Left winger David Booth is still in the prime of his career at age 29, and the six foot 210 plus pound winger could still regain his form once healthy.
Prior to joining the Vancouver Canucks in 2011-12 he had two seasons of 20 or more goals and one season of 30 or more goals through five seasons in the NHL. Unfortunately his game seems to have been in decline since suffering a concussion and being limited to only 28 games in the 2009-10 season.
When you look at the underlying numbers there appear to be some valid reasons for his offensive decline upon his arrival in Vancouver.
Zone Starts
During his time in Florida he was consistently starting over 57% of his shifts in the offensive zone. During his first season in Vancouver (2011-12) he scored at a 23 goal pace over an 82 game season and again saw 59% offensive zone starts.
There is a very large shift in his usage by the coaching staff beginning in the 2012-13 NHL season. He dropped all the way to less than 47% offensive zone starts in each of his last two seasons with the Canucks,.
Relative to the rest of his teammates he was placed in a more defensive role which he had not been given in Florida. Since this shift in usage he has only scored at a 10 game pace over an 82 game schedule. It is clear that David Booth has issues producing offense when thrust into a defensive role.
Power Play Time
With the Panthers David Booth was receiving nearly 32% of the power play time on ice. However during the past two seasons in Vancouver he was down below 10%. When you consider that out of the 87 goals he scored as a Florida Panther nearly 23% or 20 goals total were scored on the power play, it is easy to see why his production fell.
Shooting Percentage
While in Florida he totaled 309 games played with 87 goals on 949 shots. That put him at 0.28 goals per game and a total 9.1 shooting percentage. That would make him roughly a 23 goal scorer over an 82 game season. A surely valuable commodity in the NHL for any team.
However since his arrival in Vancouver he had played 134 games with 26 goals on 289 shots. Good for an 8.9 shooting percentage and 0.19 goals per game. This dropped him to the level of a 15 goal scorer over an 82 game season.
If you remove 2011-12 from this and go solely based on the past two seasons this drops him to 10 goals in 78 games on 144 shots. Good for 0.13 goals per game and a 6.9 shooting percentage. Even further down he drops to just an 11 goal scorer over 82 games.
It is generally known that shooting percentages can fluctuate, sometimes by a great deal, from year to year. This is how we can have breakout players one year and then see them fall back to their career norms the next year.
Linemates
During his first season with the Canucks his most common center was Ryan Kesler and on the other wing was Christopher Higgins. The last two seasons he has mainly played with a combination of Zack Kassian, Maxim Lapierre and Brad Richardson. None of whom would be considered productive offensive forwards at the NHL level.
Possession/Advanced Stats
The biggest reason why he is a good reclamation project to take on is his possession statistics through his decline. His Corsi for (we will call this shot attempts from now on) has not dropped below 52% and his shot attempts relative to his teammates is always higher. Essentially this shows us that while David Booth was on the ice his team played better and controlled the play more than half the time.
A few other good indicators start with the fact that he is plus 10 in the past two seasons in terms of drawing penalties. He is also a plus nine in terms of his takeaways to giveaways in the past two years. Over the past three seasons his team is drawing more icings than taking them while he is on the ice and lastly his opponents are also shooting a combined 9.7 feet further from his goaltender while he is on the ice.
All of these factors combined indicate to me that his decline has been more about the role and linemates he has been put with (so we’re blaming the coach) than a true decline in skill. Granted his shooting percentage has fallen off greatly, however it has become so low that he is due for some positive regression in this area.
