Nobody asks more of their top pair than Derek Lalonde
With the first month of the season in the books, it’s time to start unpacking some of the early observations. One thing I was keen to watch this season is how Red Wings’ head coach Derek Lalonde deployed his top pair. Last season, Lalonde challenged Moritz Seider and Jake Walman with the toughest usage of any pairing in the league. The usage was so tough that it prompted several national analysts to take note and ultimately Dom Luszczyszyn chose to update how his model measured usage to account for the historic challenge.
This season, Lalonde has settled on Simon Edvinsson as Seider’s primary defense partner. Through 11 games, the results have been exactly what the Wings hoped for, with the pairing ranking 10th in the league in 5v5 expected goals against per 60 minutes (minimum 100 minutes played):
Digging a little deeper, this isn’t because Lalonde has fed the pairing easy matchups. On the contrary, Seider and Edvinsson have been tasked with arguably the most difficult usage of any defense pairing this season.
From the above graphic, you can see that both Seider and Edvinsson start more than 13% of their shifts in the defensive zone but more impressively, they face the toughest quality of competition as judged by the average net offense rating of their opponents.
It’s a really small sample size but an encouraging one nonetheless. If Seider and Edvinsson can continue to hold down the fort with their extreme usage case, hopefully the rest of the team can capitalize with more favorable deployment.
Is this too much for players so young in their careers? Is this the hockey equivalent of Dusty Baker driving his pitchers into the ground with excessive innings and in doing so, limiting their potential (i.e. Mark Prior)? I understand it's necessary in Lalonde's mind because they are really the only two effective D-men on his roster, but how much will this affect their development?
(I know it's kind of an unanswerable question until it happens, but what do you think? Is the worry unfounded?)