Calgary Flames

A deeper look at the Calgary Flames’ acquisition of Troy Stecher

The NHL’s trade deadline day has come and gone. The Calgary Flames made their first and only two trades of the season which were a bit underwhelming. The first deal saw a swap of AHLers with Radim Zohorna going to Toronto and Dryden Hunt coming to Calgary. The second deal was a bit more interesting as we saw the first brother swap in NHL history with Nick and Brett Ritchie switching teams. Also in that deal, we saw Connor Mackey go to Arizona and this article’s main focus, Troy Stecher, go to Calgary.

The Flames are Stecher’s fourth team since the start of the 2021 season. Stecher adds mobility on the blueline which has something the Flames have lacked all year due to Oliver Kylington’s absence. He has primarily been used a sixth or seventh defenceman on other teams and should maintain that role in Calgary.

Deep dive into Stecher’s game

All charts below can be found on HockeyViz.com.

Stecher’s isolated impact

Looking at Stecher’s isolated impact chart, the least we can is he has struggled. He has generated little offence and shot attempts in the offensive zone except for the far middle right. While in the defensive zone, Stecher has allowed a lot of offence and shot attempts to be produced by the opposing team. A small positive is that Stecher seems to defend well right in front of the net as well as around the net. Along side offence and defence, Stecher has had terrible finishing and below-average setting.

Stecher’s career isolated 5v5 impact

Now we’ll be looking at all of Stecher’s isolated impact charts of his career. We can see that Stecher has had an interesting career, if he’s performing well offensively, he’s struggling defensively and vice versa. This leads me to believe his current season struggles are not the norm which means that playing on Arizona has likely been a factor. Stecher has tended to put up better results on better teams, so hopefully that continue while he’s on the Flames.

Last season he didn’t perform the best defensively, but he did well with his offensive game. The 2020–21 season is what I would say Stecher’s best year was with strong defensive results and being great at defending the dangerous areas such as the slot and around the net. Hopefully, Stecher can go back to at least performing well in one area of the ice.

Stecher’s impact on Arizona’s 5v5 play

Finally, we’ll be looking at the Coyotes’ 5v5 offence and defence with and without Stecher. With Stecher, we see similar results to his isolated impact chart from this season with almost no offence and shot attempts being generated and lots of them being created by the opposing team in the defensive end. Without him, the Coyotes still didn’t have good results, but just not to the same extent.

Stecher could end up being an underrated pickup

Troy Stecher might be end up being a great addition for the Flames. He didn’t cost them any draft picks which is a win in itself and they could end up with a solid bottom pair, hard-working, and mobile defenceman. It’s likely Stecher will perform better on the Flames since his career results show that he tends to play better on better teams. He is probably going to play with Nikita Zadorov, so my best guess is that Stecher will be used in a offensive role and hopefully start to fix his season struggles.


Photo from the Arizona Coyotes

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