Luca Sbisa Discussion -- Part IV

[Fat Tony]

Benning bit the bullet in Vey, so not so sure he does the same for Sbisa. I can see him riding this one out especially since he likely thinks Weber is worse and after Weber we have nothing (except Biega, but he's not NHL caliber to Benning for some reason).

Also most of Vey's salary can be buried while he's with Utica. Not so with Sbisa.

Click to read more...

 

[PG Canuck]

Also most of Vey's salary can be buried while he's with Utica. Not so with Sbisa.

Which is why this contract is even more stupid. Don't get how he got a raise WITH term.

 

[vanuck]

I will forever laugh because of this player whenever Benning's so-called eye for talent is brought up.

 

[biturbo19]

I will forever laugh because of this player whenever Benning's so-called eye for talent is brought up.

Nice.

That sounds fair and balanced.


Forever.

 

[Pip]

You never know when a player will "get it." I still believe that Sauve and Barker will turn it around any day now.

 

[biturbo19]

The funniest part to me, is how one-dimensional some people's idea of "talent" is.


And how focused it seems on what a player can do with a puck on their stick.

In a game where most players spends the majority of the game without the puck on their stick.

 

[vanuck]

Nice.

That sounds fair and balanced.


Forever.

Basically Sbisa is like a scouting litmus test - no one who watches the guy and concludes that he's actually a good D-man should get the benefit of the doubt. I mean, we're talking about an actual hockey professional here.

 

[biturbo19]

Basically Sbisa is like a scouting litmus test - no one who watches the guy and concludes that he's actually a good D-man should get the benefit of the doubt. I mean, we're talking about an actual hockey professional here.

Because scouting is as idiotically stupid simple as "pass/fail" on an NHL hockey player?






You say "good D-man" like you think that's an even remotely worthwhile or even slightly comprehensive scouting evaluation.

 

[Verviticus]

Because scouting is as idiotically stupid simple as "pass/fail" on an NHL hockey player?






You say "good D-man" like you think that's an even remotely worthwhile or even slightly comprehensive scouting evaluation.

oh come on. when you're dealing with someone like sbisa, there is a categorization: not nhl player, that he falls well within. you're being disingenuous just to be aggressive

bitturbo here to the rescue, to obfuscate an obvious truth

like do you actually not understand the implications for failing at such an immense degree as an evaluator of talent? do you actually believe "every mistake is the same"? the real world doesn't work like that - making a mistake parallel parking is not identical to drinking with a BAC of 1.0

 

[vanuck]

Because scouting is as idiotically stupid simple as "pass/fail" on an NHL hockey player?






You say "good D-man" like you think that's an even remotely worthwhile or even slightly comprehensive scouting evaluation.

Everything there is to say about why he's bad - and thus not a good D-man - has been already said. How many times do people have to rehash it over and over again?

 

[biturbo19]

oh come on. when you're dealing with someone like sbisa, there is a categorization: not nhl player, that he falls well within. you're being disingenuous just to be aggressive

bitturbo here to the rescue, to obfuscate an obvious truth

like do you actually not understand the implications for failing at such an immense degree as an evaluator of talent? do you actually believe "every mistake is the same"? the real world doesn't work like that - making a mistake parallel parking is not identical to drinking with a BAC of 1.0

I absolutely disagree with your premise that Luca Sbisa is not an NHL player.


It has absolutely nothing to do with "every mistake being the same", and absolutely everything to do with the idea that NHL players are multi-faceted...and not one-dimensional numbers on a page. Every mistake is definitely not the same.

It has everything to do with watching players play...and assessing them on that, and factoring in weaknesses, strengths, abilities and inabilities...

Sbisa has some very strong NHL qualities. Things he does at a very high level. He also has some qualities (moving the puck under pressure) which he does not do well, at all. He does that pretty poorly on the whole.

But...the sum of a player is not one single quality. It's a very multifaceted quality...and the real challenge, is in putting pieces together whose shortcomings overlap with a counterpart who can cover for that.

