When talking about Blue Jacket players who had career years last season, Brandon Dubinsky isn’t the first player who would come to mind. You might think Nick Foligno, Ryan Johansen, maybe even David Savard. However, if you look at Dubinsky’s year on a per game basis, it’s the best season he’s ever had in which he’s crossed the 30 game mark. Unfortunately, he only made it 17 games past that mark. His 13G, 23A through 47 games prorates out to nearly 63 points over a full season, topping his career high of 54. Flawed as it is, his +11 comes out to +19 over 82 games, also a career high. Looking deeper, his Corsi Rel (4.3) and Fenwick Rel (4.0) were also career highs (again for seasons with at least 30 games). These numbers were piled up in 18:03 TOI per game (4th among forwards), with 1:50 on the powerplay (5th among forwards), and 2:24 shorthanded (2nd among forwards). Making those minutes even tougher was his competition. Scrolling through his top 20 most common opponents brings up names like Ovechkin, Tavares, Backstrom, Kessel, Giroux, Voracek, Backes, Crosby, and Pacioretty. Not exactly easy stuff.
Unfortunately, it isn’t all roses. Dubinsky scored on 13% of his shots last season, a career high mark, and 3.7% above his career average. He was also the beneficiary of a very high 11.6% on-ice shooting percentage. In all likelihood, Dubinsky would have fallen off had he been able to play a full 82 game season. There is also that pesky 30 game mark mentioned repeatedly above. Dubinsky’s best possession season, best assist per game season, and third best point per game season came in his injury shortened, 29 game lockout season. Since joining the Jackets, he’s missed 60 of 212 games. He hasn’t played a full slate of 82 games since the 2008-09 season. That’s the downside to playing as hard as he does.
Let’s sandwich this review up with some more positive. Have a gander at his Hero Chart:
http://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js
He’s good. Real good. Over the last three years, he’s been a first line player in every way but goal scoring. He’s also about the best possible player to play with. He does all the things you want a player to do, he works his butt off, and is almost always in the exact place you want him to be. The numbers back this up too. Early in the year he played mostly with Matt Calvert and Cam Atkinson, and closed the year with Nick Foligno and Artem Anisimov. All four of them were much better with Dubinsky than without him This extended to the top defensemen as well. When playing with Dubinsky, Calvert (52.8 Corsi % with, 43.9 without), Atkinson (50.5 with, 47.5 without), Foligno (53.8 to 49.6), Anisimov (54.5 to 49.7), David Savard (51.6 to 46), Jack Johnson (52.1 to 46.6), and Fedor Tyutin (50.2 to 44.6) were all positive possession players while being negative possession players without him. Like I said earlier, Dubinsky was very good last year. Let’s just hope he can keep up his play for close to 82 games next year.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
