Last summer, the Red Wings signed J.T. Compher away from the Colorado Avalanche via a five-year, $25.5 million contract. Compher was part of a robust free agent crop, meant to help push Detroit toward the playoff cutline with his 200-foot responsibility and championship experience.
As I wrote at the time, "Compher's signing signals a clear organization priority: Two-way centermen. Dylan Larkin—Yzerman's one great inheritance from the Ken Holland regime and a Michigan product himself—fits that mould. So do Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson, first round draft picks in '22 and '23. So does Andrew Copp, last summer's marquee free agent acquisition and Compher's teammate at Michigan. And now, the latest is Compher...Layering 200-foot players of this caliber on top of one another is an outstanding formula for post-season success. It allows a team to control games and match-ups, without a sense of apprehension that your own top attackers might be exposed by defensive vulnerability."
He arrived off a career-year in Colorado, putting up 17 goals and 35 assists in 82 games and playing for the first time in his career as a full-time number two center. At the time of his signing, the questions around Compher concerned whether he could be a "2C" for an elite team (particularly when no longer playing behind Nathan MacKinnon) and just how much he could help spur a Red Wing team starved for offense. Now that we're a year into Compher's tenure with the Red Wings, it feels likes a good time to revisit exactly what he's brought to Detroit.
This year, Compher scored 19 goals and provided 29 assists for 48 points. That goal figure is a career high, and the point total trails only his '22-23 campaign. His skating impressed, and he proved himself a useful passer in all three zones.
With Compher on the ice, Detroit scored 2.68 goals-per-60 minutes and conceded 2.91 at five-on-five. By expected goals, the Red Wings put up 2.17 xG-per-60 while yielding 2.73.
Both sets of figures are slight regressions on what Compher put up in his final season as an Avalanche. The Avs scored 2.52 goals-per-60 while giving up just 1.97 at five-on-five Compher in 2022-23. By xG, it was 2.62 for-per-60 and 2.36 against. In other words, the underlying stats suggest a step back in his transition from Colorado to Detroit, going from a player who came out ahead by expected and actual goals to one who was underwater by both accounts.
However, that doesn't mean Compher was simply a worse player; instead, the context of a team around him is pertinent to that discussion. It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that a player who went from an elite tier Cup contender to a team fighting for a playoff spot experienced some regression with regards to his on-ice statistics.
The following graphics from Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz.com offer a bit more distilled insight into Compher's isolated impact. First, you can see that the Red Wings were a slightly less effective offensive team with Compher on the ice at five-on-five (2.30 xG/60 without him compared to 2.21 with him).
Red Wings 5v5 Offense w/ and w/o Compher
Source: HockeyViz.com
Then, you can see the Red Wings were also a stingier defensive team with him on the ice than without him (2.59 xG/60 with compared to 2.69 without):
Red Wings 5v5 Defense w/ and w/o Compher
Source: HockeyViz.com
Those defensive results are especially impressive when you consider the context of his deployment. Per PuckIQ.com, Compher played the third highest percentage of his minutes against elite competition among Red Wing forwards, with his 38.3% share trailing only Dylan Larkin (39.0%) and Lucas Raymond (38.3%).
Meanwhile, this season, Compher's two most common wingers were Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane. Those are two productive players, but in the context of the difficult minutes Compher played, they are not exactly defensive stalwarts. The promise of Compher's addition was his potential to provide 200-foot stability; achieving that end (or perhaps reaching its full potential) is unlikely to come with both Kane and DeBrincat.
In assessing his own performance at his end-of-season press availability, Compher said, "Personally, you always want more. You always want to do more, especially when a season ends like that...For this team to go farther, I need to be better. I think a lot of guys feel that way."
Of course it would benefit the Red Wings to see Compher's offensive production climb, but there is arguably greater value in seeing the 29-year-old center drive comparable defensive results to those he delivered with the Avalanche.
At their end-of-season pressers, both Steve Yzerman and Derek Lalonde spoke to the importance of Detroit improving defensively in its bid for the 2025 postseason. "We went from 26th to 13th in goals for," said Lalonde. "Those goals helped us, but we want to keep pushing, and you hope to get over that line. I still think it's team defense and keeping it out of your net." "Ultimately, we have to become a better defensive hockey team, and it's the fundamentals of defending," added Yzerman. "I'm counting on our coaching staff to work with our players and our players to be determined to do that. It's not necessarily the system; it's the basic fundamentals of defending that at times this year we struggled with, and we need to address that again."
In that regard, there is a certain parallel between Compher's path forward and his team's: pushing from near the postseason to into the postseason requires defensive tightening. And to be clear, in Compher's case, that is not to suggest that he was poor defensively in year one. Again, as McCurdy's figures and charts illustrate, the Red Wings were a better defensive team with him on the ice than without him. However, in large part due to contextual factors, Compher did not quite match his defensive impact from Colorado.
When asked at the end of his season to compare the Red Wings' evolution to the one he experience in Colorado (In his rookie year, the Avs finished with 48 points, 21 fewer than the league's next worst team. In his penultimate season in Denver, Colorado won the Stanley Cup), Compher reflected, "Most times, it's gradual steps forward, and it's not always the most fun. A lot of years, you end not reaching the goal that you set for yourself but continuing to strive for it."
Now, as Detroit looks to build on the season's progress, leap into the playoffs, and make the sort of painful incremental progress he described, the Red Wings will look to do so in Compher's image.
Last season, the Red Wings took the league—and perhaps even their own management—by surprise with the clip at which they scored. That was the part of the job of the second center that was supposed to be (or at least feared to be) beyond Compher. Even if he didn't quite match his previous year's point total, a career high in goals suggested that he capably met offensive expectations.
However, the '24-25 Red Wings don't just want to compete for the playoffs but qualify for them, and they believe doing so will require steering into the strengths of Compher's game.
His first season in Detroit was by no means a failure or whiff but to fully realize the aspiration of his signing Detroit needs more: more control of play, more shutdown ability, and most of all more wins. After all, Compher was signed at some fundamental level because of the connection between his strengths as a player and winning hockey games.
Achieving that objective will depend on more than just Compher himself (single-handedly winning games would be too much to ask of any player, much less a second-line center), but as the Red Wings look to snap their playoff drought at long last—and look to do so by sharpening their defensive knives—J.T. Compher will have to be one of the primary drivers in a collective improvement in the defensive third of the rink.
