Thomas Chabot's Return to Form? Thank Zub
Over the last two seasons, one of the more subtle stories following the Ottawa Senators was how Thomas Chabot’s performance had tapered off.
It’s not that he was playing terribly. He just was not playing as effectively as many had hoped for.
Some of that was a function of circumstance. It is never easy for a defenceman to log big minutes on a bad team and be expected to carry the load. It is doubly hard when most of those minutes are spent alongside Nikita Zaitsev and the transition game sputters leaving Chabot to spend more time defending in his own end.
For Chabot to be at his best, he needs to spend less time defending and more time driving the offence up the ice.
Despite publicly sharing concerns in the offseason about guarding Chabot’s ice time, D.J. Smith has backed off those comments. The idea was that by managing Chabot’s minutes more effectively, the less watered down those minutes would be. Rather than just throw Chabot into any situation, a fresher player would to a more focused and determined effort.
Through the Senators’ first seven games, Thomas Chabot leads the NHL in ice time averaging 27:10 per game. That workload is almost more than a minute more than the career-high (26:17, the second-highest in the NHL trailing only Drew Doughty) Chabot established during the 2020-21 season.
Interestingly, according to Evolving-Hockey.com’s ‘goals above replacement’ (GAR) and ‘wins above replacement’ metrics, Chabot ranks third amongst all skaters and GAR (4.4) and is tied for the league lead in WAR (0.8).
What is the secret to his early-season success?
One of the biggest changes to Chabot’s game is that he has spent the season insulated playing alongside the legendary Artyom Zub.
When the two have been on the ice at five-on-five this season, the Senators have generated 50.39 percent of the total shots (CF%), 80.0 percent of the goals (GF%) and 54.83 percent of the expected goals (xGF%). When paired with Zaitsev last year, the Senators generated 46.74 percent of the total shots, 40.74 percent of the goals, and 46.72 percent of the expected goals.
It is a marked improvement that has helped spur some discussion as to whether the Senators would benefit from breaking up this pairing to balance the true talent level of the defensive pairings.
At the root of the issue is the fact that the Senators simply have not done a great job of identifying veteran talent to supplement the blue line’s depth. Jake Sanderson looks poised to be an impactful talent and he should make his Senators debut in the latter stages of this season. There is hope that Jacob Bernard-Docker and Lassi Thomson should be able to develop into effective NHL talents, but many of the veterans who have been brought in have failed to do an effective job.
Rather than focus on redistributing the talent through the lineup, it may benefit the Senators to recognize why they would even consider it in the first place.
Through the early going, Nick Holden looks like a shrewd addition to the team, but the biggest drawbacks have been on the team’s right side. Nikita Zaitsev and Josh Brown have simply struggled when playing up the lineup.
From what we have seen of D.J. Smith’s lineup decisions, if the coaching staff elects to break up Chabot and Zub, the likelihood of having Nikita Zaitsev be pushed back up the lineup is very real.
The question then becomes, should the Senators prefer to have one really good pair in hopes that whoever fills the bottom-two pairings can play effectively enough to win? Or, is it better to water down the first pairing to improve the depth?
For me, I would rather have one really good pair and worry about identifying efficient ways of improving the other pairs without jeopardizing the Chabot-Zub pairing. As an alternative, I would encourage sliding Nick Holden over to his off-side because he has experience doing that. I believe the Senators could get more out of a top-four of Chabot-Zub, Mete-Holden than they would with a Chabot-Zaitsev, Holden-Zub top-four. And in doing so, it would allow the Senators to relegate one of Zaitsev or Brown to the third-pairing where they would be insulated, play fewer and easier minutes and hopefully have a lower chance of negatively impacting the results.
I recognize that neither Victor Mete or Erik Brannstrom have had particularly strong starts to their 2021-22 season, but both players played well during the team’s late-season stretch last year. To his credit, Brannstrom did have a strong preseason for the Senators, but was a victim of the numbers game because of his two-way contract. Brannstrom’s first few games in Belleville have not been particularly strong, but he did pick up his first point of the AHL season this weekend.
Granted, D.J. Smith has been loath to dress the two undersized defencemen in the same lineup, but both provide a puck-moving element that can (and has) helped the team before. And if reports are true about Pierre Dorion recognizing that it may be in the team’s best interests to move Brannstrom before his value continues to decline, playing him at the NHL level and even using him with Nick Holden may be one way of pumping up his trade value.
It is just a short-term solution anyway.
Once Jake Sanderson arrives, the expectation is that he will effectively address the depth and quality of the Senators’ top-four. That is a lot of pressure to put on a kid, but his defensive aptitude and puck-moving ability are drawing rave reviews.