Detailing What Brad Shaw Brings to the Devils
Deep-diving the Devils' newest coaching hire and how he will impact New Jersey's defensemen.
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In the past couple of weeks, the Devils have made two important hires.
Before delving into the bulk of today’s article and the latter of the two pick-ups, I want to quickly talk about Greg Ackerman, who was hired as a Senior Data Analyst. Ackerman was most recently a member of the Seattle Mariners’ front office as a Sports Science Analyst, where he specialized in injury prevention. As per the Mariners themselves, Ackerman focused on workload and biomechanics.
I’ve seen some pushback on Twitter (of course) about the hire from the usual suspects, saying that the Devils players should be more focused on “hitting the gym” rather than having some dweeb tell them how to not get hurt.
To that, I say, why not both? What’s the harm in acquiring someone who has proven successful at injury prevention, and why does that suddenly prevent the Devils from strengthening themselves anyway?
The Mariners, with Ackerman on the team, had one of the fewest-injured pitching staffs in the MLB. To me, adding him to the front office crew is a smart move and a huge win.
Now, on to the big fish.
Yesterday, it was announced that the New Jersey Devils added Brad Shaw to their coaching staff. The hire had been previously reported by David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, but nothing official came out until yesterday morning.
Most recently the interim head coach for the Philadelphia Flyers, Shaw spent the past three seasons in an associate coaching position with Philly, handling the defensemen and penalty kill. Before that, he held the same role with the Vancouver Canucks (2021-22), the Columbus Blue Jackets (2016-21), and the St. Louis Blues (2006-2016).
Hiring Shaw was a slam-dunk win.
You might look at the Flyers’ overall situation as an indictment of Shaw’s abilities to coach a defense, but the reality is that he did a ton for that team and their individuals that largely go unnoticed because of their poor position in the standings and horrid goaltending.
Even prior to his addition to the Flyers’ coaching staff, the belief about Shaw from around the league was that he was one of the premier defensive assistants. He has shown a continued demonstration of an ability to turn even the most disserviceable defensemen into studs and develop young defensemen into stars, which is exactly what the Devils need.
Shaw’s History of Developing Young Defensemen
To me, one of the most impressive parts of Brad Shaw’s coaching abilities stems from his ability to identify young defensemen’s talents and build an individual game around them within the system. In other words, Shaw is an expert at identifying how an individual’s skillset best fits within the system the coaching staff is running and really teaches young defensemen how to best use those skills. From there, he has shown a clear pattern of improving other aspects of youngsters’ play without sacrificing the facets of their game that they’re strongest in. He’s been on record as saying he doesn’t view the mistake itself as a talking point for young players, but rather the mindset and play that led to the mistake. That way, those mistakes are nipped in the bud altogether.
Thus, Shaw’s track record in terms of developing young, up-and-coming defensemen into excellent blueliners is pretty pristine.
During his 10-year tenure with the St. Louis Blues, Shaw oversaw the development of players like Alex Pietrangelo, Kevin Shattenkirk, Ian Cole, and Roman Polak.
Pietrangelo, who was drafted 4th overall by the Blues in 2008, blossomed into one of the premier two-way defensemen in the league under Shaw. After two seasons of bouncing back and forth between the NHL, OHL, and AHL, Pietrangelo stepped into a full-time role in 2010-11 and hasn’t looked back. From an underlying standpoint, his years in the midst of Shaw’s tenure with the Blues were the strongest of his career:
Shattenkirk, meanwhile, came to St. Louis as a 21-year-old and was turned into a perennial 40-plus point producer on the back-end. He too has his most prolific years from an underlying standpoint while playing and developing under Shaw, who saw the offensive tools but wanted to thrust some defensive responsibility into his game. The downtrend in Shattenkirk’s game directly corresponds to Shaw’s presence in the organization — as soon as Shaw left the Blues, Shattenkirk’s game steeply declined.
Cole and Polak, while not turning into the offensive players that Pietrangelo and Shattenkirk did, were extremely effective in their own right. Both were tasked with bottom-four minutes, and both turned into defensive stalwarts under Shaw’s regime.
Shaw added to his resume of developing young defensive talent when he stepped into a role with the Blue Jackets, overseeing Zach Werenski, Seth Jones, David Savard, and Vladislav Gavrikov, among a couple of other minor pieces.
Obviously, the huge one there is Werenski, who himself has credited Shaw for playing a huge role in turning him into the Norris-level defenseman he is today. From his rookie campaign to 2020-21, Shaw’s last season in Columbus, Werenski redefined his game completely, transforming from a purely offensive threat to a two-way monster. Take a look at his WAR card over time from those years:
Seth Jones, meanwhile, had his best seasons with Shaw as an assistant coach, turning into a true top-pair defenseman (before falling off eventually) and having his most productive years from a point-production standpoint.
