Handedness. It’s a frequently discussed topic when referring to NHL defensemen. Despite the high degree of authority with which people advise on its importance, these opinions are seldom backed-up by actual evidence (aside from an assortment of anecdotal tidbits).

The reason for that is largely due to the absence of publicly available research results on the topic. Domenic Galamini (now a member of the Buffalo Sabres’ analytics staff) wrote on the topic circa 2016, but that’s about it. The amount of verification and data collection work required to get an accurate gauge is tedious and cumbersome, which is probably another reason for the lack of hard data.

Last week, Prashanth Iyer of the Expected By Whom podcast (and formerly of The Athletic) produced findings of his own. His data examined leaguewide same-handed deployment rates, and how those pairings fared in in terms of GF and xGF results.

Since I only really care about how the Sabres view defensive handedness, I decided to embark on a little research study leading up to the 2023 offseason. After more than 24 hours of eyeball floater-inducing data collection and game film verification, I managed to understand how each Sabres defender was utilized on a game-by-game basis in terms of handedness (and the situational nuances therein, which we’ll expand upon).

The core questions I wanted to answer were – Do the Sabres care about handedness as a rule? If so, to what extent? Lastly, was there anything resembling a negative performance impact for the Sabres defensemen who played a large sample of games (relatively speaking) on their off-hand in 2022-23?

Let’s dig in and see if we can find some answers.

Research Process

For starters, I thought it would be helpful to lend some insight as to how I approached this research. Thanks to the handy interface at Natural Stat Trick, I was able to dive into all 82 of the Sabres’ games from last season and figure out which defensive pairings appeared in which game(s).

This helped me narrow down the scope of games I would need to go back and verify which defensemen were deployed on which side. For instance, in games where Owen Power and Henri Jokiharju were deployed as a pair, I could reasonably discern that both played on their natural side (given that Power is a left-shot defender, while Jokiharju is a righty).

Conversely, if Rasmus Dahlin and Jacob Bryson were paired together in a given contest, I would need to go back and verify which of those two left-shot entities were lined up on their off-hand. You can probably see why this process took me so long to complete. In the end, I needed to go back and verify 96 instances of what I’ll call “positional uncertainty” across 44 separate games throughout the year.

As a rule, if a specific pairing spent less than five minutes of even-strength time together in a given game, the instance was removed from the overall study. Aside from obvious sample-size reasons, these outlier shifts were likely the result of line-change overlap, and therefore not useful in the scope of what I was trying to accomplish.

Additionally, this helped eliminate small samples where Don Granato would deploy a super-tandem of Power and Dahlin in the waning minutes of a game where Buffalo needed a tying goal. Not that those minutes aren’t important, but score effects would likely create a favorably skewed efficiency impact.

Addressing Outliers

Using that same example, however, there were several instances where Dahlin and Power spent more than five minutes on the ice together in a given game, which I did include in the overall results sample.

Lastly, if a player like Dahlin played say 18 five-on-five minutes and 14 of them were on his off-hand while the remaining four minutes were played on his natural side, that game was “scored” as an off-hand appearance, given the stark disparity. These instances were rare, and most common when a player was injured mid-game forcing someone else (often Dahlin, hence why he’s being used as an example here) to play multiple shifts with different partners.

In extraordinarily rare cases, when a single player skated more than 5 minutes on both sides in a single game, that game was thrown away from their overall sample. This rarity only occurred four times across the 491 man-games (i.e. six defensemen multiplied by 82 contests, minus a one-game appearance from Jeremy Davies) that I verified from last season.

Once that was complete, I went back to determine game-by-game relative xG deltas between off-hand appearances, and natural-side appearances.

Baseline Deployment Rates

Overall, the Sabres’ baseline propensity to deploy players on their off-hand may seem high. Earlier this month, Iyer produced the chart below, which listed each NHL team’s respective rates of deploying off-hand defenders at five-on-five.

Percentage of 5v5 time a team deployed a defenseman playing their offhand this season. An interesting split amongst the teams that are very committed to R/L pairings (bottom of the graph) vs. those less committed (top of the graph)

Data via @EvolvingHockey pic.twitter.com/eiT8zwLnQ0

— Prashanth Iyer (@iyer_prashanth) June 8, 2023

As you can see, the Sabres were only out-paced by the Arizona Coyotes in 2022-23. The reason this is misleading is that Dahlin played primarily on his off-hand in 63 of the 78 games he played last season. As a player who was on the ice for over 38% of the Sabres’ five-on-five minutes, you can see how he could single-handedly skew the overall team rate (which, according to Iyer’s research, came in at 47.3%, as illustrated above).

In total, only 108 of the 491 man-games (21.99%, which is lower than the league-average same-handed pairing deployment rate of 23.9%, per Iyer) from last season were spent primarily off-hand. Only 45 of those instances came from players not named Dahlin, whose off-hand deployment was done largely out of necessity (as the Sabres only had two natural right-shot defensemen on their opening-night roster).

Further, of the 10 defensemen who appeared in at least 15 games for the Sabres last season, seven of them were left-handed shooters. So, if you were to take Dahlin out of the sample, Buffalo did a surprisingly good job of limiting off-hand deployment exposure (especially when you consider the above-referenced left versus right-shot depth disparity).

As you can see, the other two Sabres with a >30% propensity to appear on their off-hand were Kale Clague (20 of 33 contests played primarily on off-hand) and Jacob Bryson (18 out of 59 contests played primarily on off-hand). Every other defenseman in the sample landed somewhere in the 0-6% range (and a maximum of three appearances on the year).

Deployment Philosophy

So, what does this tell us? For a team with so few right-handed assets, the Sabres leaned heavily on Dahlin to play his off-hand. Beyond that, off-hand exposure was largely limited to the 6-10^th defensemen on the depth chart.

