Tag: j.t. compher

DENVER, CO – JT Compher was welcomed back to Colorado with open arms on Wednesday.

DETROIT, MI – The PWHL is headed to the Motor City for the league’s ‘Takeover Weekend’ March 16-17 when PWHL Boston and PWHL Ottawa drop the puck at Little Caesars Arena.

PWHL Toronto forward Jesse Compher’s brother, J.T. is a member of the Detroit Red Wings. He has had him following the PWHL avidly this season and is excited for the league to come to Detroit. His only regret about the PWHL’s visit to Detroit is that Jesse Compher and PWHL Toronto will be in Pittsburgh that weekend playing Montreal instead of Detroit.

DETROIT, MI – It’s strange to see J.T. Compher wearing a Red Wings jersey.

Compher played seven seasons for the Avalanche, and Thursday night in Detroit, he faced his old team. Compher played 20:57 of ice time with the Red Wings beating the Avs, 2-1, in overtime.

Compher still appreciates how the Avalanche and coach Jared Bednar shaped his NHL journey.

“He stuck with me and believed in me. He taught me the details and all the things it takes to be a good hockey player,” Compher said at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit before the game. “It wasn’t just him, though. It was the coaching staff and the other players on the team. The leaders like Gabe (Landeskog), Nate (MacKinnon), Mikko (Rantanen) and (Erik Johnson). Those guys all take it so seriously and treat hockey the right way. The way that it takes to win. … I’m super proud of my time there.”

Respect is mutual.

DETROIT, MI – J.T. Compher has provided the Detroit Red Wings the secondary scoring and versatility they sought when they made him their most significant offseason free-agent signing.

Compher has 12 points (three goals, nine assists) in the past 10 games and ranks third overall in scoring with 16 points, behind Alex DeBrincat (20) and Dylan Larkin (19).

He has solidified the second-line center spot, been an effective bumper on the second power-play unit, and their leading forward on the penalty kill by ice time. He is their only forward averaging more than two minutes a game on both specialty teams.

DETROIT, MI – Coaching staffs love players like J.T. Compher.

You can plug a player like Compher on a scoring line, checking line, either power play or penalty kill, in an offensive or defensive role, and Compher, the former Michigan standout, is going to do a professional job.

It’s one of the reasons general manager Steve Yzerman targeted Compher the first day of free agency on July 1, and the Wings signed Compher.

Nearly a quarter of the way into his first season, Compher has been exactly what the Wings wanted.

DETROIT, MI – The Detroit Red Wings made some moves this off-season. They added a few pieces to their offense, hoping to strengthen the forward core, especially in the top six. One of their new additions should be able to lock down a centerman role with the team this season.

The Detroit Red Wings agreed to a five-year, $25.5 million contract with J.T. Compher, who’s been around for the last seven seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL). For the Red Wings, Compher is someone who should be able to jump into the team’s forward core and hopefully have a positive impact immediately.

DETROIT, MI – General manager Steve Yzerman was intent on filling holes in the Wings’ lineup and few teams were as active Saturday on the first day of unrestricted free agency as the Wings were.

They made their biggest splash late in the day, signing center J.T. Compher to a five-year contract worth $25.5 million ($5.1 million cap hit).

DENVER, CO – Offense reigns supreme in the modern NHL.

Speed and skill are at an all-time high, defensemen are more active offensively, power-play scoring rates have boomed, enhanced stick technology has bolstered the shooting ability of players and referees are calling the rulebook tighter than ever before.

It’s never been harder to defend, which makes high-end shutdown players uniquely valuable. We’ve analyzed some of hockey’s top shutdown defensemen before but who are the league’s best defensive centers?

We can explore this topic by digging into some data. In fact, we need a combination of numbers to filter through the league and find our gems. Why? Well, we can’t solely rely on something like goals against, for example, because it’s too blunt of an instrument — it doesn’t account for the other four players that the center shares the ice with or goaltending quality. But it’s obviously still a really important measuring point, so the goal is to find a variety of metrics like this that can be useful and complement each other.

I started the exercise by using an initial filter for the following criteria since the 2020-21 season.

