Was trading Spezza addition by subtraction?

[dingbatz]

Good point, although I don't buy the tie in to the assumed importance of 1C making it addition by subtraction. That argument works better IMO as a saw off where the resources needed to sign him could be used elsewhere, or that his ice time could be used to develop younger players for down the road.

I guess my point was that losing a #1C for most teams would sink them to some degree. It's a role that should have more of a noticeable, quantifiable impact (you would hope in the positive) on a team's success than other positions.

 

[danielpalfredsson]

The team would have been better ON PAPER this year with Spezza, but that doesn't account for how trade talk and the rumour mill surrounding Spezza might effect things as a distraction. It was the right choice to move him, because a year of Spezza was worth giving up at this point in the Senators progression to get back Chiasson, a 2nd, and Nick Paul.

In an alternate scenario where Spezza didn't want to move on, I can't see how they could fit him in long term without him being willing to take a big discount. I don't see the team being better long term with Spezza re-signed if it means shipping off other players as they become more expensive in order to accommodate a 7.5M cap hit for Spezza.

Ultimately, the team would be better this year. on paper. Keep in mind, Legwand would likely have not been signed if Spezza stayed. Spezza would have helped a lot with the power play, and Ottawa could have probably rolled with three very strong lines.

It's impossible to say where the lines would be, because everything came together with time during the season, but in no particular order, this would at least be a possibility if they kept Spezza for this year....

Hoffman-Zib-Ryan
Mac-Turris-Stone
MM9-Spezza-Lazar
Condra-Pageau/Smith-XXX

 

[Senscore]

Our overall game would be worse... simply.

I'm not so sure. Theoretically you could bump off a lower line player like Puempel or whoever and simply substitute Spezza in for powerplays. That would make our team better with no degradation in any other area of play.

Either way though I think Spezza/Turris as a 1/2 C combo would make our team easily better.

 

[playasRus]

This team played like crap even after Spezza was traded. We only improved after the coaching change and the return of Methot. I'm pretty sure Cameron would have found a way to use Spezza in a productive way. I'm not a big Spezza fan, but going from Spezza (+ Hemsky) to Legwand and Chiasson is definitely not an addition in any way.

Michalek - Spezza- Hemsky
Hoff - Ziba - Ryan
Mac - Turris - Stone
dontcare - Pageau - Condra

is a tremendous team (dat depth!), especially when leaving out MacLean's "Benny Hill" defensive system.

dontcare = Lazar?

If everyone develops the way they did, which to be honest, would've proabbly happened with Spezz here, we'd have an awesome Forward core with that. Spezza's been pretty healthy this year too, his scoring down because he has less responsibility.

 

[RedSeven*]

Spezza is unreal.Great person and I miss watching him out there. He's still very close with the boys and he will always deep down be an Ottawa Senator. He was part of our community and had a family here and did a lot of good.

We should have got a lot more for him. if he is healthy there is no doubt this team is better.

He's clutch as can be and would be the only player better offensively then Karlsson. Our PP would be better as well.

Ita great to see Turris step it up but i don't think he's strong enough for playoff hockey yet.

I'd feel more comfortable with Spezza Zibad right now.

2 years from now..different story.

i love Turris too. nothing against him!

 

[GuineaPig]

If you asked this question 15 games ago, everyone would've said "no".

Ottawa's on a nice run. They look like they're gelling, playing well, having fun. Does that mean Ottawa wouldn't be better with a #1 playmaking center? Hell no. No way.

The reason Ottawa's young guns are playing well has to do with a new coach and a new system, not some inherent, inevitable structural weakness brought on by having a hugely skilled player in the line-up. This isn't Phillips or Neil we're talking about. This is one of the best playmakers in the league, who made a habit of making everyone around him better in all of his years in a Senators uniform.

 

[The Lewler]

I'd say we've now seen both sides of this.

Losing Spezza has hurt the PP, and definetly appeared to have submarined the offence early in this season.

His removal forced the hand of a guy like Zbad.. who is now taking big strides towards becoming the #1 guy.. which he wouldnt have had to do / would not have had chance to do with Spezza here.

And by chain reaction, Zbad moving up frees up FWD slots for the likes of Lazar/Pageau to develop.

So ultimately.. I'd say yes, it's addition by subtraction.

 

[OmniSens]

The emergence of stone and hoffman has more to do with turning this team around than losing spezza. Imagine spezza feeding hoffman every night? We'd have a 50 goal scorer on the team.

If spezza had stayed and hoffman and stone emerged we'd probably be a better team overall.

