Is Jonas Brodin Starting To Emerge From His Sophomore Slump?

The young Swede struggled to find his feet early in the season. He seemed to be under more pressure when the puck was on his stick and often made bad decisions as a result. He wasn't playing with the same calm dominance that he had enjoyed the previous season and it resulted in him being demoted from the top pairing numerous times during games as Mike Yeo tried to take him out of the firing line. Jared Spurgeon's injury has resulted in Brodin returning to his usual spot on the top pairing beside Suter.

It's not that big of a deal for a young player to struggle in their second season (the term "sophomore slump" exists for a reason) but I feel that it's important to look a bit closer at Brodin's performance now that his 45-game sample of great play from last year has been out-weighed by a 48 game sample of not-great play this season. Which sample is the truest indicator of his potential, and which way is his performance trending this year after a rough start?

Let's try to find some answers in the numbers. For the following analysis, I've set the criteria as "Wild defencemen who have payed 25% of the season so far", which leaves 8 players for this year's numbers, and 7 for last year.

-Firstly, here are his basic splits between last season and this season:

A positive aspect of his play this year has been his goalscoring, which has done a lot to mask some of his defensive deficiencies. Let's take a closer look at his scoring rates, focusing on his overall and even-strength Goals per 60 minutes, Points per 60 minutes and Primary Points (Goals+1st Assists) per 60 minutes. I have also included his Shots per 60 minutes, Shot Attempts (Corsi) per 60 minutes and his Shooting Percentage.

-Here are his scoring numbers, with the same criteria as the previous table:

So we've established that Brodin's overall performance has been disappointing compared to last year so now let's see if his performance this year is trending in the right direction.

-Below I have shown his game-by-game CF% this season along with a linear trend line (apologies for the poor quality, Y-Axis is 0-100% in 10% intervals, X-Axis is games 1-48):

-Here is the same type of graph, only this time with Brodin's CF% relative to his teammates:

With Spurgeon out hurt, Brodin couldn't have picked a better time to start finding his game again. Hopefully, once Spurge is back in the fold, Brodin continues to trend in the right direction for the rest of the season. I think last season was a glimpse at his true potential and he isn't far from returning to that level of play, he just needs to regain his confidence.

Now that he is finding some form, one would think that when Koivu, Parise and Spurgeon (the team's two best puck possession forwards and best puck possession defenceman) return to the team, it will make things even easier for him. If he's able to play well while the Wild have been extremely depleted, he should be able to play even better when the team is fully healthy, now that he is looking a bit more like his old self.

I'll be keeping a close eye on Brodin for the rest of the season to see if he can show everyone why his nickname is "Kidstrom" and not "Kidlicky".

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