RFA defensemen: Trouba vs. Lindholm vs. Ristolainen (Trending Topics)

There are three particularly notable unsigned restricted free agent defensemen left in the NHL.

One is Jacob Trouba, he of the now-infamous trade demand that likely will not be met. There’s also Hampus Lindholm, whom the latest rumors say is seeking something like $48 million-plus for the next eight seasons. Then finally, there’s Rasmus Ristolainen, possibly the most amiable of the group because he’s the only one actually practicing with his team even as he remains unsigned.

What’s interesting about all three is that, as discussed Thursday, TSN’s Bob McKenzie pretty much believes all their asks are the same. They probably all want at least $6 million AAV on longer-term deals. Maybe they don’t want to max it out on term, but they want to be assured lots of money at least through what we can only assume is going to be another work stoppage in the next few years.

And the reason that’s interesting is the disparity in quality between these players. Lindholm is an elite among elite defensemen despite being only 22. Trouba is a guy who has a lot of upside and puts up solid numbers despite being paired with a boat anchor named Mark Stuart. And Ristolainen, as has been tilled over more than a few times here, scores a lot and that’s about it.

(In fact, if you want to call this column an explanation of why you shouldn’t be high on Ristolainen’s upside, I think that would be fair.)

Let’s first talk about why Lindholm is incredible. However, the argument for his in by no means traditional. He only had 28 points last season, which isn’t a lot, and in three seasons his career highs — 10 for goals this past year, 34 for points in 2014-15 — aren’t that impressive. Instead, the argument for Lindholm being an elite defender is in the underlying numbers.

Lindholm’s most common partner was rookie Josh Manson, and they absolutely pummeled the competition. Their 5-on-5 adjusted CF% was north of 61 over nearly 800 minutes together. But even when Lindholm was playing with the ghost of Kevin Bieksa, he was still a heavily positive possession player. To be fair, he wasn’t really used in any sort of shutdown role, but the Ducks’ possession numbers jump almost 7.5 percentage points when he comes over the boards.

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There’s a huge jump in attempts generated, and an even bigger decline in attempts conceded. Everything he does is conducive to more goals for and fewer against, and that’s the definition of what you want a defenseman — or really, any player — to do. And it’s not like he was really sheltered from defensive responsibility, because he was their No. 2 penalty killer in terms of TOI (but not TOI per game because Cam Fowler missed 13). He led the Ducks in ice time last year by nearly 200 minutes. And when you talk about his middling production, well, he was on their second power play unit behind Fowler and Sami Vatanen, who both got nearly 50 percent more PP TOI per game.

The question one has to ask when determining whether Lindholm will be “worth” a major pay raise that would put him in the upper echelon of defenders is “How much of his quality came from playing for Bruce Boudreau?” Boudreau is, of course, one of the best coaches in the league, and Randy Carlyle is very much not. (Bob Murray traded a Lamborghini in for a Geo in this regard.) But while it’s a small sample, the quality of Lindholm’s play at the World Cup likewise speaks to the fact that yeah, he’s just really damn good and that’s pretty much the end of the discussion.

Jacob Trouba, who’s about a month and a half younger than Lindholm, has all the tools to become a player pretty close to that quality. He was second on the Jets in ice time last year, behind only All-Star Dustin Byfuglien. And a lot like Lindholm, his production suffered because of how he was used. Trouba had a mere 21 points last season, with six goals and 15 assists. Both numbers were either career lows or matched them. But what’s interesting is that he got even less power play time per game (1:17) than Toby Enstrom (1:21), nearly one-third of Byfuglien’s 3:21 per game. And what’s interesting is that when he’s on the ice, the Jets score more goals per 60 power play minutes than when he’s off. Maybe it’s indicative that he’d be better served with a larger role.

Of course, Trouba’s not happy with his role in general, so that’s a whole different story.

Trouba is a huge driver of just about everything both for and against, relatively speaking. Actual goals, expected goals, shots on net, shot attempts (but only attempts for). They all go in the directions you would want. Not to the extent they do for Lindholm, but again, if you have a young defenseman who’s effectively Lindholm Lite, you have one hell of a hockey player on your hands.

And this is, again, with the consideration that Trouba plays most of his minutes with Stuart. And the thing you have to keep in mind about Mark Stuart is that he makes everyone around him worse. And yet Trouba has him as a positive possession player when they’re together, such is his power (and the fact that Byfuglien shoulders the heaviest minutes the Jets have to offer). Obviously Trouba doesn’t deserve to cash in at the same level as Lindholm, but you can see the potential to become an impact player clear as day.

