SwayBlog

It’s no secret that the Philadelphia Flyers are in the midst of a full-scale youth movement on defense. It began in 2015, when Shayne Gostisbehere was called up to the NHL and delivered an unexpected Calder-caliber year. Ivan Provorov continued the process the following season by playing in all 82 games and establishing himself as the team’s No. 1 defenseman before turning 20. In 2017-18, both Travis Sanheim and Robert Hagg hit the big club for the first time as full-timers, and now Samuel Morin and Philippe Myers are banging on the door. The restructuring of the Philadelphia back end is not some future goal — it’s happening right now.

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But the Flyers have determined that turning over the entire defense all at once is not the right path to take, preferring to gradually move a few prospects onto the big club on a year-by-year basis. As a result, veterans have filled the gaps in the lineup, allowing the organization to wait on the youngsters who have been deemed not quite “ready” for their shot.

These veterans won’t be around forever, if all of the prospects become NHL-caliber defensemen. But even though these vets don’t necessarily factor into the long-term solution on the blueline for the Flyers, they can still have an impact in the here-and-now when it comes to the success of the team. And with that, we come to Brandon Manning.

All statistics courtesy of Corsica.Hockey and The Energy Line.

The general assumption from fans entering the 2017-18 season was that Manning would largely be utilized as the seventh defenseman on the Philadelphia roster. After all, general manager Ron Hextall had all but guaranteed that two of Hagg, Morin and Sanheim would make the big club out of camp, and Provorov, Gostisbehere, Andrew MacDonald and Radko Gudas all seemed penciled in as nightly lineup locks. The two rookie winners of that camp battle, the thinking went, would be every night starters as well, right?

As Flyers fans well know, that’s not how things played out. Manning missed ten games due to injury in December, but aside from that stretch, he dressed for 65 of 72 possible contests. Upon his return from that injury, Manning became a mainstay in the lineup, dressing in all but two of the final 45 games of the season. This happened despite the defense being largely healthy from January through April; Manning stayed in the lineup over first Sanheim (who was eventually sent to the AHL to receive regular playing time as a result) and then Hagg over the final weeks of the season. Clearly, head coach Dave Hakstol considered Manning to be an essential part of his blueline corps.

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In terms of usage, Manning was treated as something like a sheltered No. 4 on the depth chart. He generally played with bottom-sixer forward teammates, but more often than not faced that level of competition as well. Yet he averaged 16:04 per game at 5-on-5 (fourth on the defense) and 17:57 per game in all situations, putting him just behind Hagg in fifth. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising, then, that when Hagg fell out of favor with the coaching staff leading into the playoffs, Manning took up the mantle as second-pair defenseman during Philadelphia’s first-round series versus Pittsburgh. The pairing of Manning and Radko Gudas received the secondary matchups against lines centered by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, usage that showcased Hakstol’s apparent trust in the pair as a whole and Manning in particular.

Unsurprisingly, this prioritization of Manning in the lineup over youngsters like Sanheim and Hagg turned the 27-year-old defenseman into something of a punching bag for frustrated fans in 2017-18. He became a nightly reminder that Sanheim had been returned to the AHL despite stellar underlying metrics, and that Hagg had fallen from regular-season top-four staple to press box mainstay for the stretch run. Some especially bizarre usage decisions — namely the choice to elevate Manning to the second power play unit for a ten-game stretch in January — only served to inflame the fans further. By the end of the season, Manning had a firm grasp on the role previously held by Andrew MacDonald as the “most complained-about Flyers defenseman.”

Did he truly deserve the hate?

The positives of Manning’s season

It may shock those fully on board the “Brandon Manning is an AHL-quality defenseman” train, but there were more than a few statistical positives in his 2017-18 season. In addition, many of the accepted truths within the fanbase when it came to Manning’s play really don’t hold up to close scrutiny.

Let’s start with the most bizarre aspect of Manning’s 2017-18 statistical profile: his scoring. Despite producing points at a solid rate in his AHL career, it had never translated to the highest level of hockey, which was no surprise considering the absence of a truly dynamic skill set. That changed this season — Manning actually scored at a fairly impressive rate at 5-on-5 this time around. To illustrate this, let’s compare his scoring rates to a peer who will remain nameless for moment.

Essentially identical, no? It might shock you that the identity of “Defenseman B” is none other than Ivan Provorov, he of the 17 goals and 41 points last season. Manning basically matched him in terms of scoring efficiency at even strength last season, which is less a knock on Provorov and more testament to the surprising production of Manning.

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Manning’s scoring wasn’t especially fluky, either. Per Corsica’s Expected Goal model, no Philadelphia defenseman created higher quality shots at 5-on-5 than the 27-year old, as he led the team in individual xG created per 60 minutes at 0.32, topping both Provorov (0.28) and Gostisbehere (0.21) with ease. Manning flashed legitimate offensive skill this season.

