Whenever sports teams are dropping games, fans commonly look around a team’s roster — especially in the salary cap era — and identify areas where teams simply are not getting as much value out of a player as they should.
The phenomenon has been seen at times this season whenever the conversation shifts towards what Alex DeBrincat’s next contract will be and whether that future value and money could be more efficiently allocated to address other areas of need. In others, the conversation has shifted to questioning whether or not Thomas Chabot’s been valuable enough for the Ottawa Senators.
In the third season of the eight-year contract extension that he signed in September of 2019, Thomas Chabot is the Senators’ highest-paid defenceman by a wide margin. His average annual value of $8.0 million is almost twice as expensive as the next highest-paid blue liner (Nikita Zaitsev, $4.5 million AAV).
One of the drawbacks of making that bank while playing the team’s weakest position is Chabot will either get all of the credit for carrying this group when things are going well or get criticized for not doing enough to bolster or carry an underwhelming collection of talent on the back end.
Whether any of that is fair is certainly subject to debate, but Chabot has unmistakenly drawn some ire online for his defensive miscues of late. Part of this is a function of each game’s result feeling more important as the Senators try and dig themselves out of their early season hole and push for a wild card seed.
In terms of providing value to the Senators this season, Chabot has certainly been more helpful than not.
Through 51 games, Thomas Chabot has averaged the league’s fourth-highest amount of ice time per game at 25:46. Only Cale Makar, Drew Doughty, and Rasmus Dahlin have averaged more. With eight goals and 31 points, Chabot’s not having a career year production-wise, but they are essentially on par with his career norms. Fortunately for him, the team’s power play production has helped salvage Chabot’s offence.
At five-on-five, Chabot’s 0.53 points per 60 minutes of ice time represent a career low. In fact, it’s essentially half of his normal rate. Aside from the 2018-19 season (1.48 5v5 Pts/60) and the 2020-21 season (1.38 5v5 Pts/60), Chabot has hovered slightly above the 1.00 points per 60 mark per NaturalStatTrick.
Interestingly, Chabot’s still having a significant individual offensive impact in terms of expected goal generation when he is on the ice according to HockeyViz’s data.
The Senators are still generating a ton of shots and dangerous scoring chances when Chabot is on the ice. The problem is that the Senators just have not buried enough of their five-on-five chances. NaturalStatTrick’s five-on-five data has the Senators scoring on 6.88 percent of their shots. It is the league’s worst mark.
It would be easy to point to that figure and infer that Ottawa’s been unlucky, but Ottawa’s best players have scored at reasonable five-on-five rates. The issue here is that the team’s bottom-six depth just cannot be relied on to contribute anything offensively. In fact, when Chabot’s been on the ice, the Senators’ 8.81 shooting percentage has predictably been much better than when he’s off of it.
To illustrate just how much better the team is with him on the ice, listen to this stat. The Senators have played 1,024 minutes at five-on-five with Chabot on the ice scoring 48 goals on 545 shots. Without him, the Senators have played 1,553 minutes while scoring 46 goals on 822 shots. In other words, in 529 more five-on-five minutes, the Senators have scored two fewer goals than when Chabot is off the ice — shooting a pathetic 5.56 percent.
The unfortunate part about Ottawa’s shooting woes is that Chabot’s offensive impacts are overshadowed by the team’s porous defensive play.
Chabot will never be mistaken for a staunch defensive player, but has he been that bad this season?
The short answer is: yes.
Using JFreshHockey’s even strength defence war metric, here is a look at the defensive value provided by Ottawa’s blue liners:
Nikita Zaitsev and Travis Hamonic deservedly get crucified around the corners for their contributions. The two veterans unquestionably work hard and willingly engage in puck battles with the opposition, but their efforts are often undermined by their split-second decision-making and ineffective puck-moving ability. They are anchors on their respective defensive pairings and their mistakes often lead to the Senators spending more time in their end defending.
So, think about that for a second. As bad as these players look qualitatively and quantitatively, Thomas Chabot has been worse this season by even strength defensive wins above replacement.
Using Evolving-Hockey’s ‘Even-Strength Defence’ (-0.5, EVD) and ‘Total Defence’ (-0.2 DEF) metrics, Chabot’s results aren’t flattering. The metrics portray him as providing negative defensive value this season.
The constant juggling of partners probably has not helped Chabot this season. Thanks to Artyom Zub’s injuries, it has been a revolving door of partners that Chabot has played with this season.
The irony is that Chabot’s actually played well in limited minutes with Travis Hamonic — albeit, they’ve been killed in terms of the percentage of total goals they have allowed (37.5 GF%). In abbreviated minutes with Nick Holden and Erik Brannstrom, the results have been really positive, as well. The real problems have arrived when he has predictably lined up with Zaitsev or the young Jacob Bernard-Docker. The Zaitsev results line up with the historical norms, but maybe it should not be a surprise to see a defensive prospect like JBD struggle when he’s simply trying to super-conservatively in an attempt to limit his mistakes.
The good news is that Chabot has provided significant positive defensive value before in his career — even as recently as last season per Evolving-Hockey.
There is definitely more to give in that regard and hopefully, we’ll see some regression as the games become more important to the team. The forwards can do a much better job of coming back hard and supporting the puck defensively in the team’s own end. With improvements as a five-man unit, it can help take a lot of the pressure off a big-minute eater like Chabot.
The most important thing to realize is that Thomas Chabot is still far and away this team’s most valuable defender. There is definitely a good chance that Jake Sanderson will surpass him in the next year or so, but fans have to recognize what they have here.
Chabot can certainly be better defensively and he has been before. Hopefully, he can get back to that level down the stretch, but as a collective, the same can be said of many of the players on the roster — especially some of the top-six forwards. This group has to tighten up defensively if they are going to have a chance to push for a playoff spot and it has to be a collective effort to achieve that goal.
Is It Fair to Knock Thomas Chabot's Value to the Senators?
Great article! I'm no expert but often this year I have felt that Sanderson plays better than Chabot
Great work as always Graeme. It's been a strange season for Chabot. Going in you would have thought with Sanderson's presence and emergence it would have been a positive for him but he's just struggled a lot defensively this season. A new head coach is coming when the ownership thing gets resolved and he'll figure out how to get Chabot's whole game back on track. Wouldn't surprise me to see a complete reverse and see a career year in 2023-24.