Something to consider now is how defenceman Adam Larsson will fit into the Oilers in terms of pairings, deployment and match-ups. Judging by some of his underlying numbers, Larsson has performed as more of a shutdown type defencemen in New Jersey that starts a lot of shifts in his own zone, typically against the best competition.

To put Larsson’s deployment in New Jersey into perspective, I’ve generated a player usage chart from Corsica Hockey to show how he measured up against his teammates last season at even-strength. The x-axis is the Zone Start Ratio (ZSR), which is the percentage of non-neutral zone starts that are offensive zone starts. The y-axis is the Time On Ice Quality of Teammates metric (TOI.QoT), which is the weighted average time-on-ice percentage of a player’s teammates. The bubble size is the individual player’s Time On Ice Percentage, which is the percentage of a team’s time-on-ice played by a player. And the coloring of the bubbles is the individual player’s Corsi relative to his teammates. (Source: Corsica Hockey).

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.