Toronto Maple Leafs: Polak In Training Camp; Good or Bad?

The Toronto Maple Leafs open training camp today. An un-surprising addition to the training camp roster is Roman Polak, who will be trying to make the team on a PTO.

Last year in the Playoffs, Polak suffered a fairly gruesome leg injury, and if he hadn’t, he most likely would have gotten a contract by now, so the least the Toronto Maple Leafs can do is give him a shot.

I haven’t been the biggest fan of Roman Polak in the past, but even I have to admit he defied expectations last year and was deployed effectively by Mike Babock, especially his work on the penalty-kill.

Last year, Polak was the sixth most used player at 5v5 on the entire Leafs roster. At even strength, he was not effective, allowing far more shot-attempts against while on the ice than shot-attempts for. The Leafs did score 56% of the total goals scored while Polak was on the ice, and this gives people the impression that he was more effective than he was. In actual fact, Freddie Andersen had almost a 95% save-percentage when Polak was on the ice. No defenseman could possibly influence their goalies save percentage so favorably, let alone do it while allowing 53% of the shots against. Polak had lucky results and a 95% save percentage is simply not sustainable. Add in his age and recent injury (a leg injury to an already slow skater) and there is no reason to suspect that Roman Polak should be in the Leafs top six.

Special Teams

The entire value of Roman Polak comes from his ability to kill a penalty. He is actually a decent defenceman, as far as playing defense goes. The problem is that a real hockey game is fluid and if you’re doing nothing but playing defense, you’re just killing time until you get scored on. By far, the most effective thing a defenseman can do has nothing to do with actual defense – it’s keep the puck moving in the other direction. The stay-at-home model just doesn’t work.

But on the PK, you’re going to get shelled most of the time, even if you’re a good defender (the best penalty-killer in the NHL, Jordan Staal, allows has a 24% CF on the PK). So since moving the puck becomes less of an option, good actual defense is more effective. This makes the question with Roman Polak simple: does his penalty kill value offset his negative 5v5 value?

More from Editor In Leaf

Polak was the Leafs most used defenseman on the penalty kill,( he had an 10.44% CF) and it was the #10 ranked PK in the NHL last year. The thing is, Frederik Andersen was the 4th ranked goalie by save percentage among goalies who played over 250 minutes on the PK. All the guys ahead of him played 30 to 75 minutes more. So basically, in the entire NHL, Frederik Andersen was, at worst, a top three goalie in the NHL on the penalty kill.

Verdict:

In relation to his save percentage, the Leafs being ranked tenth looks pretty bad. It’s about seven spots lower than you’d think you’d be. If the back-up goalies aren’t putting up close to the same numbers, than it’s reasonable to think that the Penalty Kill success is largely because of Andersen and not a defense that makes the shots easy (all NHL goalies are insanely awesome at stopping easy shots).

Therefore, the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty kill was successful because of their goalie, not because of Roman Polak. The Leafs PK will almost certainly be worse this year because Andersen is due for a regression, just because it’s probably not likely he can be so impressive on the PK due the fact that goalie’s save percentage on high-danger shots (the most likely kind while killing a penalty) tend to fluctuate wildly from year to year.

Next: Ahead by a Century

Since the only value Polak brings is on the PK, and since a look into the stats show that he wasn’t the main driver of the Toronto Maple Leafs PK success, he should not be on this years roster.

He’s a great warrior and easy to cheer for, but the Leafs can ice a better team without Polak.

Stats from naturalstattrick.com