On Moritz Seider, advanced stats, usage and actually defining "winning shifts"

After seeing Red Wings twitter discourse about Seider, I decided to simply ask him directly about it.

Derek Lalonde is one of those coaches who reads a lot of what is written about his team.

It’s something slips out from time-to-time in his interactions with media members, particularly when the Red Wings are playing well. Lalonde will often make reference to something a reporter wrote earlier in the week while answering a question or in a conversation with the media.

Lalonde isn’t scrolling Twitter (or X, or whatever) but he also has a feel for the pulse of the fans and some of the discourse that infiltrates Red Wings social media.

It’s one of the reasons I was interested to ask him about Moritz Seider’s play and usage on Wednesday morning after the Red Wings optional morning skate.

Our interaction starts around the 6:30 mark in the video below.

Seider has been drawn into the middle of an analytical “debate” — if you could call it that — on social media on whether he’s been good or bad at hockey this season.

According to Natural Stat Trick, at even strength Seider has a CorisFor of 45.41 percent this season (just think about Corsi as plus-minus for shot attempts). It is a fact that when he is on the ice opponents have more shot attempts than the Red Wings. For the first half of the season opponents had 910 shot attempts while Seider was on the ice while Detroit had just 757.

That’s a data point, how you read and use that data points like that have been the issue with the Seider discourse.

Seider’s expected goals for percentage, and there are various models, has also taken a hit. And in an age where many people like to instantly tweet player cards after a game, it’s been common to see Seider’s name near the bottom of the list for Red Wings players from a given night.

And it often doesn’t line up with what I’ve been watching.

I’ve watched about half of the Red Wings games in person this season, seen the rest either live on TV or watched the replay the next morning. For my eyes, and I admit they can be flawed at times, the Red Wings have been a better team when Seider is on the ice.

Now, I could dig in and use that as a “analytics are bad,” talking point.

Instead, I want to refer people back to what my Expected by Whom? co-host Prashanth Iyer dug into earlier this week to contextualize Seider’s usage.

Seider's Historic D-Zone Usage

Seider starts a higher percentage of his shifts in the defensive zone than any big-minute defenseman. And it’s not just a comp to his peer this season, but dating all the way back to the 2007-08 NHL season.

Historically speaking, only Andy Greene in New Jersey (2015-2017), Tyler Myers in Buffalo (2014-2015), and Vladislav Gavrikov in Columbus (2022-2023) started a higher percentage of their shifts in the defensive zone than Seider this season.

When you frequently start your shifts roughly 180 feet from the other net, it makes sense that more of the play is going to be in your end, right?

And from later in his piece, Prashanth’s conclusion is a good one.

When we think about metrics like Expected Goals For% and Corsi For% and consider that shifts are about 40-50 seconds in length for these defenseman, Seider’s definitely starting at a significant disadvantage when it comes to generating offense and suppressing shots against. Models do attempt to account for this context, but I am left wondering if the shift-based nature of hockey allows for this to be fully captured and contextualized with the data we currently have available for public use.

Having read Prashanth’s post on Tuesday night, I wanted to ask Seider himself about usage and role and assessing it all on Wednesday morning.

“I think advanced stats have a time and a place and it’s something I’ll look over from time to time with the coaching staff, and we’ll talk about it,” Seider said. “But it’s not something that I think about or look at weekly or something like that.”

So it’s more of a tool to look at trends than something to use on a daily basis?

“Exactly, I think I’d rather watch video daily than look at certain stats for one game or something like that,” Seider said. “When someone says, ‘your defensive success rate is so-and-so,’ and you try to use that to fix your game, and you can’t. I think you more have to watch and study, and then use it to maybe understand what is or isn’t working.”

Seider is also well aware of his usage. He’s also well aware that other top-minute defenseman, ones that end up in Norris Trophy conversations, typically start most of their games in the offensive zone.

“I do believe good offense starts with playing solid defense,” Seider said. “But that’s something you have to consider when you look at certain numbers. There are shifts where our job is to get the puck out of the zone, with control as quick as possible, not necessarily be the one to score that time. Like there are 60 minutes in a game, so you should have enough time to generate something (in the offensive zone), but you have to take pride in those shifts where the job is to simply move the game away from our net.”

“I think when you get into the o-zone you always find a little bit of extra gas energy wise,” Seider added. “But (when you start in the defensive zone) our primary goal is to get out of the zone ASAP, sustain the puck and set up pressure for the next group. It’s not always to just get a shot right away.”

One of the buzz words that the Red Wings — and most hockey coaches use — is “winning shifts.”

It’s how Lalonde judges Seider’s play and Seider himself uses that terminology when talking about shift-to-shift goals in a game.

So, in that case, how do you win a shift?

“It varies, I think it could be we get on the ice for a D-zone faceoff, we win the puck and clear it and then we change, that can be a won shift. It can also be a winning shift when we play against a top line and find a way to deny chances, have them on their heels and playing in their own zone — that’s also a winning shift,” Seider said. “Of course it could be scoring a goal on the power play, but a winning shift could also be momentum generated from the power play into a 5-on-5. Someone might look back, for example, and say, ‘oh you didn’t score,’ but I would say I definitely won my shift and generated momentum for the team. You see, it’s a really good question, but it varies so much from shift-to-shift.”