Let's call it as it was: Cowen was bad last year. Average at his best, atrocious at his worst. And while you can debate him being worth $1.5 million, I would still say he belonged in the AHL, where he would have faced lesser competition and possibly built his game and confidence back up.
But back to the topic of the thread, namely Borowiecki and the unwarranted extension he got.
Travis Yost had a good piece on it.
And despite this, so many people are sure he's a legitimate NHLer? Including management, who seem smitten with his character and hitting alone. Intangibles that frankly count for diddly-squat if you can't play well. And that he's a local kid. Yeeeesh.
I usually like Yost's work, and I do agree that there is some risk to this extension, however there are some obvious flaws with his evaluation here;
First, the team offered him this extension based on 2 things; his performance in the AHL
this year, and his performance in the NHL
this year. While I generally like using as big of a sample as possible, when looking at where a young player who has gone through some substantial development is, old year data is less relevant.
Looking at this year only, his numbers are in line with other NHL defensive D, though I'm not sure why shot attempts and pts/60 is a great evaluative tool for defensive D; he has
stronger pts per 60 than Smid, Brodin, Pysyk, Carkner, Martin, Blum, Stoner, Hainsey, Salvador, Gleason ect and has
better shot attempts per 60 than Hainsey, Campbell, Enstrom, Orpik, Fowler, Smid, Kronwall, Gunnarson, Gorges, Brodin, ect. Granted, it's a small sample, and many of those guys face tougher competition, but it was a small sample even including his previous 2 years, and he has clearly developed as a player.
The other consideration is that while the competition he faced wasn't top lines, he also wasn't in offensive deployments; he started far more often in the defensive end or NZ than the OZ. Yet another reason shot attempts and points are not a great measuring stick.
A better method (and probably the one the team used when opting to extend him)would have been to evaluate his performance against his peers in the AHL. Unfortunately the data is not as readily available and I doubt very much Yost or many hear have watched enough to make an informed evaluation.
Maybe its that they think he IS an NHL player, but that they currently have 8 other NHL players... Next year they wont have that problem. Signing him to 4 years pretty much guarantees that if they waive him, he wont be grabbed - simply because no team will commit 4 years to a guy they know nothing about.
That's a very expensive way for a budget team to protect a guy from waivers. More likely they believe he'll contribute at the NHL level immediately.
