Confirmed with Link: Canucks Sign Pius Suter - 2-years @ $1.6M AAV

[ahmon]

I don't see Suter being that different in terms of tiers than the guys I posted (especially Steel, Kampf, Paul etc.) - Staal is a tier or two ahead of Suter for sure but he's also turning 35 in a month.

Like I said, If I'm wrong then I'll gladly take the L. If I'm right, you bet I'll be resurrecting this thread.

There's no point debating the 3C/5C anymore - it's just a wait and see if Suter can deliver.

Problem is your posts literally contradicts itself. On one you hand you are saying Suter can be a 3C who puts up 30 points, ok defensively and pks.

Of course that's possible - especially if plays with Garland. And like others have suggested in a deployment.


On the other hand you listed guys like Staal, Roy, Paul who bring entirely different elements to the game.

The difference in opinion is clearly how good he can be defensively - how much of an impact he can bring to this team defensively.

Considering your argument has been vague all along about his defensive impact, if Suter scores 32 points next year, you'll come back and say you're right, and miss the entire point of the discussion.

 

[Diamonddog01]

I don't see Suter being that different in terms of tiers than the guys I posted (especially Steel, Kampf, Paul etc.) - Staal is a tier or two ahead of Suter for sure but he's also turning 35 in a month.

Like I said, If I'm wrong then I'll gladly take the L. If I'm right, you bet I'll be resurrecting this thread.

There's no point debating the 3C/5C anymore - it's just a wait and see if Suter can deliver.

So if Suter is in the same tier as Kampf, Paul, Gaudreau and Roy why do you think there's such a huge discrepancy in terms of term and AAV for Suter vs everyone else you listed apart from Steel? Might be something for you to reflect on.

 

[tradervik]

Debates are fun, though.

 

[Bankerguy]

I really wish the Canucks could find a permanent body for the 1RW spot so that Mikheyev is freed up because I think a 3rd line with Suter C and Mikheyev RW could be two thirds of something really good.
Maybe we get lucky and a guy like Podz impresses and gets a stint with Petey, then there's always Beauvillier but i cant see him sticking there permanently, he's in his prime so i dont see him getting significantly better over this summer.
Boeser? if he's back to top form then that would leave Jt. Miller with Garland which are solid makings of an good 2nd line.
Kuz Petey Boes // Beauv Jt.M Garland // xxx Suter Mikheyev
I could be okay with this ^ if things work out.
slot Hoggy, Podz and Pearson in where makes sense

 

[JohnHodgson]

So if Suter is in the same tier as Kampf, Paul, Gaudreau and Roy why do you think there's such a huge discrepancy in terms of term and AAV for Suter vs everyone else you listed apart from Steel? Might be something for you to reflect on.

Really?

That's your analysis?

Probably because Suter has way less experience than everyone else and was a FA in the flat cap?

 

[JohnHodgson]

Problem is your posts literally contradicts itself. On one you hand you are saying Suter can be a 3C who puts up 30 points, ok defensively and pks.

Of course that's possible - especially if plays with Garland. And like others have suggested in a deployment.


On the other hand you listed guys like Staal, Roy, Paul who bring entirely different elements to the game.

The difference in opinion is clearly how good he can be defensively - how much of an impact he can bring to this team defensively.

Considering your argument has been vague all along about his defensive impact, if Suter scores 32 points next year, you'll come back and say you're right, and miss the entire point of the discussion.

I listed those centers because I don't think Suter is that far off. I think he's a small tier below some of the guys I listed.

How is that contradictory?

My opinion has been consistent the entire time saying that I think Suter can be an adequate 3C.

 

[Diamonddog01]

Really?

That's your analysis?

Probably because Suter has way less experience than everyone else and was a FA in the flat cap?

Gaudreau and Kampf were also signed this year, Roy and Paul last offseason under similar conditions.

Comparing Suter, who wasn’t signed until August ffs, is really, really stupid.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

In theory, yes. If a team could win 60% or 70% of their faceoffs over the course of a season, this would be a statistically significant advantage.

The problem is that pretty much every team, every year finishes between 47% and 53% in the faceoff circle. League leaders this year were 54%. And the difference between being a 48% 'bad' faceoff team and a 52% 'good' faceoff team is only 1 or 2 faceoffs/game which in a sport which features literally hundreds of possession changes in a game ... just isn't statistically significant.

Outside of very rare exceptions (and the 10-11 Canucks might have been one of those exceptions) it's just not something you can drive success with. Obviously you don't want to ignore it and you don't want to be at 40%, but it isn't worth sacrificing other aspects of your roster that actually move the needle for a small impact in faceoff%.



This isn't impossible but from what I've seen of Tocchet he's going to want both a high-leverage defensive 3rd line plus a traditional physical/defensive 4th line so I'd be a bit surprised if we see an Adam Gaudette-type 3rd line C usage.

I think the problem is that you're taking raw faceoff percentage over a team across a whole season (which normalizes somewhat) and forgetting that while over a large sample size this might be true, if you put Patrice Bergeron against Jack Hughes 100 times on the draw you're going to see Bergeron win like 88 faceoffs.

So match-ups matter.

Also, overall percentages are misleading because strategies are different in some zones and indeed players don't try as hard in the neutral zone.

I recall reading a story from a high level player during the 60's who said he got all excited because he beat Beliveau like 3 draws in a row in the neutral zone. But when it was a faceoff that mattered he didn't even have a chance.

There's also a false dichotomy here. Nobody is arguing that we should acquire Mike Mcleod because he's good at faceoffs and trade Quinn Hughes to do it.

Also, it's easy to say that it's just a couple of face offs per game, but which face offs? Think of how slim the margins are in this league with billions of dollars at stake?

Having a good face off team versus a bad face off team could be a swing of like 6 wins.

Maybe not in a way that's directly quantifiable by JFresh, but suppose your top D pairing is out there for a minute and a half and then ices the puck.

You have a poor faceoff man out there who loses the draw leading to 45 more seconds of possession and two forecheck hits that exhaust your D.

This might indirectly cost you the game when a faceoff win and an easy change could have allowed your top D pairing to stay fresher and mentally sharper out there..

Just because it's not easily quantifiable by blunt force statistics doesn't mean it isn't relevant.

 

[JohnHodgson]

Gaudreau and Kampf were also signed this year, Roy and Paul last offseason under similar conditions.

Comparing Suter, who wasn’t signed until August ffs, is really, really stupid.

Teams re-sign their guys well ahead of free agency to lock in cost certainty.

Most teams that needed/wanted Suter didn't have cap space at that point.

It's not a fair comparison at all lol.

That's like saying Tarasenko (5M - 1y) is only slightly better than Nick Foligno (4M - 1y).

Just idiotic to use $ as some sort of comparison as to who's better. None of these players were signed at the same time. Gaudreau signed an extension in April and Kampf re-signed in June. By July 1, most of the cap space was already drained out. Teams that want/need Suter didn't have cap anymore. Rebuilding teams didn't want to give him anything more than 1 year.

Also he came off a down year so naturally, there wouldn't be as much interest. Just a poor comparison all around.

 

[Diversification]

Suter's deployment prediction: "3"C with Garland and Hogs/Pod at evens. Blueger with Joshua/PDG/Aman will shoulder tougher defensive minutes 5v5.

He'll be a 2nd unit PK guy who isn't relied upon to take draws. That will be the task for JTM and Blueger.

 

[strattonius]

Suter's deployment prediction: "3"C with Garland and Hogs/Pod at evens. Blueger with Joshua/PDG/Aman will shoulder tougher defensive minutes 5v5.

He'll be a 2nd unit PK guy who isn't relied upon to take draws. That will be the task for JTM and Blueger.

Agreed with your deployment takes - this is showing that Blueger is more versatile than Suter; Blueger will also be on PK1 duties in all likelihood. Not singling you out just still curious why Suter is winning that poll so decisively.

 

[Diamonddog01]

Teams re-sign their guys well ahead of free agency to lock in cost certainty.

Most teams that needed/wanted Suter didn't have cap space at that point.

It's not a fair comparison at all lol.

That's like saying Tarasenko (5M - 1y) is only slightly better than Nick Foligno (4M - 1y).

Just idiotic to use $ as some sort of comparison as to who's better. None of these players were signed at the same time. Gaudreau signed an extension in April and Kampf re-signed in June. By July 1, most of the cap space was already drained out. Teams that want/need Suter didn't have cap anymore. Rebuilding teams didn't want to give him anything more than 1 year.

Also he came off a down year so naturally, there wouldn't be as much interest. Just a poor comparison all around.

Teams re-sign comparable players to 4 or 5 year deals at a higher AAV to lock in cost certainty? I thought you said the reason was the flat cap?? Give it up dude, this is just silly.

As to the bolded, your analogy is quite frankly laughable. A bigger contract is obviously not an automatic indicator of a superior player and admittedly and it's somewhat reductionist and an appeal to authority however the fact that Kampf and Gaudreau got 4 years +, at a higher AAV, as did Roy and Paul last year speaks volumes. Worse teams on two occasions now were fine watching this player move on.

As amusing as your backpedaling and goalpost moving is let me clear: Suter is not a comparable - stop embarrassing yourself further by pretending that they are.

 

[biturbo19]

It's not impossible that he steps up in a bigger defensive role as a 3C but I certainly wouldn't be banking on it.

And your Pettersson example isn't the same thing. Saying that a proven elite player who finished top-10 in Selke voting this year could play a smaller role he hasn't played before isn't the same as saying a 27 y/o journeyman can step up into a far bigger defensive role than he's ever played before.

Blueger scored at a higher ES rate than Suter from 2019-2022 while playing true 3rd line C minutes with 3rd line linemates on a playoff team. He's a 3C. He's proven. He's done it before. He's bigger, stronger, more physical.

Suter may have the inside track. I don't know. They're paying him less than Blueger and Blueger was a July 1 signing as opposed to an August signing so I suspect it's Blueger's job to lose, though.

If Suter is the 3C taking hard defensive matchups, I suspect we'll be talking about 3C being a significant weakness all year. As others have noted, though, Suter might get the sort of usage that Adam Gaudette got when he was the '3C' here in 19-20 on a soft minute '3rd line' and Beagle was the '4C' playing the hard minutes.

Yeah. I think what you've described at the end there is the most logical way of approaching this roster configuration. Where it'll probably be debatable and a bunch of semantics about which is even the "3rd line".

The reality with Suter is, to get something out of him...you basically want him playing a fringe 2C type role, and we have a bunch of overflow of wingers who are similar. Not "matchup" players. Guys who are more like "Top-6 scoring role" players...but not necessarily great at it and too many bodies for them to actually play in the Top-6. Basically just an "overflow" crappier second 2nd line.


So you can call him a 2b Center or something and call Bluegers the 3C where he fits the role more conventionally in terms of playing the hard minutes. idk. But that's really the sort of configuration where Suter might make a little bit of a sense here.

 

[Shareefruck]

I see no reason why you couldn't have your fourth line be your "poor-man's scoring line", personally.

I think I'm starting to lean towards no longer being so stuck on the whole Mikheyev as a scoring winger thing (even though he did well there) and just have him and Blueger form the basis of a strong 3rd line instead. Maybe DiGiuseppe can be the 3rd man on it?

When I consider the whole "beggars can't be choosers, make the best of a bad situation" thing, that's kind of where my mind goes.

 

[biturbo19]

I see no reason why you couldn't have your fourth line be your "poor-man's scoring line", personally.

I think I'm starting to lean towards no longer being so stuck on the whole Mikheyev as a scoring winger thing (even though he did well there) and just have him and Blueger form the basis of a strong 3rd line instead. Maybe DiGiuseppe can be the 3rd man on it?

When I consider the whole "beggars can't be choosers, make the best of a bad situation" thing, that's kind of where my mind goes.

I think this is the biggest thing. I'm not sure it matters which you label as which line...they'll probably even end up with a relatively even split of minutes. That part is a sort of non-negotiable. You can't have a "scoring line" playing severely limited "4th line" minutes. Offensive skill players just absolutely sink in that sort of deployment because they need to be coming over the boards regularly enough and having that time to handle the puck and make plays.


I'm even wonder if Suter's signing doesn't lead to a roster configuration that actually scales Millers 5v5 minutes back a bit. Let him continue to work the PP and he'll still get his time, but it wouldn't necessarily hurt to roll back what he plays, especially if he's working with Boeser as most people sort of expect. Borrowing some "2nd line minutes" to roll things more evenly and avoid having a real "limited 4th line minutes" group.

 

[Shareefruck]

I think I kind of see it as "whichever line gets Garland is the third line and probably favorable minutes as a result of that," personally.

 

[biturbo19]

I think I kind of see it as "whichever line gets Garland is the third line and probably favorable minutes as a result of that," personally.

Yeah. It's weird to define a line by the winger...but that's probably true. That's the byproduct of having a "Top-6 Winger" who probably won't be playing in the Top-6.

 

[Diversification]

Agreed with your deployment takes - this is showing that Blueger is more versatile than Suter; Blueger will also be on PK1 duties in all likelihood. Not singling you out just still curious why Suter is winning that poll so decisively.

It's summer. Skeleton crew of posters. 50 votes total can skew like that. Also, it's not clear-cut because neither are locks as 3C. Blueger has the inside edge provided last year was an aberration and not a trend but he has yet to prove it either way.

 

[Zarpan]

Really?

That's your analysis?

Probably because Suter has way less experience than everyone else and was a FA in the flat cap?

Suter has played nearly as many NHL games as Roy and Gaudreau.

However, it is true that teams were less certain about what they'll get out of Suter since he has played on teams that have lacked depth. His deployment on the Canucks will likely be quite different than how he was typically deployed before.

Roy, Gaudreau, Kampf, etc... have performed well in their current roles for a while, and they were rewarded in the expectation that they would at the very least continue to do well in those roles.

 

[VanJack]

Sometimes it's a bit of head-scratcher why a useful player like Suter ends up as a UFA long after the July 1st deadline.

I mean he's only 27; is a a natural center who can play the wing; and has scored at a decent clip in Chicago and Detroit. And from all reports he's solid defensively and can kill penalties.

But for some reason he languished as a UFA and accepted a significant pay cut to sign with Vancouver for two seasons.

All in all, a nice piece of work by Allvin to address one of team's biggest holes--third line center.

 

[JohnHodgson]

Sometimes it's a bit of head-scratcher why a useful player like Suter ends up as a UFA long after the July 1st deadline.

I mean he's only 27; is a a natural center who can play the wing; and has scored at a decent clip in Chicago and Detroit. And from all reports he's solid defensively and can kill penalties.

But for some reason he languished as a UFA and accepted a significant pay cut to sign with Vancouver for two seasons.

All in all, a nice piece of work by Allvin to address one of team's biggest holes--third line center.

Depth players are really feeling the squeeze on the cap crunch.

In a normal year, I think Suter would be looking at a multi-year deal at 2.5M+

Teams re-sign comparable players to 4 or 5 year deals at a higher AAV to lock in cost certainty? I thought you said the reason was the flat cap?? Give it up dude, this is just silly.

As to the bolded, your analogy is quite frankly laughable. A bigger contract is obviously not an automatic indicator of a superior player and admittedly and it's somewhat reductionist and an appeal to authority however the fact that Kampf and Gaudreau got 4 years +, at a higher AAV, as did Roy and Paul last year speaks volumes. Worse teams on two occasions now were fine watching this player move on.

As amusing as your backpedaling and goalpost moving is let me clear: Suter is not a comparable - stop embarrassing yourself further by pretending that they are.

I'll keep the receipts fam.

I'll bring this up in a year.

 

[kmwtrucks]

the Suter signing sure feels like a forward is on the way out. I know teams dont want to add sweetners but what would Vancouver give up to garland off the books with no retention 2025 2nd? I would that would be the least you would have to give up to get someone to take him.

 

[MS]

I think the problem is that you're taking raw faceoff percentage over a team across a whole season (which normalizes somewhat) and forgetting that while over a large sample size this might be true, if you put Patrice Bergeron against Jack Hughes 100 times on the draw you're going to see Bergeron win like 88 faceoffs.

So match-ups matter.

Also, overall percentages are misleading because strategies are different in some zones and indeed players don't try as hard in the neutral zone.

I recall reading a story from a high level player during the 60's who said he got all excited because he beat Beliveau like 3 draws in a row in the neutral zone. But when it was a faceoff that mattered he didn't even have a chance.

There's also a false dichotomy here. Nobody is arguing that we should acquire Mike Mcleod because he's good at faceoffs and trade Quinn Hughes to do it.

Also, it's easy to say that it's just a couple of face offs per game, but which face offs? Think of how slim the margins are in this league with billions of dollars at stake?

Having a good face off team versus a bad face off team could be a swing of like 6 wins.

Maybe not in a way that's directly quantifiable by JFresh, but suppose your top D pairing is out there for a minute and a half and then ices the puck.

You have a poor faceoff man out there who loses the draw leading to 45 more seconds of possession and two forecheck hits that exhaust your D.

This might indirectly cost you the game when a faceoff win and an easy change could have allowed your top D pairing to stay fresher and mentally sharper out there..

Just because it's not easily quantifiable by blunt force statistics doesn't mean it isn't relevant.

Your example is taking the single best FO guy in the NHL (Bergeron) against the single worst (Hughes). And yes, as I said, if you could stack 4 insanely good faceoff Cs on your team and win 65% of your faceoffs over a full season, maybe you're driving a small advantage.

But doing that isn't realistic and in actuality like 95% of NHL Cs hang out in that 47-53% range and vary from season to season.

And yes, you can draw up situations where obviously winning a faceoff is a big deal. But it just isn't consistently replicable and you're going to lose that big faceoff basically just as often no matter who your C group is and no matter what your anecdotal evidence is.

Again, in the end you're talking about a very small number of possession changes in a sport where there are hundreds of possession changes in a game. This one type of possession change, though, is quantifiable so it gets over-analyzed and overrated in terms of impact. Being 5th in the NHL instead of 20th might buy you 1 or 2 goals over the course of a season. And we can see that there is statistically very little correlation between being a good faceoff team and winning games (outside of rebuilding teams that are very young at C and bad at faceoffs because most young Cs are bad at faceoffs, but the losing isn't because of the faceoffs).