Hoffman-Spezza-Ryan (still think this could have worked out)
Stone-Turris-MM
Mac-Zbad-Chiasson
Lazar-Pageau-Condra

god damn. What could have been.

Something doesn't work here.

 

[Stylizer1]

The type of players Spezza wanted to play with are the ones we have right now. If we kept Spezza there would be no need for Legwand. Buy out Greening. There's 5.5 in cap and open up an extra spot.

We are playing nice now and the team is exciting but I think they would be even more dangerous with Spezza.

We will only know how good this team really is when we hit the mid way point of next season. This season could be a fluke a la Colorado last season compared to this season.

Who knows, Murray could of had "the talk" with the team and it has inspired them to play extra hard.

 

[Answer]

If we kept Spezza then I would have the lines combinations as following..

Hoffman - Zibby - Ryan

MacArthur - Turris - Stone

Michalek - Spezza - Puempel

Condra - Pageau - Lazar

 

[pm88]

As much as I liked Spezza, I think it probably was for the best that both sides moved on. Him being here may have stunted some of these guys like Z-bad, Turris, etc. I have no ill will towards him for wanting to leave. He always seemed like a nice guy and I can never recall him shunning or ducking the media no matter how many bad losses we had in the years between our Finals appearance and today.

That being said it would have been pretty sweet seeing him paired with a guy like Hoffman. Hoffman would have something like 35 goals by now if he had Spezza feeding him the puck. Hoffman's game is based similarly to what Heatley's was with the whole shoot first mentality and he would have exploded with a guy like Spezza getting him the puck.

Its too bad he couldn't find consistent chemistry with Ryan though. That had the potential to be electrifying as well if they had managed to click

 

[Hutz]

Who knows, Murray could of had "the talk" with the team and it has inspired them to play extra hard.

Nobody had had "the talk" with them yet??? No wonder they were playing like sexually frustrated teenagers for half the season. I still feel it should probably be the parents responsibility, though.

 

[Stylizer1]

Nobody had had "the talk" with them yet??? No wonder they were playing like sexually frustrated teenagers for half the season. I still feel it should probably be the parents responsibility, though.

I meant the one like "this is my last season" or " I have 6 months to live" kind of talk.

Funny response though.

 

[Stylizer1]

If we kept Spezza then I would have the lines combinations as following..

Hoffman - Zibby - Ryan

MacArthur - Turris - Stone

Michalek - Spezza - Puempel

Condra - Pageau - Lazar

Good luck with that one bud.

 

[ReginKarlssonLehner]

While the recent surge of goals have helped during our winning streak, prior to that, the Senators lost 23 one-goal games.

Had the powerplay been anywhere near league average during that stretch, this team would be sitting in 3rd or 4th in the East with the games they could have converted from losses or OTL/SOL.

Dismissing a huge part of our game because we are scoring at a somewhat unsustainable rate right now will bite us in the @$$ later.

Alright, here's the thing. Everyone saying we would have won more of those 23 one-goal games and our PP would be better ontop of how we playing now need to take a deep step back and need to take a deep breath.

Who the hell says we are even in those 1 goal games to begin with? Lool. With Spezza we may have lost those games by more than 1 goals.

You guys are considering Spezza's positive impact over our current situation and not his negative which completely falsifies the argument.

With Spezza, our system is still not the same, we are playing 2013-2014 hockey. Milo still sucks cause he does better with 2 way guys and the other player on their line maybe doesnt even break out properly cause he playing with 2 guys who are struggling like hell defensively.

That line resonates to the rest of the lineup. Leadership core still wtf.

Naw. Spezza probably improves PP but at same time our 5on5 WAY worse AINEC.

Also, Pageau probably not in NHL and our best line in the last stretch maybe not assembled.

Also, people forget last year our PP at home was 29th but on road it was like 4th so maybe what we seeing now is actually norm and we were just lucky or hit great streak away last year?

 

[HavlatMach9]

The team would have been better ON PAPER this year with Spezza, but that doesn't account for how trade talk and the rumour mill surrounding Spezza might effect things as a distraction. It was the right choice to move him, because a year of Spezza was worth giving up at this point in the Senators progression to get back Chiasson, a 2nd, and Nick Paul.

In an alternate scenario where Spezza didn't want to move on, I can't see how they could fit him in long term without him being willing to take a big discount. I don't see the team being better long term with Spezza re-signed if it means shipping off other players as they become more expensive in order to accommodate a 7.5M cap hit for Spezza.

Ultimately, the team would be better this year. on paper. Keep in mind, Legwand would likely have not been signed if Spezza stayed. Spezza would have helped a lot with the power play, and Ottawa could have probably rolled with three very strong lines.

agreed with most of this, especially the concerns in the future

 

[thinkwild]

The phrase ‘addition by subtraction’ just doesn’t quite seem right to me in this situation. It’s not like we got better because we got rid of Spezza. We have gotten better because we have drafted and developed a new young team and it is starting to take the next step together.

The term addition by subtraction I could see some applying to Greening or even Phillips for instance. While I find those characterizations distasteful as well, they may be more applicable to the expression.

Spezza may have made us better this year, likely would have, but then we didn’t have the luxury of simply answering that question either. We would have also had to soon lock him up on a long term contract extension which was risky in itself. Not just injury history, but he may have also Alfie walked for nothing without an overpayment.


There’s players that get you to the playoffs, and then there’s those that can help you win in the playoffs. I don’t know for sure if Spezza was one or both of those, but the situation unfortunately called for moving on and renewing. And its working. But I don’t think its fair to say we are better because he’s gone. Maybe its just semantics on my part, but i think we are better because the years of drafting, developing, and growing are leading to renewal and finally starting to pay off.

But we maybe shouldn’t get ahead ourselves of either as there’s probably still pain ahead before the final goal is reached.

 

[Iamok]

I was always under the belief that Spezza needed to go, just as I felt with us needing to move on from Alfie. More than anything, the team needed a culture change from "the old guard" if we were ever really going to successfully rebuild.

 

[JD1]

This season could be a fluke a la Colorado last season compared to this season.

The reason that Colorado's season was deemed a fluke is because the underlying numbers just didn't support the W/L record. This is the same thing the stats egg heads said about the Leafs for a few seasons and it caught up to them also.

The leading candidate for "fluke" season this year is Calgary.

In our situation, the underlying numbers clearly support the Sens having a W/L record that results in a playoff position.

 

[Icelevel]

Thinkwild, I agree with you

 

[sanityplease]

Op, absolutely.

The best teams in the league have good, 2-way team play. Hard to preach that when your #1 centre & captain of your team doesn't buy in...

 

[operasen]

I was always under the belief that Spezza needed to go, just as I felt with us needing to move on from Alfie. More than anything, the team needed a culture change from "the old guard" if we were ever really going to successfully rebuild.

Can't help but wonder how Spezza would have fared in Cameron's more creative System. The basic roster addition is Chiasson (this year) and that's not much of an upgrade. Paul, in the end, will be the difference maker (and maybe the 2nd round pick).

That said, I concur the culture change needed to be established. Spezza was not the beginning (Alfie), nor is he the end (Neil, Phillips).

The team as it exists, sans Neil, Phillips and with minimal participation of Smith and Greening, is one that is building towards something that reminds me of the times when we ruled the league.

Murray has to stay the course with what he has built around Zibanejad, Hoffman, Stone, Pageau, Lazar, in addition to Turris et al. We are quite young, but the future is quite robust.

If an O'Reilly type is to be added in the off-season, it should not be at the expense of the new core.

 

[ReginKarlssonLehner]

Op, absolutely.

The best teams in the league have good, 2-way team play. Hard to preach that when your #1 centre & captain of your team doesn't buy in...

This in a nutshell. Then consider the fact that Spezza isnt even scoring 70+ anymore and LOL.

The guy has 55 in 73. Are ya'll serious right now?

 

[blahblah3]

This in a nutshell. Then consider the fact that Spezza isnt even scoring 70+ anymore and LOL.

The guy has 55 in 73. Are ya'll serious right now?

And that is from being on a team which is entirely offensively driven.
Can you imagine a team with Zibanejad being stuck on the third/ fourth line, or not even on the team? That is what happened last year, and would have happened this year if Spezza was still eating up minutes and slowing Zibanejads development. What a nightmare.
No way in hell Spezza would have been complacent being relegated to the third line this year, even though that is basically the player that he is now. So yes, the reality is that the team is currently better without him, as is true for Maclean, Phillips, Neil, Cowen and Greening.

 

[FlyingJ]

Firing MacLean is what turned out to be addition by subtraction. We saw early in the season that, despite Spezza and his supposedly atrocious defensive game being gone, the team still gave up a ton of shots against and struggled to get out of its zone and create offense consistently.

Sad that, if the rumours are true, it came down to MacLean vs Spezza last off-season and MacLean won. Hindsight, I know, but still.

That being said, there were plenty of reasons to trade Spezza. Not the BS "leadership" garbage that Melnyk and co implied to make him the scapegoat, but more his age combined with his perpetually wonky back. Wish him all the best in Dallas though.