Pittsburgh Penguins: Olli Maatta is the Pens' X Factor

Saying that the Pittsburgh Penguins have upgraded their offensive lineup in impressive fashion this summer would be an understatement.

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The Pens bolstered their depth up front by adding Phil Kessel, Nick Bonino, Eric Fehr, Sergei Plotnikov and Matt Cullen. Combining this group with the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Chris Kunitz, David Perron and the now healthy Pascal Dupuis should return the Pens to the offensive juggernaut fans have grown to love.

However, at this point in the offseason, there are way more questions regarding their defensive corps. Is Kris Letang fully healthy after sustaining another concussion late last season? Will Derrick Pouliot continue his growth and blossom into a top-4 NHL defenseman? Can Ben Lovejoy and Brian Dumoulin be a serviceable bottom pair? And can the much talked about Rob Scuderi be somewhat usable as a 7th defenseman? There’s potential for this group to be successful but they could also fail in a big way.

But to me, the most important question regarding this defensive corps is, can Olli Maatta step into a top pairing defensive role with Letang?

Look, we have all seen Maatta’s skill:

But, is he ready for a NHL top pairing role and the minutes that come with it? After all, in the past calendar year he has had two surgeries to repair the same shoulder injury and surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his thyroid.

That is a lot for any one person to overcome, let alone a 21-year old kid who is living in a foreign country. Whether Maatta can overcome these obstacles and come back strong is going to be essential to Pittsburgh’s success given the amount of minutes that he is going to be playing.

Bottom pairing players such as Scuderi, Dumuloin and Lovejoy can be sheltered to a degree by only playing 12-15 minutes each night. But, if Maatta is going to be playing first pairing minutes, there is no where to hide. He is going to be expected to take the place of the steady, savvy veteran in Paul Martin which will thrust Maatta into the spotlight. With the questions that face this defensive unit, Maatta must step up and play well.

Thus far, Maatta’s production speaks volumes about what he’s capable of. Consider his HERO chart below via ownthepuck.blogspot.ca.

But his sample size of games-played is still relatively small with only one full season under his belt. He has played only 98 games in the NHL, 78 of them coming in his rookie season and that was while playing the majority of the time with Matt Niskanen.

Below, we’ll visit Maatta’s WOWY (with or without you) numbers while paired alongside Niskanen, Letang, and Christian Ehrhoff. (via stats.hockeyanalysis.com)

Let’s also consider how each of the above defensemen performed when away from Maatta.

Again, with only 98 games played, this is only a small sample size for Maatta. These stats don’t tell his whole story, but they are a good place to start.

Looking at GF60 (goals-for per sixty minutes), each defenseman either increased their goals-for or are within .07 in the case of Letang. So, essentially what this tells us is that more goals are being scored per sixty minutes while playing with Maatta. That assumption is further supported by the fact that each defensive partner sees a substantial increase in GF% (goals-for percentage) with Maatta on the ice.

From a defensive standpoint, GA60 (goals-against per sixty minutes) indicates that each defensemen, with the exception of Matt Niskanen, recognizes a decrease in goals-against while paired with Maatta. While rate stats can be skewed by a player’s QoC (Quality of Competition), this is still an important metric when viewed in this regard.

All of this data can be summed up in one simple statement. With Maatta on the ice, the Pittsburgh Penguins are a successful shot suppression team while also generating plenty of offense on their own. That offense often stems from the back end, which is why Mike Johnson had to retreat from his normal puck possession system and employ a dump-and-chase mentality when Maatta, Letang, and Ehrhoff were all out with injury. The above corsi data represents this as well, since you’ll notice a definite uptick in CF% (corsi-for or total shot attempts-for) alongside Maatta.

All of these numbers are encouraging. But, since Maatta will likely spend the majority of his time with Letang, it’s great to see that the two of them have shown some some chemistry in the past.

Lastly, just because I was curious, I looked at Letang’s numbers with Paul Martin during the same time frame (2013-2015) and compared them to Maatta. Check them out for yourself:

To sum up that data, the Pens saw an uptick in offense and much better shot suppression when Letang was paired with Martin. However, despite forfeiting more shot attempts-against, Letang and Maatta still recognized a lower goals-against per sixty minutes of play. This is a high level overview of their production without taking things like QoC into consideration, but again, it’s telling us that if Maatta can sustain his expected level of play that pairing will be just fine.

Also, it’s important to note that Martin played almost twice the amount of minutes alongside Letang as Maatta has. So, there’s something to be said about chemistry and familiarity that the two should develop over time.

The bottom line is that none of these numbers are discouraging or bad by any standards. In some cases they are very good. Maatta has played well no matter who he has played with and made their advanced metrics better in more cases than not. This is an encouraging sign for Pittsburgh Penguins fans as we get closer to training camp with Maatta slated to be paired in a top defensive role with Letang.

Next: 3 Pens Under the Microscope in 2015-16

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