Toronto Maple Leafs: Dominic Moore Stats Analysis

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed Dominic Moore on July 1st.

The Toronto Maple Leafs inked Moore to a one year contract with a one-million dollar cap-hit.  He is thought to be the front-runner to be the team’s fourth-line centre.

Drafted in the third round of the 2000 draft by the Rangers, Moore has carved out a strong career as a defensive centre. He is a left shooting, 37 year-old who previously played for the Toronto Maple Leafs from 2007-09.

As you can see from the Hero Chart (ownthepuck.blogspot.ca) Moore is worse at defense than Brian Boyle, and he scores less.  He is also way older. The only benefit, is that he’s cheaper.  That said, let us make a deeper statistical analysis and see if he’s a player the Leafs should have bothered with.

Dominic Moore Stats Analysis

Moore has never been much of a scorer.  His career high is 41 points, and it happened a decade ago with the Leafs.  For the last four seasons, he’s been good for between 15 and 27 points.  For fourth line production, that’s alright, if he brings good defense.  Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.

Looking into his season last year with the Bruins, a couple things pop out: He doesn’t draw penalties, and he takes too many penalties.  This is a huge negative, especially for a fourth liner.  The last thing you want is a penalty from the fourth line.  Moore took the third most penalties per minute of ice-time on the Bruins last season.

Moore was also the Bruins worst possession player, putting up a 47% Corsi.  Considering his main job is defense, it is not good that he spends the majority of his time in his own zone.  Also, Moore was the third-worst (and only marginally better than the actual worst) shot-suppressor on the Bruins.  The Bruins allowed by far the most shots when Moore’s line was on the ice.

On the Penalty Kill, the Bruins used Moore as the centre on the second pairing.  Compared to their first pairing – whether looking at corsi or shots/against/60 – Moore’s line was significantly worse than Bergeron’s line.   Though Bergeron is an unfair comparison, it’s fair to say that Moore wasn’t a particularly strong penalty killer.

Conclusion

There was a time when Dominic Moore was a fourth-line centre who could be counted on to offer up great defense and some half-decent scoring numbers.

That time was about five years ago.

Moore is no longer any kind of offensive threat.  His defense is terrible.  He can kill penalties, but not particularly well.

And he’s 37, meaning that there is every reason to think he’ll be worse than he was last year.

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Even though Fred Guathier and Ben Smith are not really qualified to be NHL regulars  on a contending team, Dominic Moore doesn’t appear to be much of an improvement.  The best you can say about him is that he’s a passable injury replacement.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should have stuck with Brian Boyle, or gone for the still unsigned Daniel Winnik.  Both would have been huge upgrades on what they currently have.

Next: Is Marleau Worth the Risk?

As of now, the Toronto Maple Leafs could really use an upgrade on the fourth line centre position. The signing of Dominic Moore creates more questions than it answers.  Mainly, what the hell were they thinking?

stats from naturalstattrick.com