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Feb 09, 2010

Patrick Marleau Is Playing Almost Exactly As Well As He Did Last Season
Posted by Jonathan Willis

I was lucky enough to catch an interview as I was driving home with the radio analyst for the San Jose Sharks, an ex-player named Jamie Baker. Baker’s a former college and NHL player, who spent a few seasons with the Sharks, and I was impressed listening to him over the radio – he was concise, he was logical, and he made a bunch of very good points.

At one point in the interview, Baker was asked if coach Todd McLellan’s decision to strip Marleau of his captaincy was the reason he has played so well this season. It’s a common theory that I’ve heard at least a dozen times in the media, and it’s a theory that Marleau has consistently disagreed with. Baker took Marleau’s side, reminded us all that he’d been a very good player last season, he’d been playing injured down the stretch, and that the addition of Dany Heatley was obviously a big help.

It’s difficult to measure how much impact Heatley’s had on Marleau’s game, but Baker’s comment about playing injured grabbed my attention. Marleau missed some time at the end of March with a “lower body injury”, but his play dropped off before that – actually at almost exactly this point in the season. Marleau’s played in 58 games this season; let’s compare his numbers this year through the same number of games last year.

Season	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-
2008-09	58	33	30	63	+25
2009-10	58	38	26	64	+25

The thing about those numbers is that they’re so… similar. Marleau has more goals this year, but the points and the plus/minus are spitting images of each other.

Unfortunately for Marleau, over the season’s final 20 games (including two in the chart above), he managed just five goals, eight points and a minus-9 rating. His play actually rebounded a little bit in the playoffs; he managed three points and an even rating over the six game series against the Ducks.

I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect that the injury which sidelined Marleau in March was a nagging problem that flared up towards the end of February. If nothing else, it’s certainly interesting that his production and two-way play fell off a cliff towards the end of the season. It also casts a lot of doubt on the popular narrative that the burden of being team captain was what weighed Marleau down.

Feb 08, 2010

Bob Gainey Resigns; Pierre Gauthier Named G.M. In Montreal
Posted by Jonathan Willis

The resignation of Bob Gainey earlier today caught most in the hockey world by surprise; despite his struggles in the top Montreal hockey job few people (if any) expected him to walk away in the middle of the season. Replacing Gainey is Pierre Gauthier, who has held the general manager’s position previously in Ottawa and Anaheim.

Aside from his aversion to high jersey numbers, we know a few things about Gauthier from his work with other teams. He took a chance when he joined the Senators, leaving an assistant general manager position in Anaheim to take over the league’s worst franchise – and in turning the Senators around he showed both decisiveness and professionalism.

When Gauthier arrived the Senators were a mess; previous G.M. Randy Sexton had fired Rick Bowness after a 6-13 start, but things got even worse under new head coach Dave Allison and in December Sexton was dismissed and Gauthier was installed. Immediately, Gauthier went to work mending the Senators’ relationship with star centre Alexei Yashin – a holdout and a player the Senators had consistently snubbed in favour of first overall pick Alexandre Daigle. Just a few days into his new job, Gauthier awarded Yashin a five year contract and the 21-year old became the key to Ottawa’s offence.

For close to a month, things were relatively quiet, as Gauthier assessed the team and installed his own system. In late January, however, Gauthier’s assessment was finished and he made sweeping changes to the team. On January 23rd, Gauthier made a blockbuster trade, sending Martin Straka, Don Beaupre and Bryan Berard to the New York Islanders in exchange for Damian Rhodes and Wade Redden. On the same day he sent away forward Dan Quinn to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for cash.

Gauthier’s biggest move that day had to do with the Senators’ off-ice personnel. Head coach Dave Allison, by that point sporting a 2-22-1 record, was dismissed along with his assistants (including current analyst Pierre McGuire) and replaced with a young Colorado Avalanche assistant named Jacques Martin. For better and worse, Martin’s defensive system would define the Senators as they blossomed from a laughingstock to an Eastern Conference powerhouse.

The trades didn’t work out too badly either; Straka would eventually turn into a star offensive player, but not until three more years, split between three different organizations, had passed. Both Beaupre and Quinn were all but finished at that point, and their careers ended shortly after the trade. Berard never really had a chance to develop; a flawed but potent offensive defenceman, at 23 years of age he suffered a serious eye injury that derailed his career. Meanwhile, Damian Rhodes would share the net with Ron Tugnutt for the next few years in Ottawa, mostly at an acceptable if unspectacular level of play, while Redden became a key piece of the Ottawa blue-line.

In 1998, Gauthier resigned as Senator’s GM, citing personal and family reasons, and was quickly hired back by the Anaheim Ducks as their general manager. Things didn’t go nearly as well in Anaheim, and after Gauthier was dismissed in 2002 it was widely viewed as an overdue move. There were also whispers of discontent throughout the Ducks organization, allegedly because Gauthier ran all aspects of the team with an iron fist.

In Montreal, Gauthier inherits an organization he’s familiar with and a coach he’s comfortable with, so he won’t need time to assess before making whatever changes he feels are necessary. Canadiens fans just have to hope that their team follows the path of the Gauthier Senators and not the Gauthier Ducks. Gainey’s left quite a mess for him to try and clean up.

Feb 08, 2010

Marc-Andre Fleury’s Dream Season Continues
Posted by Jonathan Willis

I’ve kept a close eye on Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury this season. I like Fleury for a lot of different reasons, and I fully expect he’ll be an average to above average starter for the next decade or so. That said, I don’t know if there’s a more overrated goaltender in the league this season.

With Fleury’s latest loss in the books – a game in which he allowed five goals to the high-flying Washington Capitals – his save percentage on the season has dipped to a mediocre .906. That ranks him 23rd among the 30 NHL starters, below guys like Jose Theodore in Washington of Jonathan Quick in Los Angeles, and in the neighborhood of much-maligned starters like Cristobal Huet in Chicago and Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers in Edmonton. Even-strength save percentage (which is a better indicator of goalie value, since it renders the difference in penalty-killing units moot) tells a similar story, slotting Fleury 24th of the league’s 30 starting goalies.

Fleury hasn’t looked significantly better than backup Brent Johnson, who has a better save percentage (.912). Johnson was at one time the St. Louis Blues goalie of the future, but poor performances (aside from his one brilliant playoff run) turned him into a journeyman backup, a job he has excelled at for just under three seasons now. The fact that his performance this season rivals that of the highly-touted Fleury is an indicator of how bad Fleury’s season has been.

Of course, what defenders of Fleury like to point out is that he’s won a Stanley Cup as a starting goalie. I don’t put much stock in that either, given that Fleury’s .908 save percentage in the playoffs represented a decidedly average performance. Ironically, he was better (brilliant, actually) in Pittsburgh’s previous run to the Finals (the one they lost), posting a .933 save percentage to lead all playoff goalies in that category.

None of this is to say that Fleury’s a bad goaltender – far from it. He was brilliant in 2007-08, he was good in 2008-09 and at 25 years of age he’s had four decent or better seasons as a starting goaltender. He’s already had a good career and I expect that to continue.

I’m just in constant amazement that a guy like Carey Price – whose last three seasons bear a striking resemblance to Fleury’s (one great, one good, one poor) – gets kicked around in the press while a guy like Fleury is off limits because he has a cup ring. Fleury’s a good goaltender. He’s had a fine career. I’m confident that he will continue to have a fine career.

But he’s been a below-average starter this season.

Feb 08, 2010

San Jose Acquires Niclas Wallin
Posted by Jonathan Willis

The San Jose Sharks have added some depth to their blue-line, acquiring defensive defenceman Niclas Wallin from the Carolina Hurricanes. Along with Wallin, the Sharks also acquired a fifth round draft pick in exchange for Buffalo’s second round draft pick.

Wallin was part of Carolina’s 2006 Stanley Cup-winning team, and had earned the moniker “Secret Weapon” for his infrequent but well-timed offensive contributions (bizarrely, Wallin holds the franchise record for overtime playoff goals, with three). His playoff experience made him attractive to Sharks’ GM Doug Wilson:

“Niclas is a playoff-hardened, veteran player with lots of postseason experience. He has a history of playing his best when the games mean the most.”

