The Mighty have Fallen: Chris Tanev

Looking into Chris Tanev's decline in 2019-20.

              

As the playoffs approach the biggest question in this offseason for Jim Benning and the front office of the Vancouver Canucks is going to be how they approach free agency. One of those big decisions will be on the right side of the defense. With the cap space being limited due to the upcoming ELC contracts of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes coming up quickly, it looks like the Canucks will only be able to keep one of Troy Stecher and Chris Tanev. I want to dive in and explain why it should be an easy decision to choose Troy Stecher based on the decline in Chris Tanev.  

Looking at Chris Tanev and his offense there really isn’t much special. Outside of 2014-15, he has really been producing at a bottom pair rate and on the lower side of that. Even with his terrible offensive production he has still managed to grade out as a top 4 guy in each of his seasons since 2014-15.

So as you can tell, Chris Tanev and his value are going to strictly come off his defensive play. A guy who has been Bottom pair/Replacment level offensively likely isn’t going to provide much value in that part of the game.

Diving into his defensive game we will take a look at how Chris Tanev has performed since 2014-15 and get into how those numbers compare to his 2019-20 campaign. To do that we will use RAPM from Evolving Wild which will isolate his impact on shot suppression and quality suppression of opponents.

2014-15. Chris Tanev graded out as a top pair defenseman on his defensive ability alone. He allowed -2.57 shots less than the mean NHL player and -0.17 XGA/60. Those ranked 22nd and 6th among defenseman in the NHL. When we look at his XWAR he ranked 6th among defenseman for the NHL. We can tell that he supressed shots at a first pair rate and his quality suppression was also at an elite rate. The only thing stopping him from being elite in this season was his shot suppression ranking in the lower tier first pair category.

2015-16. Chris Tanev put together one of the best seasons from a defensive perspective in the past decade. He was  9th CA/60 with -4.10 which really was the only part of his game missing in the season prior. His elite quality suppression continued as well ranking 1st among defenseman with -0.35 RAPM XGA/60. Without a doubt this was his peak.

Just a little fast forward, 2016-17, 2017-18 Chris Tanev continued to grade out as a first pair defenseman both from a shot suppression and a quality suppression standpoint. In 2018-19 he did take a step back in his shot suppression standpoint moving from his regular -4.0 CA/60 to -1.57. Overall, he still graded out as a middle tier first defenseman but the decline was still evident given his elite past few seasons.

Getting into this season, Tanev declined at an extreme rate. It’s really crazy to think he would decline this much and a reason why signing Tanev is going to be such a risk if the Canucks choose to pursue it. As we just talked about, at his peak he was allowing -4.0 CA/60 and between -0.10 to -0.35 XGA/60 in terms of quality suppression. This season Tanevs defensive profile was nothing close to the regular guy we normally see. It was 2.50 CA/60 ranking 181st, and 0.03 XGA/60 ranking 133rd. Combining that with his XWAR numbers to round out his defensive profile he went from a top pair guy to a bottom pair player. That’s a pretty drastic downgrade moving to the 146th ranked defenseman considering he was top 10 multiple years.

So, realistically the biggest problem for the Canucks is not that Chris Tanev isn’t worth a contract at all. If you are paying him in between 1.7-2.5 million I think it’s a fair deal based on his performance level. The problem is that’s counting on him not declining much more. That again is a huge question because he just declined at such a steep rate over the past season. Are we certain he can regain his old form? I really want that but based on the numbers I have seen over the past 3 years it’s tough to see that happening. Moving away from Chris Tanev is a tough reality but something the Canucks must do based on the decline this season.