Rasmus Ristolainen remains a lightning rod topic with the Buffalo Sabres. We’ve discussed and dissected his game from nearly every level. There’s no denying that the Sabres have put him in a situation over his head for years now. That’s not the fault of the player and sometimes that part of this discussion gets overlooked.

There are some strong points in his game like his performance on the power play, but he struggles where the majority of the game is played, 5 on 5. Deploying a player with the type of minutes he receives that struggles the way he does is one of the reasons the Sabres have continued to find themselves at the bottom of the NHL standings.

There’s a belief out there among some that if Ristolainen’s minutes are reduced that he can still be a decent defenseman. I’ve always been skeptical of this theory and I’ve dipped my toes into the topic in the past. However, I’ve never gone all-in on it to get a solid answer.

Well, what better time than now?

Data Set-Up

I went back and pulled game logs for Ristolainen going back to the 2016-17 season. Getting a four-year sample set felt like enough data to get a reasonable answer to the matter in question.

I broke down his on-ice data at 5 on 5 into three buckets to see if I can find any positive trend with a reduction in minutes. One bucket is games that he played over 20 minutes at 5 on 5, the second are games that he played between 17 to 19 minutes, and the final bucket is games in which he played under 17 minutes.

In the chart above you can see a breakdown by percentage of his total time on ice in each bucket. I tried to get this as close to even as possible and this was the closest I was able to get it. The majority of his games come in between 18 to 19 minutes played at 5 on 5.

I also wanted to make sure there wasn’t any drastic deployment change and in any of these three groupings. If there were it would have to be accounted for when getting into the results. Fortunately, there was not much a difference. Here is the offensive-zone starts breakdown by each bucket:

• 20+: 47%
• 17-19: 47%
• <17: 50%

Results

Now that we’ve set the data landscape, let’s get into the results. I’ll start at a high level and work my way down.

The chart above looks at 5 on 5 on-ice shot share (CF%), goal differential (GF%), and shot quality (xGF%). We get our first glimpse of an answer that Ristolainen’s performance won’t improve with a reduction in minutes. His shot share and shot quality share remain relatively flat regardless of his ice time. We do see a slight improvement in shot share, but it’s still well below 50%.

Let’s talk about goal differential. That trend line is interesting and required some extra digging to see what’s potentially happening here. He goes from a positive player in goal differential at 5 on 5 to a significantly negative in that category with a reduction in minutes.

It’s odd that his goal differential looks that good when he plays over 20 minutes when you consider that in those games he has the lowest on-ice shot attempts for and a high amount of shot attempts against.

The hidden data point here is that his on-ice save percentage in games that he played over 20 minutes is 95.1%. That’s an insanely high save percentage and is why his goal differential looks so good. As you drop the minutes the on-ice save percentage reduces to 91.6% which is close to average in the 17-19 minutes bucket. In the less than 17 minutes group it drops all way down to 89.7%, which is why you’re going to see those goals against per 60 minutes go up in that section in the chart below.

As we break the shot and goal data down another level, you can again see that we’re not getting much of a change in on-ice results outside of the goal differential that we just went through. The shot quality for when he’s on the ice improves slightly with a reduction of minutes, but his shot quality against gets worse.

The last thing to look at is his production level. One of the good things about Ristolainen is his ability to consistently produce around 40 points each season.

His points per 60 minutes are essentially the same in two of the three buckets. Interestingly enough it spikes in the middle bracket. I honestly don’t have a reason for that outside of that it’s the bucket in which he has played the most minutes.

In theory, you’d expect a total reduction in point production as his ice time is brought down. He would be on the ice the less and his quality of teammate would likely change. Therefore possibly reducing the quality of offensive talent.

Conclusion

Speaking of quality of teammate, that is the one blind spot in all of this. While his quality of competition would go down with a reduction in minutes, so would his teammate quality. There’s something to be said for that, but I don’t believe that plays a big factor here for Ristolainen. Nothing in the data above gives me any indication that teammate or quality of competition change is going to have a significant factor in his on-ice results.

The Finnish-defender is 25-years-old (turning 26 in October). This is the player that he is. There will be no more development or drastic improvement at this point in his career. A player peaks at age 24 and Ristolainen is heading towards the end of that peak age period.

He’s at best a second-pair defenseman that needs offensively sheltered minutes with a strong partner and he’ll provide most of his positive impact on the power play. That type of player should not be playing on your top pair and isn’t worth $5.4 million on the salary cap. It also doesn’t make sense for the Sabres to keep him when one of the strongest points of his game, the power play, isn’t needed as Rasmus Dahlin now fills that role on the top unit.

We’ll see what the Sabres decide to do with Ristolainen this offseason, but we’ve established here that any plan to reduce his minutes is not going to improve his performance. If he’s going to remain on the team, they have to reduce them because it’ll mean he’s on the ice less during a game. However, the on-ice results will remain the same when he does play at 5 on 5.

It may be time for both sides of this relationship to make a change and move on.

Data via: Evolving Hockey