Manning also continued to produce solid results in terms of raw territorial play at even strength, a trend that has persisted throughout his NHL career. In each of his three full seasons with the Flyers, the team has won the shot-attempts battle with the defenseman on the ice, and 2017-18 was no different. Even after adjusting for score and zone starts, Manning’s Corsi was a passable 50.64 percent, +1.26% relative to his teammates. And unlike in 2016-17, Philadelphia wasn’t outscored with Manning on the ice, as they won the goals battle by a 37-35 margin (51.39% Goals For Percentage). In terms of raw outcomes at least, Manning wasn’t a major liability.

And the critiques of Manning that appeared on social media over the past few months — that his struggles in the second half were ignored by the coaching staff, and that the Manning-Gudas pairing was an abject disaster — don’t really hold up either.

Note: Manning played in only three December games.

Aside from a lucky October in terms of goal differential, Manning hovered right in that 45-55% range in both shot- and goal-based outcomes at 5v5 during each month of the season. The results were never stellar, but also never truly fell into the “we need to bench this guy immediately” realm.

As for the much-maligned Manning-Gudas duo, the numbers really didn’t match the eyes when it came to their performance. The pair posted an adjusted Corsi For Percentage of 51.61 percent and an xG rate of 50.06 percent. In addition, the Flyers outscored the opposition 24-22 when the pair skated at 5-on-5. They sure seemed like a mess at times this year, but somehow, their results ended up being acceptable for a third pairing.

A picture is being painted here of a solid bottom-of-the-lineup defenseman, capable of holding his own territorially and coming off the best offensive season of his NHL career. So what exactly is the issue?

Manning’s lingering problem

One of the consistent critiques of Corsi as a viable evaluation tool is that it assumes all shot attempts are of equal value. The mindless blast from the point into a forward’s shinpads receives the same emphasis in the equation as a slam-dunk rebound chance into a wide-open net. This tends to be the primary issue that most coaches within the game have with Corsi, and why many direct their staff to track scoring chances and studiously evaluate plays that result in goals. The counterargument is that territorial play matters, and Corsi provides an accurate look into which forwards and defensemen are truly “pushing play” in the right direction, in addition to the fact that shot-attempt differential has proven to be a better predictor of future goal differential than even past goal differential. And the debate rages on.

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The Expected Goals stat is a way to bridge the divide. Essentially, xG looks at every unblocked shot and hands it a value based on the likelihood that it will turn into a goal, primarily basing that determination on shot location. So if a player is “inflating” his Corsi by helping to create a ton of point shots, xG should pick up on that.

The public xG models are absolutely more descriptive of what occurred on a player’s watch in a specific game than an “every shot is equal” stat like Corsi. But over the long haul, Corsi has been found to be a superior measure in terms of evaluating players (in comparison to the public models at least), due to a combination of two factors: shot quality itself is subject to randomness, and the current xG models are currently incomplete as detailed tracking data (such as pre-shot movement and passes) do not exist yet for all 31 NHL teams. At the moment, Corsi is the better stat to trust.

But what happens when a player’s Corsi consistently looks better than his results by xG, and that phenomenon lasts over multiple seasons of work? Does it become fair to wonder if said player is being “overrated” by raw differentials and would be more accurately judged by location-adjusted metrics?

This brings us to the case of Brandon Manning.

Over the past three seasons — in other words, since Manning has become a full-time defenseman at the NHL level — his Corsi For Percentage at 5-on-5 is a perfectly solid 51.39%. On the other hand, his results by xG drop all the way to 47.75 percent, a 3.64% discrepancy. Not a single regular NHL blueliner holds a larger gap between his Corsi and xG over that span than Manning.

Now, it’s fair to note that there are some good defensemen on this list — Keith is a future Hall of Famer, Werenski is a rising star, Barrie and Goligoski are viewed as high-end offensive defenseman, and Doughty is a yearly Norris candidate. But don’t forget that xG isn’t a perfect stat — it misses some important aspects of chance creation/suppression. It’s easy to guess that xG might be underrating the quality of shots that players like Werenski/Barrie/Goligoski help to create; it’s just as simple to accept that Keith and Doughty’s defensive prowess might be getting underrated by the model. But players like Manning and Stecher, who prove underwhelming by the eye test of most? It’s tough to imagine they’re doing anything right to “break” the xG model.

In addition, Manning’s actual on-ice goal differential over this three-season span is 47.64 percent, which is nearly identical to his xG (47.75%) and is a far cry from his Corsi (51.39%). Three seasons isn’t a small sample anymore, and the goal results seem to be matching xG, goal results that place him in lower-end third-pair territory.

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Per the model, the Flyers have struggled both to prevent the opposition from creating quality shots and in creating dangerous chances of their own with Manning on the ice over the past three years. He ranks 140th out of 169 NHL defensemen with at least 2,000 minutes played in terms of average quality of on-ice shot created, and is 20th-worst when looking at shot quality allowed.

That adds up to a real problem.

