Carlson had some very splashy point totals and that generally means he played a big role in the offence. He had 75 points in 69 games, an absurd number that led all defencemen by 10. And that wasn’t built up by feeding Alex Ovechkin for one-timers, either; he was a driver at 5-on-5 leading the league in points per 60 among defencemen.
The question of Carlson’s total value comes two-fold: how much offence did he actually drive and does it make up for his defensive weaknesses?
I had nine names I was debating – the five listed above, Carlson, Miro Heiskanen, Dougie Hamilton (yes, even in just 47 games he was that good) and Jaccob Slavin. Of those nine here’s where Carlson ranked in terms of various on ice-metrics, both raw and using RAPM which accounts for teammates and opponents.
Offence
GF/60: 3rd
RAPM GF/60: 4th
xGF/60: 7th
RAPM xGF/60: 8th
Defence
GA/60: 9th
RAPM GA/60: 8th
xGA/60: 9th
RAPM xGA/60: 9th
Overall
GF%: 9th
RAPM GF%: 8th
xGF%: 9th
RAPM xGF%: 9th
Oh, and on the power play he ranked sixth in goal impact by RAPM and raw totals, only ahead of the three defenders who don’t get time on the top power play unit. Is this your king?
In terms of on-ice metrics, it’s very hard to see an argument for Carlson’s merit as the other teams benefitted much more from the presence of their star defenceman than Washington did with Carlson. The defensive metrics are the worst of the field (and among the worst in the league, frankly) and his offence simply isn’t enough to shoulder that burden. Despite all those points he scored, he wasn’t even first in that category suggesting that while he may be more of a focal point to Washington’s offence, it didn’t actually help them score more goals than say, Josi or Hedman.
It’s the overall numbers that hurt his candidacy. Of the nine defenders, Carlson was the only one that was outchanced for the year and the only player whose team outscored and outchanced teams with him on the bench. The difference between him and the next worst defender by expected goals percentage here is over 4 percentage points. By goals, it’s close at 3.6. That’s a chasm that’s hard to ignore.