Toronto Maple Leafs: What Does Zach Bogosian Bring to the Team?

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed Zach Bogosian as an unrestricted free-agent.

The story is that the weak Toronto Maple Leafs blue-line, while uber-talented, didn’t have enough toughness or grit to be successful in the NHL playoffs, and so they have tried to make up for this by bringing in Bogosian.

But how much will he play, what will he contribute, and will he live up to the narrative, or will the narrative be shown – as so many hockey narratives are – to be convenient, untrue and, actually, kind of dumb?

Hard to say, but let’s check out what we know about Bogosian and see if we can’t come to a conclusion or two.

Zach Bogosian and the Toronto Maple Leafs

Bogosian is 30 years-old,  he’s 6’3 and 225 lbs, which makes him shorter but slightly heavier than Justin Holl.  Bogosian is a right-handed American, and he was drafted 3rd overall in 2008 by the Atlanta Thrashers.

Bogosian is big, and he is physical, but he’s also slow and doesn’t have any offensive upside.  Its hard to see him fitting in on a Leafs team that emphasizes puck movement and possession, two things that Bogosian won’t help with.

As you can see in the chart, Bogosian is a negative value player who projects to hurt his team, not help them.  That isn’t good.  He is an excellent penalty killer (and players who are good defensively but who can’t move or skate very well tend to do all-right in the structured environment of a PK) but he is brutal defensively at even-strength.

At 5v5, he has no offense or defense, so its going to be hard for him to take minutes from the similarly sized Justin Holl, and frankly, even if Holl loses his job, its next to impossible to see Sheldon Keefe deploying a player like this high in the lineup as its antithetical to everything we know about Keefe as a coach and the Leafs as an organization.

Keep in mind, that given the respective amounts of time spent at 5v5 vs 4vs5, it wouldn’t make sense to play even the best penalty killer in the NHL if he hurt you at even-strength.

The above chart covers three year, but in a smaller sample size, Bogosian can look pretty decent. He got into 20 playoff games and had a CF% of 58, which is excellent. When he played, the Lightning had the advantage in shots, scoring chances, dangerous scoring chances, goals and expected goals. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

But how much of that was Bogosian, and how much of that was playing on the NHL’s best team? He played half his minutes with Viktor Hedman, and half with Ryan McDonagh, posting good numbers with both players.

This is encouraging, especially in light of the fact that his last team, the Sabres, was terrible. It would nice, and convenient, if Bogosian’s problems were all because of the team he played on.

I don’t think this is the case, however.  The sample size of Bogosian’s career is over 600 games, and there are lots of players who put up good numbers on bad teams playing tough minutes.  You simply cannot write-off his terrible play for an entire career because of his deployment and team for 20 games.

It may be instructive to look at Luke Schenn’s numbers.  He is a similar player, in both style, size, and career success.  Schenn too has terrible career numbers and excellent playoff numbers this year with Tampa.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, clearly feel that they are  similar team to Tampa, and that they could also deploy Bogosian in such a way as to make him successful.

But keep in mind that on the Leafs last year, Justin Holl played some of the toughest minutes in the NHL and was extremely successful.  It would be hard to see the Leafs giving the minutes of a large, physical player who plays perfectly within their system to a slower, worse version.

And Bogosian certainly isn’t going to get anytime with Rielly now that T.J Brodie is on board.

That leaves Bogosian on the third pairing, without the elite left-side defenseman he’s had in his only successful NHL stint.  Since the Leafs can’t (or at least shouldn’t) use Bogosian in the way Tampa did, I find it unlikely that he’ll be as good.

The Leafs already have Travis Dermott who has destroyed third-pairing minutes since he was a rookie, and they have to get ice-time to both Rasmus Sandin and Mikko Lehtonen.  Therefore I don’t really see a path to a lot playing time for Bogosian without a bunch of injuries.

Bogosian could very well end up as the seventh or eighth defenseman on the Toronto Maple Leafs depth chart, and I can easily see a situation where he doesn’t make the team out of camp and is claimed on waivers.  I hope that doesn’t happen, because I think having someone like Bogosian as a fall-back option makes you a very deep team.  I just don’t see his performance in Tampa this spring being replicated in Toronto because I don’t see a path for him to a top-four role with an elite partner.

I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that the Leafs have picked up a late-blooming diamond in the rough who only needs to be deployed properly to be successful.  It’s certainly possible that given the dogmatic beliefs of most NHL coaches regarding players like Bogosian, that he’s been used improperly the whole time, and is now good.  I hope that is the case, but the sample size does not bode well.

I am cautiously optimistic here.  NHL coaches often throw a big, physical, 3rd overall pick into untenable situations that, on a bad team, would be much worse.  I’d like to think that when deployed to take advantage of his strengths, the Leafs will get the Lightning version of Bogosian.