Over the past three seasons, underlying numbers have increased greatly in understanding for the general public. At the same time, Winnipeg has enjoyed three seasons of the Jets second edition as a NHL franchise.
In this mini-series, Arctic Ice Hockey takes a look at how the Jets' roster has performed in these metrics relative to each other in finding the best of the best.
We look at playmaking with defensemen, but acknowledge some huge flaws here. With defensemen, there will be even more white noise due to puck movers getting assists from non-playmaking contributions… but whatever. Let's look at the numbers anyways.
Top Playmaking Defensemen:
| Player | A1/60 | A/60 | iFen/60 |
| Dustin Byfuglien (2yr) | 0.41 | 0.96 | 10.67 |
| Grant Clitsome | 0.38 | 0.70 | 5.34 |
| Dustin Byfuglien (3yr) | 0.38 | 0.86 | 10.34 |
| Jacob Trouba | 0.28 | 0.78 | 7.88 |
| Tobias Enstrom | 0.27 | 0.58 | 4.22 |
| Zach Bogosian | 0.22 | 0.56 | 8.19 |
| Mark Stuart | 0.20 | 0.48 | 5.47 |
| Paul Postma | 0.16 | 0.32 | 5.55 |
| Adam Pardy* | 0.15 | 0.45 | 4.97 |
| Keaton Ellerby* | 0.12 | 0.35 | 3.72 |
iFen/60 is the individuals non-blocked shot volume per an hour of 5v5 time
*Pardy’s and Ellerby’s numbers are only for their 2013-14 season, due to being new additions to the Jets
Thoughts:
* If you remember from the goal scoring piece, Byfuglien's three year and three year data does a switch when looking at assist production versus goal production.
* While Byfuglien has the best primary assist numbers, I'm going to give the Clitsome for posting nearly the same numbers with way less shot volume, and therefore less from rebounds. While it could be debated that rebounds is a form of playmaking, Byfuglien won the last one so let's play nice and let someone else get their picture on the top.
* Jacob Trouba again looks very promising.
* Paul Postma's numbers are hilariously low for an "offensive defensemen"… how much is his very small sample relative to the rest of these players remains to be seen.
* Mark Stuart's numbers are not that bad, yet again, while Ellerby and Pardy are depth defensemen playing like depth defensemen.
