Foppa
Future Norris Winner
Here's a WYSIWYG table that shows games played, points, ice time and salary of what we have gained and lost so far this season based on actual production last year. It doesn't try to 'project' into the future but I find it useful to help dissect our moves and in making assumptions moving forward.
A few notes:
- Average age is weighted by time on ice...because if you are 23 or 39, it doesn't really matter if you don't play. The higher your impact, the more your age is weighted into the average.
- For salary of guys who played in the NHL last season and have yet to sign with anybody this off-season, I used their last season's salary as a base point.
Analysis - Forwards
We have a net gain in games played, goals, points and ice time. Again, based solely plugging in last season's performance, we add 10 goals to the line-up and our additions absorb about 7 minutes more ice time per game (over 10 hours of ice time over a season). That would indicate a nice boost in depth.
A closer look reveals that quality-wise, the totals are a bit deceiving since it when you look at the difference it takes 62 more games to score 7 more points for the "new" group. We added a main piece, support piece and fourth line piece (Iginla/Briere/Winchester) and lost a main piece, support piece and fourth line piece (Stastny/Parenteau/Malone). If all three stay healthy next year, it is reasonable to assume the new group will not have as good of offensive effectiveness. But that is somewhat beside the point - for example, in order to keep the Avs' ship steady at his position in the hierarchy, Briere doesn't have to replace what Parenteau does this year in Montreal, he merely has to replace what Parenteau did last year for us...which is to say, not a whole lot. Iginla will be looked at to not tit-for-tat replace Paulie's production but to do some things that will make us a more diverse team. Winchester is an undoubted regular fourth line upgrade over Malone who was more of a bit depth player.
What is crystal clear are a couple things...we added lots of age (or should I say "veteran experience and leadership"?
) and we saved money both in the long-run ($15.4 million in contracts) and next year ($1.32 million less spent on the forwards).
Analysis - Defense
Well the nets are all down across the board on defense...older, less production and more expenses. At first glance it seems like a clear downgrade. This is where you have to look past the numbers.
The question is, how much of the loss in "production" actually addition by subtraction and how much are we expecting to be compensated by in-house development? The fact is Benoit and to a lesser degree, Sarich, were regulars on our blueline and we replaced those two with one guys, Stuart - who didn't even play as much as Benoit alone. But did Benoit and Sarich play useful, good minutes? I would argue Benoit has gotten somewhat of a poor rap here...for at least a part of the season, he provided better-than-expected results but by the end of the year, logging over 20 minutes of ice per game, he became far overextended.
So...in terms of overall picture, I think it is viewable as such: Stuart becomes, even as bad as Sharks fans wanted him gone, an obvious upgrade over Sarich in the physical, vet slot. He'll play more and he'll contribute more. The wildcard is then Redmond (let's just assume Wilson still sucks, Elliott still doesn't get it and Siemens and Bigras aren't ready). If Stuart > Sarich, all Redmond has to be for our defense to improve is to be somewhat close to what Benoit was for us last year. Given the glowing praise by Kento and Jets fans, this seems highly do-able. Now this improvement may not really matter much, it may not lift us past highly mediocre on the blueline. And I think that is still open for scrutiny and criticism.
Overall Financial Impact
This is interesting because the changes result in slightly more expenditure this year (based on keeping the guys we lost at their going rates)...this number becomes greater when you consider "keeping" Sarich would like cost far less than $2 million.
But this short-term increase is more than offset by a total of over $13 million saved in the life of all these contracts which will be important when guys like EJ and Mack need new deals and to (hopefully) help absorb the long-term impact of a new deal for O'Reilly.
A few notes:
- Average age is weighted by time on ice...because if you are 23 or 39, it doesn't really matter if you don't play. The higher your impact, the more your age is weighted into the average.
- For salary of guys who played in the NHL last season and have yet to sign with anybody this off-season, I used their last season's salary as a base point.
Analysis - Forwards
We have a net gain in games played, goals, points and ice time. Again, based solely plugging in last season's performance, we add 10 goals to the line-up and our additions absorb about 7 minutes more ice time per game (over 10 hours of ice time over a season). That would indicate a nice boost in depth.
A closer look reveals that quality-wise, the totals are a bit deceiving since it when you look at the difference it takes 62 more games to score 7 more points for the "new" group. We added a main piece, support piece and fourth line piece (Iginla/Briere/Winchester) and lost a main piece, support piece and fourth line piece (Stastny/Parenteau/Malone). If all three stay healthy next year, it is reasonable to assume the new group will not have as good of offensive effectiveness. But that is somewhat beside the point - for example, in order to keep the Avs' ship steady at his position in the hierarchy, Briere doesn't have to replace what Parenteau does this year in Montreal, he merely has to replace what Parenteau did last year for us...which is to say, not a whole lot. Iginla will be looked at to not tit-for-tat replace Paulie's production but to do some things that will make us a more diverse team. Winchester is an undoubted regular fourth line upgrade over Malone who was more of a bit depth player.
What is crystal clear are a couple things...we added lots of age (or should I say "veteran experience and leadership"?
) and we saved money both in the long-run ($15.4 million in contracts) and next year ($1.32 million less spent on the forwards).Analysis - Defense
Well the nets are all down across the board on defense...older, less production and more expenses. At first glance it seems like a clear downgrade. This is where you have to look past the numbers.
The question is, how much of the loss in "production" actually addition by subtraction and how much are we expecting to be compensated by in-house development? The fact is Benoit and to a lesser degree, Sarich, were regulars on our blueline and we replaced those two with one guys, Stuart - who didn't even play as much as Benoit alone. But did Benoit and Sarich play useful, good minutes? I would argue Benoit has gotten somewhat of a poor rap here...for at least a part of the season, he provided better-than-expected results but by the end of the year, logging over 20 minutes of ice per game, he became far overextended.
So...in terms of overall picture, I think it is viewable as such: Stuart becomes, even as bad as Sharks fans wanted him gone, an obvious upgrade over Sarich in the physical, vet slot. He'll play more and he'll contribute more. The wildcard is then Redmond (let's just assume Wilson still sucks, Elliott still doesn't get it and Siemens and Bigras aren't ready). If Stuart > Sarich, all Redmond has to be for our defense to improve is to be somewhat close to what Benoit was for us last year. Given the glowing praise by Kento and Jets fans, this seems highly do-able. Now this improvement may not really matter much, it may not lift us past highly mediocre on the blueline. And I think that is still open for scrutiny and criticism.
Overall Financial Impact
This is interesting because the changes result in slightly more expenditure this year (based on keeping the guys we lost at their going rates)...this number becomes greater when you consider "keeping" Sarich would like cost far less than $2 million.
But this short-term increase is more than offset by a total of over $13 million saved in the life of all these contracts which will be important when guys like EJ and Mack need new deals and to (hopefully) help absorb the long-term impact of a new deal for O'Reilly.