Players like Ilya Lyubushkin and Mattias Samuelsson were only asked to do so in a pinch, while Power and Jokiharju didn’t play a single game primarily on their off-hand. The same goes for Casey Fitzgerald (a right-hander) and Lawrence Pilut (a left-hander who spent most of his five-on-five minutes alongside Fitzgerald), but those two only appeared in 23 and 17 games, respectively.

Rounding out the group was Riley Stillman, a late-season LHD acquisition who was only asked to play off-hand in one game (his first as a Sabre) in which Dahlin was sidelined with an injury (leaving Buffalo short a player capable of RHD deployment duties).

The “Odd Men Out”

There are a few logical hypotheses that can stem from these results. For the most part, natural righties stayed on their strong side out of necessity. As for the remaining lefties, off-hand duties were largely limited to the roster fringe (Dahlin notwithstanding).

To me, that would indicate that the coaching staff wasn’t interested in having players like Power and Samuelsson shoulder off-hand responsibility in critical development years (the first and second NHL seasons, respectively). Instead, they seemed much more content to let the de facto third-pairings deal with a handedness redundancy (where the coaches could limit their exposure both in terms of minutes-played, and quality of competition).

This theory is fortified by a rather interesting strategic trend I found while verifying handedness in the game film. In March, Dahlin and Bryson served primarily on a pairing in 10 different games last season. You would assume that Dahlin would have played on the right side of that tandem since he had been in that spot for the majority of the year, right?

Wrong. In all of those instances, I was able to verify that Bryson was the one playing on his off-hand in those contests. So, the next logical question is – was Bryson perhaps better on his off-hand? Or at the very least similarly impactful? Otherwise, why would Granato do that? It’s not like he and Dahlin produced favorable results as a pairing last season (xGF rate of 44.55% through 179 minutes at 5v5).

For comparison’s sake, in the few random games where Dahlin skated primarily alongside Clague as his defensive partner, the same thing occurred. Instead of his regular spot playing off-hand RHD, Dahlin instead shifted back to his natural position, leaving Clague to handle off-hand duties.

Underlying Results

Disappointingly, it’s illogical to compare relative xG deltas when one sample is so significantly larger than the other. For that reason, the only xG disparities that were worth examining belonged to Dahlin, Clague, and Bryson.

I was hoping for more variety (even though it would have made the research portion that much more difficult), but alas. Still, let’s take a look at what the relative xGF deltas tell us about these three players, and the degree to which shifting to their off-hand impacted their underlying impact.

From what I gathered, the data does support Granato’s approach. Bryson was demonstrably better playing his off-hand last season. While this helps explain why he handled right-side duties alongside Dahlin (despite ultimately poor xGF results as a pairing), it does beg the question of why he wasn’t deployed that way more frequently.

There are a lot of extenuating factors to consider, so just taking the xGF “handedness delta” above at face value would be a mistake. Still, it does paint something of a baseline picture of the coaching staff’s approach.

Like Bryson, Clague also experienced a degree of increased relative xGF success playing on his off-hand (which could explain why he was asked to do so more often than not last season). The delta isn’t as stark in contrast, but it’s there.

Lastly, in Dahlin’s case, he experienced a relative xGF uptick playing on his natural side. That said, he was so proficient on his off-hand that he was the logical choice to handle the lion’s share of off-hand duties in 2022-23. Again, a testament to the coaching staff (and likely the analytics staff) for handling things the way they did in that regard.

This realization also fortifies my belief that the organization wanted to “shelter” their developing assets from handling off-hand duties. They had fringe veterans who could do the work proficiently (i.e. Bryson and Clague), so it would have been an unnecessary developmental risk for someone like Power or Samuelsson to play on the right side and potentially adversely impact their growth.

Acquisition Logic Moving Forward

There’s a lot to unpack here, so I want to summarize what the findings mean, and how the results might shine a light on what sort of defenseman the Sabres could target this offseason. Everything I outlined above could indicate that Kevyn Adams will procure a natural RHD, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Alternatively, I think that, if a veteran option is to be acquired for the defensive top-four, then it would need to be someone with a history of proficiency playing on the right side, regardless of their natural handedness.

Essentially, the idea that playing off-hand, as a rule, hurts performance has been debunked to a degree here. The Sabres’ approach indicates that certain players are capable of favorable off-hand results. That being said, they limited the exposure to either “bottom of the roster” players who could be sheltered, and/or a generational defenseman with a history of playing well on that side.

Whether or not they would go a step further and ask a potential defensive acquisition like Noah Hanifin for example (a natural LHD), to handle off-hand play regularly remains to be seen. What they decide to do in this area will probably shed the most significant light on the extent to which the Sabres really “care” about handedness.

As we enter the busy portion of the offseason @CMDeDominicis put together his board of 25 defensemen that could realistically be available this summer. https://t.co/A6pIhAo2qd

— xBuffalo (@ExpectedBuffalo) June 21, 2023

Either way, the findings from last season certainly do a good job of putting the approach in context. The idea that the Sabres don’t care about handedness at all is wrong, but the extent to which they care is probably a moving target.

Using Hanifin as an example again, the analytics staff would probably embark on a similar exercise to examine his past right-side metrics (assuming a healthy sample even exists) before arbitrarily deciding that he’d fare just fine in that role. Perhaps if the Sabres do indeed acquire another LHD to play in the top four, I’ll need to provide a part two to this exercise and provide additional context to the decision.

This would of course require another deep dive into their past three-year results to examine their deployment. An assuredly tedious task, but it’s a long summer and I might get bored. Stay tuned.

Relative xGF and Linemate TOI Data provided by Natural Stat Trick

Charts and Data Collection courtesy of Expected Buffalo and Prashanth Iyer

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports