PTO: [EDM] F Brandon Sutter PTO with the Oilers (released)

[sandwichbird2023]

my most indelible sutter memory, beyond his bullying of prospects and young players (see the “big balls” comment upthread), is his complete inability to clear the zone. just an utterly worthless player who much of his last 2-3 years here was a liability, even as a fourth line plug.

Hes utterly worthless only when the games matter. When the team is eliminated from the playoff, suddenly he's a star player. Definitely hurts the team's lotto odds.

First player in NHL history to have a retroactive NTC applied, iirc. Also at the time of his first contract with the Nucks the first forward ever to sign over $4m per without ever scoring over 40pts in any prior season.

Those are my only memories of him.

Still, wish him all the best on a comeback attempt. I might not like him as a player, but I don't blame him for taking the money offered to him by an idiot GM.

 

[M2Beezy]

For many fans he is one of the more quietly disliked guys on the Canucks over the years. Arrogant, disrespectful entitled, not to mention quite an annoying hockey player to watch as hes pretty below avg at almost everything living off his name. Long covid anti vaxxer too lol, I got very little sympathy

 

[mattihp]

He plays with a lot of balls. Got big balls for sure.

Hope he makes it with the team. He’s a great guy.

Hope he gets them checked out. Sounds painful

 

[krutovsdonut]

i wish him well. he is a classic victim of unreasonable expectations in vancouver that were not of his making. benning thought sutter could replace kesler as 2c behind the sedins and annointed and paid him as such, but sutter was never more than a 3c no matter how many good minutes you gave him. trading bonino for sutter and committing so much key ice time to him was one of the mistakes that cost the canucks any chance of a retool in that era. he's a bottom six player who can eat minutes and look like a player but will not drive play either as a centre or winger and actually suppresses line offence as a centre.

that said, he's actually had a pretty decent career for one of the worst puck distributing centres i have seen play significant minutes since the 1990s. he can do just about everything else well except generate offence consistently to the point coaches will play him despite that. he has a decent shot when he gets a clear chance, but the problem is that getting the chance is a nearly random event. otherwise he's a pretty poor skill finisher in tight or under pressure, but he can certainly bang pucks in during a scramble.

he might find a spot on the oilers since they don't need any more offence or they could put him as third defence first man with an offensive line. and he could role play fine before covid got him.

 

[Breakers]

Sutter spent 6 season in Vancouver, the longest of any team during his career

Whenever his name gets brought up, the term most often associated with him is "Ohh yeah I forgot about that guy"

He is the most forgettable player i have ever seen.

not good at anything
but does just enough to blend in with the surroundings that you forget he exists

 

[Homesick]

Meh, he'll be a 4th liner at best for 775k a year. Most likely will be in Bakersfield for most of the year

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

i wish him well. he is a classic victim of unreasonable expectations in vancouver that were not of his making. benning thought sutter could replace kesler as 2c behind the sedins and annointed and paid him as such, but sutter was never more than a 3c no matter how many good minutes you gave him. trading bonino for sutter and committing so much key ice time to him was one of the mistakes that cost the canucks any chance of a retool in that era. he's a bottom six player who can eat minutes and look like a player but will not drive play either as a centre or winger and actually suppresses line offence as a centre.

that said, he's actually had a pretty decent career for one of the worst puck distributing centres i have seen play significant minutes since the 1990s. he can do just about everything else well except generate offence consistently to the point coaches will play him despite that. he has a decent shot when he gets a clear chance, but the problem is that getting the chance is a nearly random event. otherwise he's a pretty poor skill finisher in tight or under pressure, but he can certainly bang pucks in during a scramble.

he might find a spot on the oilers since they don't need any more offence or they could put him as third defence first man with an offensive line. and he could role play fine before covid got him.

The bolded essentially summarizes his impact with the Penguins as well. Decent wheels and a good enough shot that he'd score his share of goals off the rush or in transition, but there wasn't even any point to him having linemates because he had zero ability to actually get the puck to them or to get in position to receive the puck from them.

Talented wingers are wasted with him. Just put him with two plugs whose entire job it is to hit and forecheck since Sutter has no clue how to actually properly utilize his linemates anyways.

 

[elitepete]

His last season on the Canucks he played at the level of a 13th forward. I don’t think this will amount to anything.

 

[mkatcherin00]

Hes utterly worthless only when the games matter. When the team is eliminated from the playoff, suddenly he's a star player. Definitely hurts the team's lotto odds.

First player in NHL history to have a retroactive NTC applied, iirc. Also at the time of his first contract with the Nucks the first forward ever to sign over $4m per without ever scoring over 40pts in any prior season.

Those are my only memories of him.

Still, wish him all the best on a comeback attempt. I might not like him as a player, but I don't blame him for taking the money offered to him by an idiot GM.

I remember him scoring a lot of big goals to start the year in VAN. Lucky for Edmonton, they don't need difference makers at forward. They have a few. Nothing wrong with seeing what is there

 

[53or8]

Will always be the guy that cost me two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts.All annoyances aside he was never good enough to play 2c after Horvat.

