Quoting: hawksfan1988
again, do your research. Keith played top pairing in Chicago with a rotation of d partners Murphy, Mitchell, Boqvist. you seem to be more overwhelmed with your lack of knowledge then Keith was playing 1st pair d for the Hawks.
Zadorov-Murphy took on the toughest comp and the hardest zone starts. Keith played 2nd pairing and was a big part of the reason Chicago allowed the 7th most GA last year.
Some of Keith’s defensive Rel stats from this year – all at 5v5 among CHI’s top-7 defensemen by TOI (“+” is bad, “-” is good):
CA/60: +8.10 (7th)
FA/60: +9.02 (7th)
SA/60: +6.98 (6th)
GA/60: +0.53 (5th)
xGA/60: +0.66 (6th)
SCA/60: +3.44 (7th)
HDCA/60: +3.06 (6th)
On-Ice SV%: .9168 (4th)
O-Z faceoffs/60: 19.23 (2nd)
D-Z faceoffs/60: 18.59 (4th)
So he’s not getting hung out to dry by poor goaltending and he’s not getting buried in defensive zone starts. He must be facing the toughs a lot then, right? Well, the Central was really weak and Murphy-Zadorov took most of the Elite comp (via puckiq.com) and D-zone faceoffs (via NST) and both guys ended with better defensive numbers than Keith, so that isn’t it either. Keith faced Elite’s just 22% of his TOI and during those minutes his CA/60 and DFA/60 ranked 6th among seven regulars.
The stats show that Keith is not on the ice against the strongest of the opposition OR in the toughest on-ice positions. Here's what the stats show:
TOI vs Elites
Murphy: 25.6%
Zadorov: 25.0%
Keith: 22.0%
Mitchell: 21.1%
de Haan: 21.0%
O-zone faceoff%
Boqvist: 62.07%
Keith: 50.85%
Kalynuk: 50.00%
Mitchell: 49.13%
de Haan: 47.49%
Murphy: 40.25%
Zadorov: 38.83%
Don't try telling me that he was being dragged down by rookie partners. All three of Keith's most common defense partners had better CF% away from Keith than they did with him:
Murphy with Keith: 46.33% / without: 48.75%
Boqvist with Keith: 48.38% / without: 49.35%
Mitchell with Keith: 41.63% / without: 46.62%
Two of the 3 were appreciably better by xGF% without Keith, Boqvist was the same:
Murphy with Keith: 42.19% / without: 49.31%
Boqvist with Keith: 46.99% / without: 46.50%
Mitchell with Keith: 39.43% / without: 45.98%
Do your research? LOL