Looking at how Tyson Barrie has become one of the best offensive defensemen in the game today.

The Colorado Avalanche were the surprise team of the NHL last year but their season ended when Matt Cooke took out Tyson Barrie in round one of the playoffs. At the beginning of last year no one believed that Colorado's season would live and die with Barrie. His rise has been meteoric since his emergence during the strike shortened 2013 season. It helps that the Avalanche defense consists of Erik Johnson, Barrie and a whole lot of nothing. The roster in Colorado was begging for one of Barrie or Stefan Elliott to step-up. While Elliott was the initial favourite to claim the spot, Barrie leaped in front of him and is now holding down a spot amongst the 10 highest scoring defensemen.  

Does he benefit from easy usage?

As thin as Colorado's defense core is it is clear that Barrie gets some sheltered minutes. Johnson, Jan Hejda, Nick Holden and inexplicably Brad Stuart get the tough minutes. Last year there was a definite attempt to shield Barrie as he was something of a defensive liability. Therefore, Barrie was able to stretch his offensive game against lesser competition while hiding his deficiencies. This worked to the advantage of the Avalanche in two ways: Barrie was a beast from January on with 30 points in 39 games and it kept Barrie away from the other team's best. The presence of Johnson and Hejda as a shutdown pairing allows the Avalanche the luxury of rolling out Barrie in a more offense-centric pairing.

Not to steal the next section's thunder but in order to tell whether Barrie benefits from this usage just look at how he has faired since Johnson's injury. With Johnson out Barrie's production has gone up but that is largely because of his power play usage as opposed to his even strength usage. In terms of usage Barrie drops from 52% offensive zone starts to 43.5% zone starts. His relative corsi, the difference between the team's corsi when he is on the ice versus when he is off the ice, also drops from an elite 11.8% to just over 9%. The drop in relative corsi makes sense as Barrie is facing tougher competition and it is logically tougher to drive play against better players. The rate at which the Avalanche score with Barrie on the ice has not changed but largely because their on-ice shooting percentage has increased. This likely means that in case the ability of Barrie to drive play to a greater extent with Johnson in the lineup probably speaks more to how Barrie has benefited.

What effect has the Johnson injury had?

The Avalanche defenseman affected most by the absence of Johnson has been Holden, who has been asked to play against much tougher competition than he otherwise would. Barrie has been affected as well but he has generally benefited from Johnson being injured. This seems counter intuitive at first but it makes sense after looking at the numbers a little closer. Barrie has been relied on for more offense with Johnson out of the Avalanche lineup. The Avalanche have been able to more or less maintain their pre-EJ injury shot rates, scoring chance rates and goal rates with Barrie on the ice. Therefore just by increasing his ice time by two minutes per game Barrie's production was bound to get better.

With Barrie's even strength production rates remaining largely static with Johnson injured there must be some other reason for Barrie's production increase without Johnson. The difference in Barrie's point production with Johnson out is on the power play. His power play production has gone from 3.1 points per 60 minutes (P60) to 5.8 P60, an elite level of power play point production for defensemen. Think Kevin Shattenkirk last year.

With Johnson in the lineup Barrie splits power play time with Johnson and Holden with each getting around 50% of available power play time. This suggests that as much as Barrie is helped by Johnson's presence at even strength he is equally hurt by Patrick Roy's insistence on splitting evenly splitting power play time.

What does Barrie do well?