Wallin’s having a fine season for the Hurricanes, but the fact remains that he’s a depth defenceman playing in the league’s weakest division. He plays a simple, physical game, although his 125 hits should be taken with a grain of salt, as Carolina’s RTSS scorers credit quite a few more hits than the league average.

From Behind the Net, here’s a sampling of Wallin’s 5-on-5 advanced statistics over the past few seasons:

Season	QualComp	QualTeam	ZoneStart	RelCorsi/60	+/- Per 60
2007-08	5/8	1/8	50.3	-11.5	-1.32
2008-09	5/9	7/9	46.6	-3.9	-0.14
2009-10	2/7	3/7	48.4	-3.4	-0.57

It isn’t an especially attractive picture; it’s a portrait of a defensive specialist who plays on the third-pairing and gets outscored. Wallin’s numbers are better this year, but he isn’t going to be more than third-pairing guy and I wonder a little bit how he’ll adjust to playing in the tougher Western Conference. I should also mention at this juncture that Wallin was a big part of the Carolina penalty kill.

I’m fairly indifferent to this move; Wallin’s a decent pickup but I wonder if the Sharks wouldn’t have been better off claiming a guy like Nick Boynton on re-entry waivers; not only does Boynton bring the same skill-set, but he’d be cheaper and Anaheim would be paying part of his salary. Then the Sharks would have been able to use that second round pick in another deal, closer to the deadline.

Over at Fear The Fin, their reaction is much the same: they like the move, but they worry that the Sharks’ precious cap space could have been put to better use. At Canes Country, they’re celebrating Wallin’s time with the Hurricanes; despite his modest role he was a popular player in a city where he played for a long time.

Feb 08, 2010

The Disconnect Between Fantasy And Reality
Posted by Jonathan Willis

On Friday, I wrote my evaluation of the players Atlanta got back in exchange for Ilya Kovalchuk. I wasn’t thrilled with either of the prospects joining the Thrashers; leaving aside Patrice Cormier’s emotional baggage he really doesn’t have the offensive flair to ever play above the third line, and Niclas Bergfors has never shown a particularly potent scoring touch at and professional level.

On Saturday, I caught an interview on XM Radio’s hockey channel, NHL Home Ice, with hockey analyst Pierre McGuire. What surprised me was McGuire’s description of the players involved – in defending the trade, he called Bergfors a ‘potential 25-goal scorer’ and described Cormier as the kind of player who would be a very good third-line guy on a cup-contending team or a second line guy on a bad team.

It’s rubbish, and it’s the kind of rubbish that often gets repeated about prospects. Projection is one thing, but the best projection of future results is past results, and in this case there’s no reason to believe McGuire’s optimistic projections.

We’ll start with an easy point: the offensive potential of Niclas Bergfors. In four seasons in the American Hockey League, Bergfors has scored 17, 13, 12 and 22 goals. In other words, he hasn’t been a consistent 20-goal scorer at the AHL level. Projecting him into a guy who can bang home 20 to 25 goals per season in the NHL is nothing but self-delusion at this point. Sure, he’s still relatively young (he turns 23 next month) but in this case the most likely outcome is that Bergfors gets tagged as enigmatic after a few lacklustre NHL seasons and has a fine career over in Europe.

Patrice Cormier’s scoring is not very good for an NHL prospect. For perspective, Cormier’s the same age as an Edmonton Oilers draft pick, Philippe Cornet. Cornet was a late pick, a late cut from Canada’s World Junior team, and a teammate of Cormier’s in Rimouski. He’s generally tagged as a candidate for bottom six work, with enough offence to keep him in the game. Last season he collected points at a far better pace than Cormier, finishing with 77 to Cormier’s 51. It’s a similar story this season. Cornet’s not a highly-touted prospect; he has a shot at an NHL job, but it’s a long way from a sure thing and it probably won’t be in a scoring role.

There’s plenty of other examples, but the point here is that Cormier’s offence has never looked like it will be good enough to get him a job on a scoring line, even for a bad NHL team. It may be that his defensive abilities counter for that; he certainly looked the part at the World Juniors. Then again, like another forward touted as the next elite shutdown centre thanks to his World Junior play, perhaps Cormier will end up struggling once he reaches the professional ranks.