Even Vladislav Gavrikov’s come-up as an effective two-way defenseman can be attributed to the development he underwent under Shaw. As has been the pattern throughout much of these players’ development arcs, Gavrikov’s best seasons from an underlying standpoint came while playing with Shaw as coach.
I’m not sure anything was going to stop Quinn Hughes from turning into the star that he is today, but Shaw’s one year with the Canucks was the first year in which Hughes came anywhere close to being a point-per-game defenseman, getting increased ice time and starting the uptick in his defensive game in the process.
Then came his stint with the Flyers, in which he was responsible for developing players like Jamie Drysdale, Emil Andrae, and Cam York.
Drysdale, whose underlying profile remains relatively rancid, took massive steps forward this season, particularly in the second half of the year, after he returned from an injury in December. The offensive dynamism has never been the question with Drysdale, but his defensive game certainly needed some work. Shaw’s work in helping Drysdale to get to that point may not have shown all that much on the analytics cards, but he was noticeably better at gap control, stick checking, and using his body to seal off plays before they developed.
Andrae, a second-round pick from the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, turned into a pretty solid player for the Flyers in his first full season in the league. At 5’9, he transformed his game under Shaw, turning from a purely offensively inclined blueliner as a prospect to being a reliable two-way player, shockingly using his frame to create separation from the opposing puck carrier and the puck itself and maintaining solid positioning to prevent any plays from getting through.
Then there’s York, who has been one of the more underrated young defensemen in the league under Shaw’s control. At 23 years old, he’s already blossomed into a consistently solid, two-way, second-pair defenseman, and (shocker) put up his three best seasons from an analytical standpoint during Shaw’s tenure.
For the Devils, who have so many highly-touted young defensemen either on the team or in the pipeline — Luke Hughes, Simon Nemec, Seamus Casey, and Anton Silayev — getting Shaw as a coach was a phenomenal move. Nothing against anyone listed here, but I don’t think anyone outside of Q. Hughes has the potential to be as dynamic as, say, L. Hughes and Simon Nemec, assuming development goes well.
Reclamation Projects
Another testament to Shaw’s aptitude in this role is that, throughout his career, he was able to turn players’ careers around. While the Devils are generally pretty stocked up on the blueline, they do have two defensemen who struggled from an analytical and eye-test standpoint in Brenden Dillon and Simon Nemec.
Enter Shaw, who also has a proven track record of reclamation projects.
Rasmus Ristolainen
Perhaps no better example exists of this ability to turn a player’s career around than Rasmus Ristolainen.
Ristolainen, who many regarded to be one of, if not the worst, defenseman in the league prior to the Flyers’ acquisition, completely turned it around under Shaw and turned into a genuinely serviceable, top-four defenseman.
First, let’s take a look at the microstatistical profile from 2021-22, his first year as a Flyer and one year before Shaw came in as an assistant coach:
Not great, Bob!
Now, let’s look at what Ristolainen has turned into while under Shaw:
I mean, that’s a night-and-day difference. That card specifically is from the 2023-24 season, but his profile from this past season and 2022-23 look much, much improved from the horrid player he was when he first joined Philadelphia.
Taking a look at his historical WAR card, too, there is a clear boundary and tell-tale for when Shaw dug his claws into Ristolainen’s game (2022-23):
That alone is pretty irrefutable evidence that he can turn a bad player into quite a good one, in my opinion, but there are certainly more examples to be had.
This season, Ristolainen held the 24th-best expected goals against per 60 minutes (xGA/60) of all defensemen in the league with at least 1000 minutes of 5v5 time, ahead of players like Jake Sanderson, Jaccob Slavin, and Jake McCabe, all players touted for their defensive excellence.
Prior to Shaw’s stint in Philly, Ristolainen was one of those defenders who aimlessly threw around his body to a comical level, sacrificing positioning and open ice in the name of making a poorly-timed attempt at a check. He became a meme throughout the hockey community for frequent gaffes of that nature, either leaving his partner dry to chase a needless check or outright missing his target and slamming his body into the boards.
Then-Flyers Head Coach John Tortorella and Shaw worked hand-in-hand with Ristolainen, teaching him that, rather than just throwing his body at whatever moved and hoping to take its head off by accident, he could instead deploy his size and physicality intelligently, identifying when and where to be with his body to make a tangible difference on the ice while still laying a hit. As Ristolainen himself put it, “Sometimes, I need a little push, a kick in the ass.”1
Shaw did just that, and it worked.
