To this point, we’ve covered all but one of the relevant free-agent signings the Buffalo Sabres have made so far this offseason. As someone who appears to be penciled in as the team’s seventh-defenseman for the 2020-21 campaign, I wanted to take a look at Matt Irwin, and what he could bring to the Sabres’ blue line.

The 32-year-old’s underlying metrics over the past few seasons leave a concerning first-impression. Though he is a left-shot defenseman (which the team certainly needed), he doesn’t appear to have been one of the better available options, even for his modest price tag of $700,000 AAV. As a player with quite a bit of experience, there are some encouraging points in his historical data.

Analytically, Irwin’s best work came at the beginning of his NHL career. From 2012-2015 as a member of the San Jose Sharks, he consistently contributed positive year-over-year expected-goal rates. In that three-year stretch, he posted an overall xG rate of 53.9-percent at five-on-five.

In the five years since leaving San Jose, Irwin’s underlying numbers have suffered greatly. Most of that time was spent as a rotational defender with the Nashville Predators. From 2016-2020 in Nashville (including two very brief stops in Boston and Anaheim), his xG rate dropped to 49.18-percent. This reduction came without seeing any real increase in ice time (and a significantly increased OZS rate).

Both the Predators and Sharks were competitive playoff teams when Irwin was there, so it isn’t as though he was a victim of being surrounded by lesser talent, or asked to do too much. The explanation is actually very straight-forward – Irwin looks really good alongside top-pairing caliber partners and really poor alongside fellow fringe players.

In terms of shot-suppression, Irwin has been historically satisfactory in his own end, while producing very little offensively (as illustrated on the above heatmaps). Fortunately, he wasn’t relied upon to be anything other than a break-even defensive entity in San Jose, as he was paired alongside two extremely impactful offensive defensemen in Dan Boyle and Brent Burns.

In that three-year stretch with the Sharks, seldom was Irwin paired alongside someone other than Burns or Boyle at even-strength. In Nashville from 2016-2019, he was primarily paired with an all-around bad player in Yannick Weber. Last season, the same was true, as they saddled him alongside 37-year-old Dan Hamhuis.

Despite his age, Hamhuis actually continued to post decent defensive impacts but like Irwin, he was an offensive black hole. Their poor scoring impacts make it even more bizarre that the Predators coaching staff elected to give them an OZS rate of 63.64-percent on the year.

Based on his respective tenures in San Jose and Nashville, there appears to be a pretty strong blueprint on how Irwin is best utilized. Simply put, he isn’t versatile enough to play with just anyone. If and when injuries arise in Buffalo, Ralph Krueger might be required to totally shake up his pairings, so as not to set him (and by extension, his defensive partner) up for failure.

As previously stated, he has produced his best career impacts alongside offensively gifted defenders in a near-even OZS rate. The problem in Buffalo is that Rasmus Dahlin is the only surefire offensively impactful defenseman. He too plays the left side, so it isn’t likely he’d be paired with Irwin in the event of an injury.

Depending on how Henri Jokiharju’s development continues into next year, perhaps there is a fit there. Krueger could also get experimental and test Irwin in a defensively-tilted setup alongside someone like Colin Miller. Interestingly enough, there is a small sample of data that suggests Irwin could thrive in that scenario.

In 2016-17 he spent roughly 236 even-strength minutes alongside Mattias Ekholm. The two of them posted an xG rate of 56.06-percent in that span, despite holding an OZS rate of just 42.42-percent. This type of usage was seldom seen again, but it might be worth revisiting if the Sabres plan to optimize him sans an elite offensive presence for him to lean on.

Obviously, we’re putting the cart way before the horse here, but I wanted to examine if Irwin has really struggled as badly as his recent charts indicate. The key seems to lie in his lack of partner versatility. The data indicates that he really only succeeds alongside players with a very specific skill set (i.e. elite offensively). Overall, he is the definition of replacement-level, however, his usage will directly dictate how much of a drop-off the Sabres experience on the back end if he is required to dress for an injured regular.

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