2018-19 Player Review: Christoffer Ehn
By Alex Drain
4 years agoNext up on our Red Wings player review series is Christoffer Ehn, the fourth line center who broke into the NHL as a rookie for Detroit in 2018-19. Let’s take a look at his season in review:
Boxcars
Ehn scored 3 goals and 6 assists for 9 points in 60 games played which is rather lackluster at face value, but given his role, it isn’t terribly bad either. Ehn played just over 10 minutes per game and almost none of that came on the power play, with a healthy chunk being on the penalty kill, which doesn’t give Ehn a ton of opportunities to make an impact offensively, and it’s not really expected of him either. His -5 rating actually isn’t too bad as well.
Corsi
Ehn posted a 42.08 Corsi For %, which again is not great, but it’s also fairly typical of guys in his role. 4th liners are not high possession guys, since they are not terribly skilled offensively and they play a good deal of time in the defensive zone. As a result, his CF% Rel. was -6.41%, which is rather expected and is similar to that of other fourth liners on the team (Jacob de la Rose, Luke Glendening).
Goal based
There’s a decent gulf between his goals for numbers (what actually happened) and his expected goals numbers (what the data predicts should have happened), meaning that Ehn may have gotten a bit of luck. His GF% of 42.42 results in a very respectable Rel. GF% of -2.72%, whereas his xGF% is 39.3, resulting in an uglier -7.14% Rel xGF%. The former puts him a fair bit ahead of de la Rose by comparison, while the latter suggests that there wasn’t much difference in play between the two.
Graphing It
As expected, Ehn was stronger as a defensive player than an offensive one but he’s not really where you want him to be, given that he is not above the mean in any category. At the very least you’d like him to be a plus player in Def_xG and he’s not. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement here.
Evaluative Metrics
Ehn received a 69.17 grade from Corsica Hockey’s player ratings which puts him below the 70 threshold that you’d expect your players to be at. While that number is not an absolute atrocity, it is in the cellar of the NHL and you’d like it to be a tiny bit higher if Ehn is to be an everyday fourth line center. Ehn also registered a 0.04 Game Score, which, while better than that of Witkowski or Jake de la Rose, is still a fair bit worse than what you would want from your fourth liners.
2018-19 PREDICTIONS
I assume Ehn will spend most of this coming season with the Red Wings, since he is a younger piece who is incredibly cheap as he is still on his entry level contract. I think he takes a small step forward offensively (and defensively) as he continues to develop in the NHL, so let’s say that in 68 games played, he registers 5 goals and 9 assists for 14 points.
Conclusion
I do think that Ehn has the capability of being the fourth line center on a future Red Wings contender, given that he is still quite young (just turned 23). This was only his first year in the NHL and he spent a chunk of it in Grand Rapids. Ehn showed some good flashes during the season but ultimately his metrics weren’t great. That said, he’s not that far from being an acceptable fourth liner and the Red Wings can afford to take the time to wait and see what kind of player Ehn develops into. But for this year, he gets:
Grade: C-
Not a good season, but he gets a little bit of a more lenient grade since he’s being marked on the rookie curve.
Recent articles from Alex Drain
