Erik Karlsson Is Really Good

Last year Erik Karlsson kicked some serious National Hockey League butt, won the Norris, got a $45.5 million contract, and convinced some old guy that Filip Kuba is worth $8 million. Not bad for a 21 year-old. In fact, I googled what the average 21 year-old does, and none of the things I mentioned came up.

Any who…how good was Karlsson at even-strength last year? Well, I’m glad you asked. Erik Karlsson led defensemen in even-strength points with 50. The next highest was Kevin Bieskskssksksksa with 34. Karlsson was THAT good.

In my “season preview” I wrote a few weeks ago, I talked about the possibility of Erik Karlsson regressing. Here’s what I had to say:

“Kent Wilson from nhlnumbers.com wrote a very good article on Erik Karlsson and his new contract, in which he mentioned possible regression. He used a stat called IPP, which measures the frequency that a player was involved in his team’s scoring with him on the ice. (Ex: Karlsson was on the ice for 90 ES goals for, and had 50 ES points. 50/90=0.56. Therefore Karlsson hand an IPP of 56%)

“Individual points percentage (IPP) is another measure that can spike or crater for individuals over a season, but also tends to regress towards a general mean over time.”

This is similar to shooting percentage, which we looked at earlier. Kent went on to mention that the best defenders usually have an IPP around 35%, while the league average amongst regular defensemen was 28.6%.

He then listed some examples of defensemen who had a very high IPP one season, but then saw it regress the following year. I put his examples in the chart below, and added their P/60. I included Karlsson from last season just as a comparison.

	Year 1 IPP	Year 1 P/60	Year 2 IPP	Year 2 P/60
Keith	0.5	1.61	0.26	0.68
Jovanovski	0.52	1.04	0.3	0.61
Barker	0.5	1.35	0.3	0.6
Montador	0.57	1.39	0.31	1.1
Lebda	0.5	1.13	0.21	0.47
Karlsson	0.56	1.72

The results are quite dramatic. All of the players saw massive drops in their even strength production. Steve Montador was the least effected. This is probably because in 07-08 (Year 1) he played for a lousy Florida team, and in 08-09 (Year 2) he played for Anaheim and Boston, who both qualified for the playoffs.

Many would argue that Karlsson was only 21 last year, so he will improve next season (which is true). But that isn’t the point. As Ken put it, “getting an IPP over 50% is difficult, rarely duplicated and dependent to a non-trivial degree on factors outside of a player's talent level.””

The thing I didn’t realize at the time was, Erik Karlsson’s career IPP isn’t 35%. In fact it isn’t even close. Karlsson’s IPP in 2009-10 was 46%, 51% in 2010-11, and 56% in 2011-12, which works out to be 52% for his career. Meaning, when a goal is scored with him on the ice, more than half of the time he had a significant part in it happening. In a nutshell, that’s why he won the Norris.

The Prince of Sweden’s IPP is an exception among defenseman. Like how Alex Tanguay has a career shooting percentage of close to 19%, despite the average forward only shooting around 11%.

Will Karlsson’s IPP regress? Most likely, yes it will. But it probably won’t drop off as much as some of the other defensemen I had in the chart. (FYI: I wasn’t comparing Karlsson to guys like Cam Freakin’ Barker, or that Brett Lebda guy; I was just showing the effects of an IPP regression)

Another thing that could affect his total points is the amount of goals scored while he is on the ice. Last year he was on-ice for a league leading 135 goals for (PP and PK included).

In 2011-12 his top line mates were Filip Kuba, Jason Spezza, Milan Michalek, Colin Greening and Daniel Alfredsson.

-Filip Kuba has been replaced for Marc Methot, who has just 3 goals in his last 3 seasons. Right away, that’s a down-grade offensively

-I don’t see why Spezza can’t score 30 again next year (if he stays healthy)

-Will Michalek repeat his 35 goals and 16.5 S% next season? Spoiler alert: he won’t

-Colin Greening last year scored 17 goals, but his spot on the 1^st line will most likely be replaced by one of Latendresse, Zibanejad, or Silfverberg. I wouldn’t expect either Zibanejad or Silfverberg to score much more than 17,(keep in mind, they’ve never played pro hockey in North America), but Latendresse could. Although it remains to be seen how well he’ll play after two consecutive injury-shortened seasons.

-Don’t get me wrong, I love Alfie, but he’ll be 40 next season, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see his shooting percentage regress

One thing that is completely unpredictable is how much a young player will improve. Just because he got a lot better last year, doesn’t mean he’ll improve by the same amount next season. Progression isn’t linear.

In my opinion (just guessing here folks), Karlsson will get about 60 points next season.

Conclusion:

-Will things like Karlsson’s IPP and the amount of goals scored with him on the ice regress? Yes, they could.

-Could Karlsson improve a lot, and make up for some of his possible regression? Yes, he could.

-Is it possible that he doesn’t improve enough to make up for a lot of his regression? Yes it is.

-Could Karlsson score more than the 60 points that I predicted him to score? Absolutely, I’m just some schmuck with a computer and an internet connection.

But I’ll say this, even if Karlsson’s points regress, it doesn’t matter all that much. As long as he keeps driving possession, creating scoring chances, playing good defense (haters gonna hate) against the opposition's top players, and controlling the power play, I really won’t care if he gets only 60 points.