Building an NHL roster is not, "oh this guy guy has a great Corsi"...it's in watching the game, and identifying components of play where various players are strong and weak. And then assembling a unit with a bunch of players who can both "play to their strengths" and "avoid being exposed for their weaknesses". It's about assembling a TEAM that fits together in their strengths, which allows players to avoid baring their weaknesses altogether. And that's not a shots for/shots against thing. That's a "watching how a guy like Sbisa uses his stick" thing.

 

[Verviticus]

It has everything to do with watching players play...and assessing them on that, and factoring in weaknesses, strengths, abilities and inabilities...

you're thinking way too hard about a really simple question. is that part of what bothers you? you've drawn the team out and played multiple rounds of 9th dimensional chess, solved complex equations and everyone else is like "woah, that garbage man can skate fast but he's awful at hockey"?

Sbisa has some very strong NHL qualities. Things he does at a very high level.

no he doesn't. he has above average size and skating. we're talking like, 20th percentile, not 5th. thats not a very high level. thats above average

But...the sum of a player is not one single quality. It's a very multifaceted quality...and the real challenge, is in putting pieces together whose shortcomings overlap with a counterpart who can cover for that.

when the single quality thats really bad can be summed up as "he can't play hockey with the puck", it doesn't matter what else he does. he's outrageously bad because the most important thing you can do as a defenceman, well, he cant do.

Building an NHL roster is not, "oh this guy guy has a great Corsi"...it's in watching the game, and identifying components of play where various players are strong and weak. And then assembling a unit with a bunch of players who can both "play to their strengths" and "avoid being exposed for their weaknesses". It's about assembling a TEAM that fits together in their strengths, which allows players to avoid baring their weaknesses altogether. And that's not a shots for/shots against thing. That's a "watching how a guy like Sbisa uses his stick" thing.

nobody gives a **** about his ****ing corsi. they give a **** about the fact that he's an awful pile of garbage on the ice. you have a weird single man crusade against THE CORSI CONSPIRACY or something. sbisa sucks via every possible metric, angle, eye test and even via divining rod

the more you try to make basically any defence for sbisa, the less i think of how you view the game of hockey. sbisa is that bad

 

[Verviticus]

Everything there is to say about why he's bad - and thus not a good D-man - has been already said. How many times do people have to rehash it over and over again?

because hes not yet convinced people have enough hours in high-level hockey meditation to piece together the 6th dimensional puzzle that is your average nhl hockey team, of course

 

[vanuck]

because hes not yet convinced people have enough hours in high-level hockey meditation to piece together the 6th dimensional puzzle that is your average nhl hockey team, of course

Yeah, the irony is you don't even need Corsi to see how bad he is - let alone bringing a stats-based argument into it. Corsi could have nothing to do with this and people would still say he sucks.

 

[biturbo19]

you're thinking way too hard about a really simple question. is that part of what bothers you? you've drawn the team out and played multiple rounds of 9th dimensional chess, solved complex equations and everyone else is like "woah, that garbage man can skate fast but he's awful at hockey"?



no he doesn't. he has above average size and skating. we're talking like, 20th percentile, not 5th. thats not a very high level. thats above average



when the single quality thats really bad can be summed up as "he can't play hockey with the puck", it doesn't matter what else he does. he's outrageously bad because the most important thing you can do as a defenceman, well, he cant do.



nobody gives a **** about his ****ing corsi. they give a **** about the fact that he's an awful pile of garbage on the ice. you have a weird single man crusade against THE CORSI CONSPIRACY or something. sbisa sucks via every possible metric, angle, eye test and even via divining rod

the more you try to make basically any defence for sbisa, the less i think of how you view the game of hockey. sbisa is that bad

Watch what Sbisa does on the ice. Watch his puck battles, watch his stick, watch how he handles dump-ins, watch how he handles every contested puck he faces in his jurisdiction.


Yes, when he has the puck on his stick, things have a chance of going very badly...but more often than not, it doesn't end in disaster. He makes tons of simple plays with the puck every night that nobody here seems to care about because he makes one real bad one.

I think the "eye test" is clearly missing something if it doesn't identify the fact Sbisa has a very good stick defensively, is among our most physically active defencemen and does a ton of "little things" right every shift. Sbisa is clearly a ****up when it comes to one singular aspect of being a "puck moving defenceman". He fails hard under pressure with the puck on his stick. But he changes possession with aplomb (both ways unfortunately, sometimes). He's one of the few on our blueline who can both skate with anyone, and physically handle anyone.


