Toronto Maple Leafs Martin Marincin Clear Waivers

The Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Martin Marincin has cleared waivers.

In addition, the Toronto Maple Leafs have also recalled Calle Rosen from the Toronto Marlies. Marincin, since he cleared, will now suit up for the Marlies.

The Leafs are lucky not to have lost a valuable player on waivers. At the same time, it will be interesting to see what they have in Calle Rosen. Rosen is a 23 year old Swede who loves long walks on the beach, day time TV and the Beach Boys. One assumes. Who knows? At this point, we’ve not seen him in an NHL game. But based on the early returns of his step-brother, Andreas Borgman, I want to.

As for Marincin, all you have to do is say something positive about him and you’re timeline and comment’s section blows up with people telling you how stupid you are. Regardless of popular opinion, he’s a solid player, beloved by the so called ‘analytics community,’ and one who gives the Leafs a solid depth option. In the NHL, you can’t have too many competent defenseman, as injuries are guaranteed to pile up over the course of an 82 game grind.

Marincin’s Stats

I think Marincin deserves one last defense of his play. Just bear with me for two minutes, and I’ll never mention it again. Let’s pretend we don’t know anything about stats vs eye test and consider just a couple of things without bias:

Most everyone probably remembers being shocked when they learned about the inaccuracy of eye-witness testimony in their first-year Intro to Psych class. It turns out that the human brain is terrible at remembering things accurately because in order to function usefully, we have to reduce everything to patterns and dump A LOT of useless info.
This involves people’s recollections of once-in-a-lifetime events like describing the suspect of a robbery. So imagine how poorly people do trying to remember what happens in a hockey game that is sixty minutes long and involves over 10, 000 “events.”
When even the best scout in the world watches a hockey game, he is limited to remembering big events and noticeable plays. This is the reason why nerds can find statistical inefficiencies to exploit. It’s not just in hockey, it’s in everything. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if you measure and track things, you’ll eventually be able to take advantage of people who don’t. It would be impossible for hockey to be the only subject in which this doesn’t happen, ergo statistics matter. A lot.

Now, if you take a player like Auston Matthews, who’s noticeable whenever he’s on the ice, you’re going to be able to tell with your eyes that he’s really, really good. But what about guys who you don’t notice? Martin Marincin doesn’t really score, he doesn’t rush the puck, and he doesn’t lay thundering checks. The only time you ever notice him, is when he makes an error. This makes it seem like he’s terrible. I’m not here to tell you he’s great, but in a salary cap league where every team has some bad players, a 6/7th dman who is solid and won’t hurt you is really valuable.

More from Editor In Leaf

I think we can all agree that while scoring the most goals wins you the game, that there are many different ways in which to achieve this. Is it really that far fetched to think that a player could do a bunch of little things that mostly go unnoticed, but which help his team win? I don’t think it is, and I think Martin Marincin is that player.

Despite the hatred towards him, he actually has some impressive NHL stats. And you don’t need to be versed in ‘fancy stats’ to understand why. Just by using shot-attempts, scoring-chances and goals, I believe I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Marincin is an effective NHL player.

"Here is Marincin’s Shot-Attempt Differential for each of the four years he’s been in the NHL, relative to his teammates: +7.03% , +0.73%, +2.48%, +2.71%. Here is Marincin’s Scoring Chance Differential for each of the four years he’s been in the NHL, relative to his teammates: +1.34%, +1.38%, +1.30%, +2.11%. Here is Marincin’s Goals Scoring Differential for each of the four years he’s been in the NHL, relative to his teammates: +6.89%, +5.61%, +2.14%, +4.52%."

All the preceding stats are from naturalstattrick.com, and they are all 5v5 and account for the entire team’s performance while said player is on the ice vs when he isn’t. As you can see, Martin Marincin contributes positively 100% of the time he plays, over 175 career NHL games.

Just so we are crystal clear, a hockey game is decided by who has the better goal scoring differential. If the goal is to win, scoring goals is how you do it. How do you score? You get a scoring chance. How do you get a scoring chance? You attempt a shot. Goals might be fluky. But shot-attempts aren’t. There are over 150 combined shot-attempts in each game, meaning you can build a sample size fairly quickly.

Next: How Does Jack Eichel Contract Effect the Toronto Maple Leafs?

If you contribute to all three categories, you’re a good player. End of story. In this context, stats tell the entire story. Like it or not, Martin Marincin is effective. Even though you’ve seen him screw up tons of times, it is an indisputable fact that his presence helps teams win games.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should never have waived him, but they are lucky to not have had him claimed.