Finally we come to Ristolainen, who had by far the best scoring numbers of this entire group (9-32-41 last year), but whose underlying numbers are significantly worse. If the argument for the other two defenders in this group is that they perform well in “emerging” areas of the game, then the argument for Ristolainen is that he would have gotten P-A-I-D paid a decade ago, before we knew what corsi and fenwick were.

The easiest way for me to illustrate the impact Ristolainen has on his team is to highlight his deficiencies next to Trouba and Lindholm. He so significantly pales in comparison as to become nearly transparent:

In the “for” categories you want to be above the middle line, and in the “against” you want to be below it. Ristolainen fits the bill on exactly none of the four above stats. He is, to his credit, better at generating scoring chances than his teammates, but he also concedes more than they do, and in the end it’s a bit of a wash. The Sabres’ share of chances per 60 when he’s on the ice is marginally negative.

The thing to keep in mind with Ristolainen is that the things he does well are generate assists, draw penalties, and create shooting opportunities for himself. These are all very valuable skills. In the latter he falls somewhere between Lindholm and Trouba, and both are pretty good at that themselves anyway, so that’s nice company in which to find oneself. Both are valuable skills, especially if your shots are getting through to the net and creating rebounds (since Ristolainen only had four goals at full strength last year on 121 shots, we can assume that this is what he was doing).

But the problem for Ristolainen is that even if he’s drawing penalties, racking up helpers, and getting shots through traffic and on goal, that fact that he has possession and goals percentages in the low 40s should be alarming. As has been said a million times, at the end of the day these “underlying” numbers are only as good as what you do with them, right?

In much the same way as Trouba is paired with an albatross like Stuart, Ristolainen has to suffer through a pairing with Josh Gorges against top competition. That’s not conducive to success. Part of the reason Trouba can overcome that and Ristolainen cannot is that Paul Maurice uses Trouba wisely in some regards (giving his pairing middling minutes as opposed to throwing him and Stuart to the wolves), and Dan Bylsma, for whatever reason, does not.

You can talk all you want about how Ristolainen is on a bad team (he is) and has to play with a bad partner (he does). But the fact is that if you’re giving a 22-year-old kid 25 minutes a night and he’s drowning like this, you don’t keep letting him drown. If you know someone’s going to get pummeled as badly as Ristolainen does on a nightly basis, why have it be the guy who can at least generate offense at a high level even against top competition? Maybe adding Dmitry Kulikov helps relieve some of that pressure — he is immediately the best Sabres defenseman — but who really knows?

Something to consider: If his numbers are that bad, but he got more ice time than all but four other defensemen, maybe that tells you he shouldn’t get that many minutes in the first place.

Obviously his game is defensively deficient. This much is inarguable. And if your entire team is defensively deficient, well, there have to be equally bad options; again, the relative numbers show quite clearly that the Sabres get better at everything when Ristolainen is off the ice. So the question becomes, “Why?” It’s tough to know the answer to that question, but you can — or at least should — experiment to find out. One suspects that if Ristolainen was used in a middle-pairing role, his defensive profile would get better, and his offensive numbers might either stay in the same ballpark or likewise take a step forward.

The point is that he hasn’t been put in a position to succeed, and while he’s overcome that in some ways, the negative impact his usage has on the team is massive. So maybe scale it back and see what you actually have.

People talk about Ristolainen’s upside as a potential No. 1 defenseman and it’s hard to see it based on his standing right now. Fans and even media want to assume the best about their prospects. They talk about “ceiling” and take that as incontrovertible. In Ristolainen’s case, maybe he has a high ceiling, but he’s still very much feet-on-the-ground. The points are there — and really, that’s not nothing — but everything else is absent. Therefore, the odds that the points go away are probably better than the odds that the rest of his game catches up to the points.

Points are outputs. Things like possession, the ability to get out of your own zone, etc. are inputs. Think of it like this: If you do w, x, and y well, you get z. Once you know the three variables, figuring out the fourth is easy enough.

Trouba and Lindholm don’t have the points, but they have the foundational basis in their games that leads you to believe they’re possible. They have w, x, and y, but they still don’t have z locked down. Meanwhile, Ristolainen has only the end result, and none of the framework to actually make it sustainable. He knows what w, x, and y equal altogether, but he’s not sure what they are individually.

His coach should be helping him with that, but he isn’t.

The end result, then, is that while Ristolainen had like 80 percent of the points Lindholm and Trouba scored combined, he’s the one whose production fans should be most leery of. If all these guys want roughly the same kind of contract, only one would clearly be “worth it” right now. Trouba would probably become worth it at some point during the balance of the deal. Ristolainen would be a pretty expensive and unlikely gamble, based upon all the evidence we have.

Doesn’t mean he can’t keep it up. It just means he probably won’t.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise stated.