2017-18 was no different for Manning

So far, we’ve only looked at Manning’s three-year history when it comes to Corsi vs. xG, not specifically his 2017-18 season. Unfortunately, the trend held true this past year as well.

Manning was +1.26% relative to his teammates by raw shot differential, but when those shots were weighted using the xG model, he dropped to -2.09% relative. Yet again, Manning helped his team to win the territorial battle, but struggled to push them to a shot quality edge.

Per Micah Blake McCurdy’s invaluable shot charts, we can pinpoint the quality-related issue for Manning this past season. As the below visualization illustrates, it was defensive zone results that proved the biggest problem.

Take note of the significant amount of red in the low slot and netfront area in the viz on the left. The Flyers were allowing lots of shots from the highest-danger area with Manning on the ice, and they tended to come on his regular side of the ice as well. Compare that to the team’s performance when Manning was on the bench in the viz on the right. The entire netfront area and slot is in blue, meaning that the team did a better-than-league-average job at suppressing chances in that region of the ice. That valuable ability disappeared when Manning skated, however, even though the defenseman largely faced bottom-sixer competition.

This is where the eye test comes into play as well. Manning does not employ a particularly conservative style despite his bottom-of-the-lineup role. Instead, he’s aggressive without the puck, regularly pinching deep into the offensive zone on the cycle and jumping up in the neutral zone to cut off passes and disrupt oncoming attacks. He’s always graded out fairly well by entry denial statistics (4th on the team in Controlled Entry Allowed Percentage in 2016-17, 3rd this year) and that’s a testament to his willingness to take risks and put pressure on opposing teams.

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But those aggressive maneuvers don’t always work. For defensemen like Gostisbehere, Provorov and Sanheim, players blessed with high-end offensive skills and instincts, it’s easier to accept the occasional counterrushes and blown coverages because the risks are worth the reward. But for a third-pair defenseman like Manning? Even in his best offensive season of his career, Manning couldn’t avoid the on-ice shot quality issue that has long plagued him.

Manning’s aggressiveness likely contributes to his solid shot differentials, and since a key element of Hakstol’s system is built around the regular activation of defensemen in all three zones, the veteran’s willingness to do just that may be a contributing factor as to why he remained in his coach’s good graces. But it also seems to result in enough “big mistakes” to limit his all-around value.

What comes next for Manning

It’s not at all impossible to make a positive case for Brandon Manning the player based on stats. He is, after all, coming off a legitimately strong offensive season, and there are worse players to have on your third pairing than a vet still three years away from 30 whose scoring is trending upward and has never produced a negative 5v5 shot-differential season (both raw and relative to his teammates) in any of his NHL seasons. Combine that with the clear trust he earned from Hakstol — other teams usually assume that coaches in other organizations tend to distribute ice time rationally — and it’s tough to imagine Manning not receiving NHL contract offers this offseason.

At the moment, however, it doesn’t seem like the Flyers will be one of the teams making an offer. When asked about his pending unrestricted free agents (of which Manning is one), Hextall acknowledged that he had the “we’re probably not bringing you back” conversations with all of them except Valtteri Filppula, implying that Manning’s days in Philadelphia are done.

There’s at least a slim possibility that changes, of course. Morin will have knee surgery shortly, and might not be ready for the start of 2018-19 as a result. He was projected to be an NHL roster lock due to the fact that he would have to clear waivers to be sent to the AHL at the end of camp. This injury does change that equation slightly.

However, my guess is that Manning is still on the way out even if Morin misses extended time next season. Hextall noted in his exit interview that Myers — Philadelphia’s top defenseman prospect — is close to being NHL-ready as well, so the Morin news probably does nothing but accelerate Myers’ timeline, not force a re-evaluation of Manning’s contract status.

Does Manning deserve to be let go? After three seasons of watching Manning up close, my view is that the Flyers should go in a different direction. They just have too much talent coming through the pipeline, and while there are certainly worse options for a No. 6/7 defenseman on a roster, it’s not like he’s an elite option in that role either.

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Manning is the rare player that causes me to fully acknowledge that Corsi doesn’t tell an accurate story of his value. Of course, the irony is that while many people in hockey stubbornly hold to that mantra when asked about players who receive heavy usage despite poor underlying metrics, when faced with a player who actually does seem to inflate his Corsi, they continue to entrust him with a consistent role.

Obviously, the Flyers didn’t start Manning in 90 percent of his possible games because of strong surface-level advanced metrics. They did it because they clearly valued his veteran presence and had faith that he would avoid glaring mistakes. But the end result was the same as if they had: Manning played a lot more than he probably should have.

That’s the biggest reason why it’s time for Hextall to move on from Manning, as he seems likely to do. The youth movement pushes relentlessly forward, and Manning simply doesn’t provide enough value to stem the oncoming tide.

> Flyers Season in Review archive

All statistics courtesy of Corsica.Hockey, Natural Stat Trick or The Energy Line.

Top photo: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

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