 

[F A N]

I agree, the term "5C" is not common parlance, but it's entirely clear in the way it was described and what it means. It's absolutely applicable to literal "Swiss Army Knife" utility players like Pius Suter.

It's not often described in common discourse because a lot of people seem to look at it with that overly simplistic mentality of the bolded. That idea that ignores what makes for an actually effective 4th liner. Suter doesn't really have that...which is where his better fit is either as a stopgap/fill-in middle-6 Center or as a Top-9 Winger.

But the user who threw out the term defined it. He defined 5C as someone who should only play C in a pinch. We don't have to guess what it means. I think ou're conflating what you think is an ideal player to play the position with a player who has successfully played the position. Suter has spent a substantial (I would say majority) of his time as a C in the NHL. He's listed as a C. I think most of us think management signed him to play the C position for the Canucks.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with thinking Suter should only play C in a pinch. But are you saying that the Canucks signed a bottom 6 winger with the intention of slotting him in as a bottom 6 winger? For some reason you don't seem to want to answer this question.

Gaudette is also a player in the same mold as Suter...but much much worse. That same issue where he might be better as a C, but not good enough there to actually want to play him at C if you have a choice. Not really a 4th line player who can be effective crashing and banging and playing with energy...not a matchup player. Not skilled enough to want in your Top-6.

The difference in ability level makes Suter something like a Top-9W/5C type clearly NHL caliber utility player. Whereas Gaudette is an AHL journeyman fringe guy. But there are some parallels in the type of tweener player they are.

Is Yanni Gourde a tweener and does it matter? I get that you like having an old school top 6 bottom 6 but that doesn't take away from the fact that Suter is, at this point, a proven NHL C. It doesn't matter if Gaudette is stylistically similar. A generation of players model their game after [insert start player] and that means nothing.

And you left a key difference here. Gaudette's failure at C was his inability to defend. Suter defends well and coaches trust him to play in a variety of situations and on different lines.

Your stopgap argument is also irrelevant. Cole is a stopgap due to his age too that doesn't mean he's not expected to be a top 4 Dman. The Canucks targeted Suter and Blueger for their ability to play C, defend, PK, chip in offensively, and because they could be economical signings. Nothing wrong with having "stop gaps" when you don't have the ability to acquire a long-term solution.

The whole "takeaways" stat is one of the most overrated defensive metrics for me. For one thing, it's a bit like the "hits" statistic in that it can seem a little bit subjective to begin with. But also more importantly, guys who are racking up tons of "takeaways" are inherently players who didn't have the puck and keep the puck to begin with. Which is where smart, responsible puck management > "takeaways" for me.

The takeaway stat was in the context of posters claiming Aman is some sort of ferocious forechecker. By definition, you're forechecking because your team doesn't have the puck.

And we're not talking about comparing a player with 29 takeaways vs 34 or something like that. 9 takeaways is an glaringly low stat that catches attention.

I don't think that's true. Suter is capable of playing Center in the NHL. I just think he's a bit of an odd utility fit player. The sort of guy who you don't really want to have to deploy at any of your 4 "healthy roster" Center spots 1 through 4 because he's not really ideally suited to any of them on a strong team. Suter absolute can and has deployed as a Center, largely because he's spent his entire NHL career on teams that aren't ideally constructed and don't have better options. Vancouver is going to be no exception to this.

Your post is way too long for me to respond to everything. But your opinion above is fine. Then your opinion is that the Canucks signed a bottom 6 winger who really should fill in at C in a pinch?

 

[Shareefruck]

You know, this comes up a lot, and it's going off on a bit of a tangent, but I don't think I agree with the logic that terms necessarily need to be or should be used based on what "technically qualifies," at least in the context of evaluating what you want/have, the end goal being as close to a strong team as you can approach.

When someone says 1C or 2C or 3C, it's implied that they mean a serviceable/normal example of one, not a bare minimum example of one. It's not even about having impossible standards and expecting to get an "ideal" one, it's more that when you imagine one, you imagine a middle-of-the-pack one (when you talk about getting/having a #1 center, it's implied that you're referring to a proper one, which wouldn't be the 30th best center in the league, it'd be the 15th best).

People like to correct that, but it seems fair enough to me. Makes more sense to me that when you're referring to a bare minimum and above one, you'd have to include the qualifier "technically a 1C/2C/3C" instead of needing a qualifier when you're referring to an average one.

Also, the phrase "Literal Swiss Army Knife utility player" is interesting.