2023-24 Season in Review: Ryan Graves

Graves has yet to settle in as the reliable top defender the Penguins were hoping to add when they signed him to a six-year deal last summer.

Vitals

Player: Ryan Graves
Born: May 21, 1995 (Age 28 season)
Height: 6’5”
Weight: 220 lb
Hometown: Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2013, fourth round, No. 110 by the New York Rangers
2023-24 Statistics (NHL): 70 games played, three goals, 11 assists, 14 points

Contract Status: Graves has five seasons remaining on the six-year contract he signed with the Penguins last July. The deal locks him in through the 2028-29 season, and includes a 12-team no trade list through 2025-26, per CapFriendly.

Monthly Splits

From Yahoo! Sports

Story of the Season

“With Ryan, there’s no dancing around it. He was a very good player in Colorado and New Jersey... He came in and from the beginning, I thought, ‘it happens’. Did I expect it to go the whole year? No.

“Part of that is on us as an organization, but it’s as much on Ryan to push and find his way through the summer. It’s a massive summer for him. His strength, which will allow him to be more physical and make stops in the defensive zone, his mobility— he’s going to have to push and really work on that. We have to arm him with the path to get there and he has to execute it relentlessly and if he can do that, he will get back to being the player he was when we signed him.” — Kyle Dubas on April 19, about Graves’ first season as a Penguin

When Dubas and the Penguins signed Graves last summer, they were hoping they had added a plug-and-play quality defenseman who could slot in with either Kris Letang or Erik Karlsson on the first or second pairing.

That’s a big ask, and it proved to be one Graves wasn’t able to live up to during his first season in Pittsburgh.

Graves was unable to build on a strong season with the Devils as his struggles to limit opponents in the defensive zone led to the Penguins reducing his role with the team.

“We’re going to rely on him moving forward. We’re going to work with him and try to see what we can do to keep his game simple. I think that’s when he’s at his best, when he defends hard and controls the netfront.” —Mike Sullivan on Graves after the Jan. 2 loss to the Washington Capitals

Graves started out the season averaging 21 minutes per night through the first two months. That fell to under 17 per contest through January and February.

He was then sidelined by a season-ending concussion in April. Coincidentally or not, the team then went on to have by far their best stretch of the season when big No. 27 wasn’t dressing.

Dubas was unusually direct in calling Graves out at the end of the season. This isn’t a player the Penguins planned to bury on the third pairing— they wanted him to be a reliable cog in the defensive core. Changes will be necessary this offseason in order to help Graves fit into the system the way the team was originally envisioning.

Regular season 5v5 advanced stats

Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of nine defensemen on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.

Corsi For%: 49.06 (5th)
Goals For%: 50.67 (4th)
xGF%: 50.5 (4th)
Scoring Chance %: 48.26 (7th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 50.34 (7th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 6.39 (9th)
On-ice save%: 93.26 (1st)
Goals/60: 0.16 (6th)
Assist/60: 0.54 (5th)
Points/60: 0.7 (6th)

Graves’ impact is hard to pick out here given the range of defensive partners he played with throughout the season, but overall the Penguins struggled to set up high-danger chances and quality scoring opportunities with him on the ice.

Graves finished with a +/- of +10 (third on the team among Penguin blueliners behind Marcus Pettersson and Kris Letang). Graves should give a lot of credit to his goalies stopping a ton of pucks for him because if you think this season was ugly for Graves, just imagine if the goalies didn’t post such a high percentage while he was out there.

Charts n’at

Via HockeyViz and JFresh Hockey

In the top chart, you can see the Penguins gave the Graves-Letang experiment about 30 games to mesh. When that didn’t work out well, Graves rotated between playing with Erik Karlsson, Chad Ruhwedel, Karlsson again and back to Ruhwedel as the season went along. Then Ruhwedel was traded and Graves got a few games with Jack St. Ivany before Graves’ season-ending concussion. It was a season that Graves could never quite settle in and demonstrate value no matter where he was placed.

As mentioned last summer, despite Graves’ large frame and reputation as a shutdown or defensive defender, he shoots the puck. A lot. Graves put just over 4 shots per hour on net this season, good for third on the team behind the two guys you’d expect he would be behind in this category (Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson).

Ugly looking WOWY chart for Graves. The offense generated more expected goals with him off the ice than with him on it. Considering he logged a ton of time with the first and second line players, that’s not an encouraging development. At the other end, xGA was about even (2.69 to 2.65) with or without Graves, but that brighter red spot in the bottom left graph at the left of the net isn’t something that makes Graves look very good.

A lot of these microstats are bound to not look great considering role, position and ability. But check out the bottom of the middle column for entry denial rate, entry preventions on possession and chances, plus the right hand side for retrievals (at least that’s near 50%!) and success. That’s not the look the Penguins expected or paid for with Graves’ defending not meeting the mark to be a viable top-four defender this year.

The bad thing according to WAR if you’re hoping for a Graves bounce-back or drastically different performance next year is...2023-24 is pretty much the player he’s always been in terms of EV defensive impact and general middle-of-the-road results everywhere else. A tiger doesn’t change its stripes and to some degree Graves is who he is as a player, for better and worse.

Highlights

Graves took a shift as goaltender against the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 28:

He scored his first goal as a Penguin against the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 19:

That wasn’t the only time this season Graves made the highlight reel against the Godlen Knights. From Jan. 20:

Questions to ponder

Can Graves return to the shutdown defensive role he playing alongside fellow former Penguin John Marino for the Devils in 2022-23? If so, what is the best pairing with which he could thrive? If not, can he use the summer to adapt to become a complimentary partner to an offensive-minded defender like Letang or Karlsson?

If Pittsburgh isn’t the right fit for Graves: what can the Penguins do about it? With five seasons remaining on his contract is there another alternative besides putting him on the third pair and hoping that eventually the talent/confidence he’s shown elsewhere will eventually be built back up?

Ideal 2024-25

The fact that Graves is signed through 2029 will make his deal harder to move and might mean the Penguins risk giving up assets to trade him at a career low point.

The best outcome for the team could be that Graves bounces back, in both health and defensive reliability. He was adjusting to playing with a new team last season, and it wouldn’t be the first time (or second time) that a high-profile defenseman free agent takes a year to acclimate and plays much better in the second year than in the first. If Graves can flush last year’s performance, regain confidence and come back ready to rock as that 20-21 minute complimentary defender the Penguins signed to play a simple, responsible game alongside a star defender, the train will be back on the tracks.

Bottom line

After the Penguins made a long-term commitment to this 29-year-old defender, Dubas might have no other choice but to bet on a bounce-back campaign from Graves heading into 2024-25. Whether or not hope will turn out to be a good strategy in this case will remain to be seen.