Thread: What can Brown do for you?

First off, i'm sure this thread title has been used before, but it fits so im using it again.

Now, we all know Brown has been at the center of trade discussion for years, and this season is no different. People like to look solely at point production and then make judgments on his value to the team. Now certainly, being up on the first line, he's expected to score. I'd argue that he doesn't belong up there and i'm sure many would agree. But thats a different discussion entirely.

So what DOES Brown do for this team. We are all aware of his propensity for diving... errr, lack of great skating ability. But how does that play into his value to the team? Well, he happens to draw penalties. In fact, he draws a lot of penalties. Here are some numbers:

Name Pos Team GP Penalties Taken Penalties Drawn Penalties Taken/60 Minutes Penalties Drawn/60 Minutes Penalty +/-

Dustin Brown RW L.A 11 3 11 1.2 4.3 +8

(Full credit to: Daniel Wagner at TheScore.com/nhl for his complete breakdown on this statistic. Also, sorry for ****ty formatting.)

What is happening here? The key stats listed above are Penalties taken (3), Penalties Drawn (11), and Penalty +/- (+8). Well, Brown is drawing, on average, a penalty per game. Subtracting the few penalties he's taken, he's giving his team a PP opportunity in roughly 3 out of 4 games played. It should also be noted that Brown has drawn 20% of this team's penalties. The unfortunate twist in all of this, is that this team's PP% is awful. If i remember correctly they didn't score a PP goal for the first 19-20 PP opportunities this year? So that PP% is going up, and probably looks pretty good over the last 30 opportunities. But, given an average of say, 20% effectiveness, he's contributing approximately 1 goal every 6-7 games just buy doing what he normally does. That should equate to roughly 6-7 goals in this shortened season.

We all know that Brown draws penalties. Some people hate the fact that he tends to dive, or is perceived as a diver, but I wanted to illustrate how that all contributes to this team's chances of success. It's just another one of those things that he does, that tends to fly under the radar in terms of perceived value.

I wish he wouldnt dive. Makes him look like he belongs in Vancouver, with Ryan "Tumbleweed" Kessler

Originally Posted by Bluejay

I wish he wouldnt dive. Makes him look like he belongs in Vancouver, with Ryan "Tumbleweed" Kessler

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I have never felt like his diving has been as bad as Kessler. I guess it's all relative though, and im sure if i was a fan of the opposing team, Brown would piss me off to no end. However, i did feel it was worth illustrating that what he does, does hold value to the team's chances of winning every given night. It's also worth pointing out, that a lot of the penalties he draws are retaliatory in nature. He does get other the other team's skin at times. And a lot of the times when we are complaining about "docile Brown" in the scrums, he's there waiting to draw a penalty. He's NEVER the guy that retaliates and takes a dumb penalty.

Lets use some Hayward terminology and say Brown is "selling it" to the officials rather than call it diving.

Originally Posted by MJ

Lets use some Hayward terminology

Oh, let's not.

Brown keeps his feet moving and creates chances (we'll leave out finishing ratio/capability out of the converstion). I think embellishment or "selling it" is an appropriate term in some cases for Brown. Most times (more than not), the opposing player actually commits an infraction that deserves a penalty. I consider a "dive" to be something where there is no infraction, but a player tries to "act out a scene" to draw an unwarranted penalty.