I'd like to see someone break down an entire game of Sbisa's film. Not just a few goals against. Or a few plays here and there. A whole game. In detail. I'd be really interested to see how the non-****up shifts are evaluated. There are tons of them...shifts where Sbisa heads off a scoring chance 2 stages before it can even develop. But it seems like some people don't weight that as anything, against those intermittent Pizzas he serves up...sometimes.

If you think that my evaluation of "Sbisa does some things well and other things extremely poorly...calls into question my entire ability to evaluate talent. Then again...i think that's an absurdly binary reaction. And hockey is simply not that binary a sport. Hockey is about what players can do...and it's not a "can/cannot" dichotomy. Hockey is in the grey areas...and that's what makes it fun.

 

[Verbalyst]

I think everything Sbisa does fans have put under a magnifying glass. When hes on the ice ppl are waiting for him to make a mistake. Maybe it's bc he the lost faith of u guys, but it's a new season.Give the guy a chance.

Sure he makes bonehead errors and last night he strugggles w breakout stretch passes, but maybe later on in the season those connect.

Hes a good skater and is physical. When he's making the right plays he does actually help the transition game. He's good at clearing the front of the net. He's good on the PK. I didn't see not a single post of anyone praising him on breaking up that 2 on 1 Calgary had in the 3rd, but if one of his passes dont go directly to a teammates tape u guys jump on him. If u watch games around the league there are far worse defenseman than Sbisa

 

[Verviticus]

if you havent come to the conclusion "sbisa is not an nhl quality player" yet, i question your ability to judge hockey related things. thats all. i couldn't care less how many factors of complexity you need to process the game through

If u watch games around the league there are far worse defenseman than Sbisa

name them

 

[Cupless44]

Everything there is to say about why he's bad - and thus not a good D-man - has been already said. How many times do people have to rehash it over and over again?

On these boards?

About a kazillion.

 

[Hit the post]

I think everything Sbisa does fans have put under a magnifying glass. When hes on the ice ppl are waiting for him to make a mistake. Maybe it's bc he the lost faith of u guys, but it's a new season.Give the guy a chance.

Guy got a *VERY* lucractive contract. He put *HIMSELF* under the microscope because of that.

Nobody would give a **** about him if he was paid a million bucks (pretty much standard money for #6 or #7 D).

On these boards?

About a kazillion.

Kind of like people who complain about complaining...

 

[Ryp37]

Watch what Sbisa does on the ice. Watch his puck battles, watch his stick, watch how he handles dump-ins, watch how he handles every contested puck he faces in his jurisdiction.


Yes, when he has the puck on his stick, things have a chance of going very badly...but more often than not, it doesn't end in disaster. He makes tons of simple plays with the puck every night that nobody here seems to care about because he makes one real bad one.

I think the "eye test" is clearly missing something if it doesn't identify the fact Sbisa has a very good stick defensively, is among our most physically active defencemen and does a ton of "little things" right every shift. Sbisa is clearly a ****up when it comes to one singular aspect of being a "puck moving defenceman". He fails hard under pressure with the puck on his stick. But he changes possession with aplomb (both ways unfortunately, sometimes). He's one of the few on our blueline who can both skate with anyone, and physically handle anyone.


I'd like to see someone break down an entire game of Sbisa's film. Not just a few goals against. Or a few plays here and there. A whole game. In detail. I'd be really interested to see how the non-****up shifts are evaluated. There are tons of them...shifts where Sbisa heads off a scoring chance 2 stages before it can even develop. But it seems like some people don't weight that as anything, against those intermittent Pizzas he serves up...sometimes.

If you think that my evaluation of "Sbisa does some things well and other things extremely poorly...calls into question my entire ability to evaluate talent. Then again...i think that's an absurdly binary reaction. And hockey is simply not that binary a sport. Hockey is about what players can do...and it's not a "can/cannot" dichotomy. Hockey is in the grey areas...and that's what makes it fun.

No ones putting themselves through whole game tapes of Sbisa its painful enough the first time. He did plenty of that himself this off-season. He can physically handle people but he doesn't, he looks timid a lot of the time.