David Savard
David Savard was drafted by the Blue Jackets in the third round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft and didn’t see meaningful NHL time until the 2011-12 season. Despite a slight uptrend in his play prior to Shaw’s hire in 2016-17, Savard had never been particularly solid, rather just a serviceable third-pairing kind of guy.
Flash forward to when Shaw got hold of him, and Savard’s game elevated to a whole new level.
From 2016-17 to 2020-21, Savard was genuinely one of the best defensive defensemen in the entire National Hockey League, and had surprising offensive impacts in that time as well.
There is a clear bell-curve in Savard’s career trajectory, with the five best seasons of his NHL career from an underlying perspective directly correlating to Shaw’s tenure with the Blue Jackets. Now, Savard is back to what he was pre-Shaw: overutilized and over-coveted for the quality of player that he is.
Jay Bouwmeester
Speaking of overutilized and over-coveted for the quality of player that he is, Jay Bouwmeester was certainly one of those players for the bulk of his career… except for the first couple of seasons after he was acquired by the Blues, prior to Shaw’s departure to Columbus.
Leading up to the 2013-14 season, Bouwmeester spent his career below the 50th percentile in terms of WAR, meaning that he was in the back-half of the league in terms of on-ice value. In the first two seasons with Shaw and the Blues, that number spiked to the 61st and 65th percentiles, respectively. It’s particularly impressive, considering that he’d never eclipsed the 45th percentile before (in 2007-08, mind you). Most of that value came from the defensive side of things, where he pushed the 90th percentile for efficacy.
Of course, his play subsequently declined once Shaw left the Blues.
Travis Sanheim
I’ll admit, this pick doesn’t quite fit the bill of Shaw turning a bad player into a good one, but instead a good player into a great one, something to keep in mind when thinking about the career trajectory of Dougie Hamilton (who has unfortunately steadily declined but is still good) and Johnathan Kovacevic (who has always been solid, but never great).
Sanheim, who himself admitted that losing Shaw “would be a disappointment,” has taken leaps within his already-solid foundation, turning into a true top-pair blueliner.
Practically since he was first introduced to the league, the expectation was that Sanheim would be the Flyers’ #1 defenseman of the future, and he generally provided them with solid two-way play for the first few years of his career. In 2022-23, though, when Shaw was brought on, Sanheim took a leap in his development.
Here’s a look at his microstatistics from 2021-22, the season prior to Shaw’s arrival:
Now, here’s what his microstatistical profile looks like after three years of coaching by Shaw:
I mean, wow, right?
Again, Sanheim has never been a bad player, but now, he’s a great player. As I said earlier, with Hamilton, who has seen a downtrend in his play since 2022-23, and Kovacevic, who has always been good (but not great), Shaw seems like an ideal match once again. Even players who are already great can probably take another step forward! I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing Siegenthaler turn into a defenseman who can keep the puck in the offensive zone or break the puck out of his own end.
I’m as high as anyone on Shaw’s hire. What he has done with individuals like Ristolainen and Sanheim, as well as his involvement in the development of Werenski and the tons of other defensemen he’s helped turn into studs, is simply remarkable. For a team itching for a leap forward from L. Hughes and Nemec, further development from Kovacevic, improvement to serviceable from Dillon, and a resurgence from Hamilton, you can’t really ask for a coach with a better track record in all facets.
We’ll get a better sense of the say Shaw has in the defensive scheme once play starts back up again in September, but his penalty kills have always been effective, and in his 16-year career prior to being a part of one of the worst overall teams in the league with Philadelphia, his teams only placed outside of the top-10 in goals allowed three times. In one of those seasons (2018-19), it ranked 11th.
With the Devils already being a top-five defense in the league in terms of goal suppression, I couldn’t be more excited to see the wonders Shaw will be able to work.
From “Did the Flyers fix Rasmus Ristolainen? A look at his improvements and whether he can sustain them,” an article from The Athletic, by Charlie O’Connor, published on August 7, 2023.
I love your detailed breakdown of Shaw's effect on the d-men he's coached. I'm now really excited to see what he can do with the Devils' defensemen!
1. Good take on the Ackerman hiring. I can’t understand how anybody can find something to complain about, there. It HAS seemed to me like some thought should be given to what’s going on with the team, injury-wise, but I assumed it would have more to do with training methods. I’d be really interested in a follow-up after next season, to see if how/if the principles he brings from baseball apply across sports.
2. Really good, informative reporting to make the case for Shaw being an important addition to the staff. I’ll admit to thinking more about how to develop the younger D and am excited at the possibility that there may be a way to elevate the play of the vets.
Good work — shared with my NJD-fan buddies…