Promoted from the FanPosts. - Travis

The narrative goes that Matt Carle turns the puck over a lot. A simple scan of the stats show that Carle ranked 25th in the league this regular season in giveaways, with 55. This ranks behind many quality defensemen, including Subban (88 giveaways), Yandle (75), Chara (68), Wideman (68), Doughty (65), Girardi (61), and even Luke Schenn (58).

While this might stop some Carle 'haters' in their tracks, the more incessant will say that it is when the turnovers happen and how costly that they are. For that, lets look a little deeper.

I went through the game logs and looked at all 55 of Carle's giveaways and saw if they directly led to goals. It turns out that only 5 of them did. I don't know if this is a high or low ratio, but regardless only 9% of Carle's turnovers lead to goals.

Out of these 5, how many of them led to game winning goals for the other team? Just one, in the March 26th game against Tampa Bay, when Carle's turnover led to the goal that gave the Lightning a 4-2 lead, eventually leading to them winning 5-3. All five of the games where a Carle turnover led to a goal did lead to a loss. One of which was the 9-8 anomaly vs. Winnipeg in October, and another one was a shootout loss to New Jersey in November.

I wasn't sure the best way to share the data (first time doing anything like this) so I put it on a google doc for anyone who wants to look at it and hopefully some of the smarter members can make conclusions. Maybe this can help put the Carle turns the puck over thing to rest.

Carle's Turnovers Doc