I’m not writing this to attack these players. I’m not writing it to attack the Atlanta Thrashers. I’m not even writing it to take shots at Pierre McGuire. I’ve just come to the conclusion that when the majority of analysts use a word like ‘potential’ they aren’t talking about what a player will likely turn into – they’re talking about the best case scenario, if everything that can break right does. I understand why that is – prospects represent hope, and it’s a lot nicer for everyone involved , from the players to the fans, to pretend that things are going to work out that well. The reality, unfortunately, is generally a lot less rosy.

Feb 07, 2010

Detroit Trades Ville Leino
Posted by Jonathan Willis

As everyone has likely heard by now, the Detroit Red Wings have traded forward Ville Leino to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for Ole-Kristian Tollefsen and a fifth round draft pick in 2011.

Tollefsen is a middling defenceman in a lot of ways who stands out because of his size and his willingness to use it. His offensive contributions are minimal, he makes little contribution to special teams (he occasionally takes a shift on the penalty kill) and he’s a third-pairing guy at even strength. I don’t say this to tear the player down, because he’s good at what he does, which is providing a physical presence while breaking even in a depth role. I thought he was a good signing this summer by Philadelphia and I thought he would be a nice fit in Detroit; unfortunately he’s AHL bound if he doesn’t clear waivers, as the Red Wings need to clear salary.

Ville Leino is the really interesting player here, and before I get into what I think of him I thought it would be a good idea to add some context. Whenever I look at a forward in Europe, I use Gabriel Desjardins’ league translations, which give us a ballpark idea of what to expect when the player comes over to North America.

Below are Leino’s numbers for the last four seasons, projected over an 82-game NHL schedule. The first three are in Finland, while the last one was in the AHL.

Season	Age	GP	Goals	Assists	Points
2005-06	22	82	9	25	34
2006-07	23	82	10	26	36
2007-08	24	82	23	39	62
2008-09	25	82	9	20	29

The first four seasons we look at don’t show us anything spectacular; they suggest a player who can probably play at the NHL level, but not one who can handle a top-six role. 2007-08 is the exception; in his breakout season he finished second in Finland in points and scored more goals than he ever had at any other stage of his career. It’s no coincidence that the Red Wings brought Leino over to North America for 2008-09.

Still, Leino hadn’t shown an ability to play in North America at that point, and one man’s breakout season can be another man’s one-time event. Hockey history is full of players who broke out on year only to fall back to their previous level of ability; one good example would be Dave Lowry’s rebirth in 2000-01 with the Calgary Flames, a season which turned out to be unsustainable.

Leino’s AHL performance was not especially good. He finished fifth in scoring on the Grand Rapids Griffins, behind some legitimate prospects and some fairly unremarkable players. But the problem with bringing Europeans over to North America is that they rarely want to spend much time in the minors, and I doubt Leino would have responded favourably had the Red Wings asked him to spend another year in Grand Rapids. At this point, the organization couldn’t know if Leino’s regression was a result of adapting to a new continent or if he’d simply played over his head in 2007-08.

Balanced against those questions was Leino’s NHL performance: five goals and nine points in 31 games played, a performance which stood in stark contrast to Leino’s AHL struggles. The red flag on that performance was Leino’s superhuman 29.4% shooting percentage – a rate that not even the best players in the NHL could keep up for any length of time. However, the Red Wings opted to give Leino an audition on their NHL roster for this season.

By any measure, Leino’s been a failure to date. He has four goals and seven points in 42 games, along with a minus-10 rating. Some of that probably isn’t his fault (Leino’s on-ice percentages are brutal this season) and thus this is probably the low-water mark for his performance, but the Red Wings were giving him cherry even-strength minutes – lots of offensive zone starts, and lots of ice-time against lousy opponents and he wasn’t producing. More importantly, Leino had a season and a half in North America and in that time he’d looked a lot like the player he was before 2007-08 – a guy who would probably only score 10 goals and 35 points. I think Leino will improve in Philadelphia, but I’d also bet he doesn’t stray too far from the numbers he put up over most of his career in Finland.

Philadelphia didn’t give up much to get him, so it’s difficult to see a real problem with this deal on their end, while Detroit gets some cap space and a reserve guy in the minors (assuming he makes it that far).

