutes (rough) and a goal every 40 minutes (yeeeesh).
Reality is, Montour came into Buffalo as an interesting defender, and let's freaking hope he put in some sort of performance because the price was a pretty decent one to pay. And maybe he passed the eye test. But maybe he's just not very good. And sadly, the stats say he's just that;
not very good. For one, he's the complete opposite of who Chabot would need because he's a meh D playing too many minutes, which is the running theme that was the case for so long with Ristolainen and what the Sens are doing with Nikita Zaitsev. I think he can bounce back. He's been decent in the past, and I think he was given too much to handle on a team that really hasn't done well with handling too much to handle, but it won't be on another struggling team like the Senators who don't have somebody who can shelter him from his mistakes. The numbers don't lie. People do though, and "Montour excels in the defensive zone" is a good one.