Toronto Maple Leafs 2018-19 Player Grades

Ron Hainsey by James Tanner

Ron Hainsey was one of the NHL’s leaders in plus/minus, and if you think for any reason that that is a good thing, then please read this article.  It’s very good and far more eloquent than I could manage.  Here’s a quote, but please do read the whole thing it’s extremely informative.

"The purpose of analysis is to maximize the probability of future outscoring, and to do this requires looking at those metrics that suggest success is most likely in the future. Noting who outscored who doesn’t really matter if they do not continue outscoring. This is important. What is most likely to happen in the future is a better measure of who they truly are rather than what happened before. (Hohl, 2016)."

Unfortunately for Hainsey’s future performance, other than goals, he was a negative in every major statistical category (shot-attempts and shots) despite playing with the likes of Rielly, Tavares and Marner for much of his time.

The plus minus stats have more to do with the fact that Freddie Andersen put up a Vezina worthy .929 save percentage when Hainsey is on the ice.  That’s a hall of fame level of goaltending, and it had nothing to do with Hainsey, and was just a flukey instance of happenstance (Hainsey has a long NHL career, and no history of inflating a goalie’s save percentage).

Morgain Rielly’s stats shot way up when on the ice with anyone else.

There’s not a winger in the NHL who can’t walk him at will.

The Toronto Maple Leafs playing Hainsey on the top pairing was, by far, the worst player deployment anyone in the NHL made last year.  The fact that the Leafs went into the playoffs with Hainsey on the top pair is unforgivable.  It is the #1 reason they lost.

Recent rumours that the Leafs might re-sign him are more terrifying than a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

Oh but he’s great on the penalty kill!  Really?  The Leafs were 16th in the NHL in penalty killing, and they were under 80%.  I’m sure they can manage that terrible performance with just about anyone else on the first PK unit.

All I hear about is how Hainsey, Marner, Kapanen and Brown are such great penalty killers, but guess what? The Leafs penalty killing sucked.

Hainsey gets a D.