 

[Human]

This guy is still around? Extremely underwhelming player…

 

[mr figgles]

Sutter spent 6 season in Vancouver, the longest of any team during his career

Whenever his name gets brought up, the term most often associated with him is "Ohh yeah I forgot about that guy"

He is the most forgettable player i have ever seen.

not good at anything
but does just enough to blend in with the surroundings that you forget he exists

Sounds like exactly the guy you want on the 4th line on the cheap.

 

[Cup or Bust]

Pre-season is long and they could use a cheap bottom 6 forward. May as well invite a few guys and see what they have in preseason.

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

Guess who’s possibly back, back again?
Sutter is possibly back, don’t.. don’t tell anybody.

 

[Wallet Inspector]

Canucks fans relieved that Benning isn't GM anymore. He'd probably sign Sutter to a 5 year 25 million dollar contract.

 

[petterdaddy]

Canucks fans relieved that Benning isn't GM anymore. He'd probably sign Sutter to a 5 year 25 million dollar contract.

He already did it once so probably

 

[nowhereman]

Wish him all the best, especially considering his circumstances with long covid. It was pretty disheartening to see some on the Canucks board calling out his character and lumping him in with Virtanen, Leipsic, and Boucher just because he was taking ivermectin. Hopefully, he can make the team and end his career on his own terms.

 

[quat]

Folks seem to be forgetting his impact as a top line winger playing with the Sedins.

Top.Line.Winger

 

[Rydgar]

He was a great player on the PK even until his last playing season with the Canucks. I don't think it's a coincidence the PK fell off a cliff after he left.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

He has a very low hockey IQ, terrible vision and doesn’t know how to use his linemates. He’s also pretty lazy, he coasts a lot especially when going for a line change.

 

[biturbo19]

The bolded essentially summarizes his impact with the Penguins as well. Decent wheels and a good enough shot that he'd score his share of goals off the rush or in transition, but there wasn't even any point to him having linemates because he had zero ability to actually get the puck to them or to get in position to receive the puck from them.

Talented wingers are wasted with him. Just put him with two plugs whose entire job it is to hit and forecheck since Sutter has no clue how to actually properly utilize his linemates anyways.

Yeah. This was Sutter as a player. He's got a useful ability to score his ~15G per year off the rush and broken plays. Very few intentional assists. No matter what sort of minutes you stick him in, that's what he'll get you. It's a double-edged sword, in that it's valuable to have a guy you can stand between two complete plugs and still get your 15G. But it makes him utterly infuriating to play up the lineup with skilled linemates because he's still just going to get 15G and very few assists. He was one of the most stark examples of non-scalable production i've ever seen.


The thing is though, most of what allowed him to do this was in having pretty good wheels and being able to jump on things that way. With all this time off with long covid and complications of that, combined with his age and some injuries that had started to pile up anyway...it's just hard to see him having that skating to still be effective in that weird little niche way anymore. A slow Sutter basically saps the only thing he was actually any good at...and his specific situation is pretty renowned for destroying exactly that sort of capacity for explosiveness and stamina.

 

[EdmFlyersfan]

Oilers should try him on defense.

 

[MS]

Yeah. This was Sutter as a player. He's got a useful ability to score his ~15G per year off the rush and broken plays. Very few intentional assists. No matter what sort of minutes you stick him in, that's what he'll get you. It's a double-edged sword, in that it's valuable to have a guy you can stand between two complete plugs and still get your 15G. But it makes him utterly infuriating to play up the lineup with skilled linemates because he's still just going to get 15G and very few assists. He was one of the most stark examples of non-scalable production i've ever seen.


The thing is though, most of what allowed him to do this was in having pretty good wheels and being able to jump on things that way. With all this time off with long covid and complications of that, combined with his age and some injuries that had started to pile up anyway...it's just hard to see him having that skating to still be effective in that weird little niche way anymore. A slow Sutter basically saps the only thing he was actually any good at...and his specific situation is pretty renowned for destroying exactly that sort of capacity for explosiveness and stamina.

The bolded is 100% correct and made him one of the strangest players I've ever seen. He'd basically produce the same numbers as a 4C that he would as a 2C. Good skater and a good shot who could score some nice individual goals off broken play but has absolutely zero ability to use his linemates and once competed an entire 82-game NHL season with only 1 primary assist (on a puck that bounced off his skate to a teammate).

Sutter was never anything more than a bottom-6 wing/4C in terms of ability level who should have been making $2 million tops as a utility player but his last name/draft position carried him to like 12 years of being overplayed/overpaid by NHL teams.

The other thing about Sutter is that he's *small*. Because hockey fans for some reason associate size with height rather than weight this 6'3 185 toothpick is considered a 'big player' but he's light, weak on the puck, and very poor along the boards and in puck battles.

 

[ChaoticOrange]

Oilers should try him on defense.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Wish him all the best, especially considering his circumstances with long covid. It was pretty disheartening to see some on the Canucks board calling out his character and lumping him in with Virtanen, Leipsic, and Boucher just because he was taking ivermectin. Hopefully, he can make the team and end his career on his own terms.

He told a rookie (Goldobin) that he needed to play with more balls, despite being a relatively lazy player himself. He’s not as bad as those names mentioned, but he isn’t some great veteran presence either imo.