• Plays an average of at least 15 minutes per game
• Five-on-five goals-against rate below the league average for forwards of 2.53 (Preventing goals is the ultimate goal of defense. Goals against can, however, be quite volatile and influenced by luck — some centers prevent shots and scoring chances very well but get punished because their goaltender can’t make a save — so I didn’t want this filter to be too harsh.)
• Matchups around league-average quality or tougher (If you’re a top defensive center you shouldn’t be playing sheltered minutes. I used HockeyViz and PuckIQ’s quality of competition data to measure this)
• Must kill penalties, even if it’s just on a part-time basis (If you don’t ever kill penalties, are you really an elite defensive player?)

After running this filter, we get a refined pool of centers over the last three seasons who play top-nine minutes, are trusted enough to defend top forwards on a regular basis, prevent goals against better than league-average and kill penalties. From here, I decided to use Evolving-Hockey’s Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) tool to measure defensive impact and rank our pool of centers.

This RAPM tool can identify the players who have the strongest impact on suppressing quality scoring chances through their expected goals model. Most importantly, this tool can level the playing field by giving us a player’s isolated defensive impact after accounting for variables such as teammate quality (who they share the ice with on shifts), opposition quality, zone starts (some players start in the defensive zone more often than others) and more.

There’s no such thing as a perfect all-in-one tool, and RAPM is no different, but in a world where objectively measuring defensive impact can be challenging, this stands out as a useful data point.

Before presenting the results, I want to quickly share a couple of disclaimers:

• We’re ignoring offense and only measuring pure defensive impact. That means if Center A is higher on this list than Center B, it doesn’t necessarily mean Center A is the better overall player.
• We will only be measuring five-on-five impact because it’s nearly impossible to objectively measure penalty-killing ability with publicly available data.
• This is, of course, only an analytical perspective. The numbers obviously can’t capture everything, especially for defense. Because of that, take this article’s findings as a conversation starter, or a list that’s identifying some of the top defensive centers rather than a definitive ranking. You should look at the initial list and then apply your own eye test, context and knowledge — it’s all about how you interpret the data. There will be plenty of quality shutdown centers that don’t land on this list or just missed the cut for one reason or another like Jean Gabriel Pageau and Elias Lindholm.

Without further ado, let’s dive in. The centers on this list will be presented in the order of their RAPM defensive impact.

3. J.T. Compher will be a surprising name to many but the closer you watch him, the more you appreciate the details of his game. The 27-year-old pending UFA is speedy and offers a nonstop motor which makes him very disruptive both on the forecheck and stealing pucks on the backcheck. Compher has been on the ice for fewer than 2.00 goals against per hour in four consecutive seasons. Typically that’s been in a third-line role, but Nazem Kadri’s departure has forced Compher into a more prominent role. He’s been successful navigating the higher minutes (averaging 20:23 per game) and tougher matchups (playing the most minutes against elite competition of any Avs forward besides Nathan MacKinnonaccording to PuckIQ), authoring a breakout performance where he’s not only maintained his excellent defensive numbers, but also chipped in with a career-high 50 points.

DENVER, CO – The Stanley Cup playoffs are always full of excitement and surprises, and as the best players tend to lead their teams deep into playoffs, the supporting cast and unexpected players are the ones who help push the team to the next level. We are going to look at five players who had breakout performances during these playoffs and how their careers can only go up from here.

JT Compher

Even though J.T. Compher hasn’t had a huge jump in points per game from the regular season, he was able to step up in a big way when Nazem Kadri was injured and even before that. He played just nine minutes in Game 6 versus the St. Louis Blues but scored two goals. He followed that performance up with a two-goal game in the first meeting between the Colorado Avalanche and the Edmonton Oilers playing just under 13 minutes.

Compher’s goals came at timely moments and he did so in the bottom-six, but when Kadri missed some games, he easily stepped into his spot and provided the Avalanche with a solid second-line replacement, almost as if nothing had changed. Seeing as how stacked the Avalanche are and the impact some of the top players have had, Compher’s contributions may be overlooked, but shouldn’t be. The team may need him to be their second-line center moving forward as they will likely lose Kadri to free agency in the offseason.