He makes simple D mistakes that coaches teach you in peewee/bantam, like going behind the net for no reason when the puck is in front of it

Until he strings together multiple passable games he will and should be dumped on

 

[RandV]

Edmonton signed Nikitin to an inflated contract as a free agent

we took pressbox Sbisa off Anaheim's hands as part of the value being returned in a Kesler trade

dunno which is worse

Nikitin played 3 years in Columbus. First two he was pretty solid putting up decent points and playing top 4 minutes (22+ avg). I'm not sure what went wrong in season 3 but he got demoted and was playing bottom pairing minutes. Edmonton signed him hoping he'd return to top 4 form of the prior 2 seasons, Columbus D depth improved (Johnson, Wisnieski, Tyutin, Murray, Savard) so maybe he just got pushed down the depth chart, but he ended up remaining the bottom pairing guy.

There are plenty of poor dmen on bad contracts out there, but they almost always have two factors going for them: recent time spent getting top 4 minutes and UFA rights. Even the infamous Jeff Finger, the year before signing with the Leafs put up a solid 20 minutes a night for the Avs going 72-8-11-19. Or there's Andrew MacDonald who spent 4 years averaging 23-25 minutes on the Isles blueline before hitting unrestricted free agency and getting a big payout.

So in other words, yes there are other bad contracts out there but the Sbisa contract is it's own special butterfly. Here we have a dman who at best had a Jeff Finger-like season 4 years ago, who we got to test run for an entire year where he failed to even live up to Jeff Finger hype, and he was an RFA with team elected arbitration rights.

Sbisa had literally nothing going for him until candy man Jim Benning decided he had to get 'his guys' locked up right away, probably before he left to go scouting in Europe while the team hit the playoffs. So all things considered I'd say the Sbisa contract is in a class of it's own here.

 

[pitseleh]

If you think that my evaluation of "Sbisa does some things well and other things extremely poorly...calls into question my entire ability to evaluate talent. Then again...i think that's an absurdly binary reaction. And hockey is simply not that binary a sport. Hockey is about what players can do...and it's not a "can/cannot" dichotomy. Hockey is in the grey areas...and that's what makes it fun.

I agree there are plenty of grey areas in hockey. But Sbisa simply isn't one of them.

No matter how you slice it - last year, last two years, last three years, last four years, last five years, last six years, last seven years, or any subset within that - Sbisa's teams have scored around 43-45% of the goals at even strength, which means they are outscored by 25-30%.

If the things Sbisa can and cannot do leads to him to consistently bleed goals against, who cares what he can do? You're missing the forest for the trees. Regardless of the good things you can identify in Sbisa's play, they don't impact the game in a way that helps his team.

 

[polarbearcub]

Guy got a *VERY* lucractive contract. He put *HIMSELF* under the microscope because of that.

Nobody would give a **** about him if he was paid a million bucks (pretty much standard money for #6 or #7 D).


Kind of like people who complain about complaining...

Sbisa is worse than Andrew Alberts and Ppl liked Andrew because he made so little and wasn't a regular in the lineup.

 

[arttk]

I think the thing that pisses people off the most is the fact he is deemed unscratchable by this management group.
I mean yeah he's pretty ****, but there are **** players everywhere and you sometimes live with them because well injuries happen and you just sometimes don't have the depth for that. But with Sbisa, that is not the case. He is there because the management made a mistake they won't admit.
For those of you saying he is not that bad. "Not that" is a pretty damning descriptor. Try to say you are "not that ugly" to your girlfriend or "you are not that stupid" or "you are not that pathetic" or any negative word with "not that" to anyone and ask them what that means. Bad is bad.

 

[VanJack]

I will forever laugh because of this player whenever Benning's so-called eye for talent is brought up.

Yep...pretty well right on with this....drafting, not bad..FA signings, passable....pro scouting, terrible...with Vey now buried in the minors; Prust struggling to keep up and Baertschi mostly invisible so far, the question has to be asked, "who assesses these players before Benning trades for them?"....Sbisa and Sutter are set to collectively earn $8m a season starting next year...if they don't work out, we're in trouble.