Feb 06, 2010

Links: Try And Spot The Theme
Posted by Jonathan Willis

Doug MacLean is apparently angry at all the talk of Ken Hitchcock bringing respectability to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Puck-Rakers quotes him at length, and he takes a plethora of shots at pretty much everyone in the Columbus organization, from Mike Priest to Scott Howson, but he saves most of his venom for Hitchcock. Finally, he felt compelled to defend his own record:

“I keep hearing that Hitch brough credibility to the organization when they didn’t have any — and structure. I would like to say I’ve looked at all their acquisitions and I think the team has, with their fan base right now, less credibility than they’ve ever had in the history of the franchise. It is a disaster there right now. And Scott Howson has made — I look at the contracts he’s stuck with next year — they’ve got to dig themselves out of a hole.”

I could recite the laundry list of brutal mistakes made by MacLean, but I won’t bother. Instead, I’ll limit myself to one comment: Maybe the Blue Jackets have less credibility now. On the other hand, they’ve also played a playoff game, which they never did under MacLean, and never showed any signs of doing under his woefully inept watch.

Moving away from Doug MacLean, Tyler Dellow has some more in-depth analysis on the Ilya Kovalchuk trade, and like most of us he isn’t thrilled with Don Waddell. Unlike most of us, it isn’t the return bothering him. The whole article is incredibly good, and I’ll just quote the conclusion here:

Given where the Thrashers are on the playoff bubble, this may well have been a white flag trade – the loss of a couple of points is huge to them. I can understand making a trade that has marginal financial upside to you when you’re clearly out of the race; making that same trade at a time when you’re in the thick of it is just an awful thing to do to the few people who’ve been coming out to the rink for ten years. The return is probably reasonable, given the limited value of 27 games of Ilya Kovalchuk but effectively abandoning the playoff hunt is a pretty awful thing to do to the fanbase.

I imagine the theme is obvious at this point.

Feb 06, 2010

Is Jordin Tootoo Overpaid?
Posted by Jonathan Willis

When I saw the news yesterday that Jordin Tootoo had signed a two year contract extension with the Nashville Predators at a cap hit of $1.25 million per season, I shook my head a little bit. This season, Tootoo has two goals. Last season, he had four.

Tootoo’s a physical player, but he stands 5’9” tall. He doesn’t play power play minutes. He doesn’t contribute on the penalty kill. At even-strength, he plays fourth line minutes. He misses a lot of time with injuries. It’s hard to see why any team, let alone an always money-conscious Predators franchise, would be willing to fork over good money for a guy who looks like a pretty typical fourth line plugger.

The first item in Tootoo’s favour is that he isn’t a typical fourth liner. He has been sent out for a lot of own zone minutes, and despite that the Predators actually have a very good outshooting percentage with him on the ice. He can be relied upon in his own end, and that’s generally an undervalued talent.

Tootoo’s other talent is that he draws penalties with the style he plays. Over the last three seasons, Tootoo has drawn 59 penalties at 5-on-5 (courtesy behindthenet.ca) and taken 41. That’s a pretty good ratio, although not incredible for a forward, and assuming a 16% PP success rate and an 84.0% PK success rate, that works out to roughly one extra goal for the Predators each season. Tootoo also fights; over the last three seasons he has 20 fights, and according to the voters at hockeyfights.com he has a record of 11 wins, five losses and four draws, which is pretty good – especially since Tootoo generally gives up a few inches. Lastly, he’s also an incredibly popular player with fans in Nashville.

I’m not sure that combination of skills is enough to make Tootoo worth the money. From a marketing perspective he might be, but from the hockey operations side of the ledger I don’t think his contribution to winning games is enough to justify that kind of money.

Feb 06, 2010

Brendan Burke Passes Away
Posted by Jonathan Willis

Sad news yesterday, as Brian Burke’s 21 year-old son Brendan died in a car accident in Indiana, along with his passenger, 18 year-old Mark Reedy.

There’s not much that can be said here, except to say that our thoughts are with Burke and his family at this time.

Feb 05, 2010

Second Team Canada Player Suspended Indefinitely
Posted by Jonathan Willis

I actually meant to write about this yesterday, but I got caught up in the Ilya Kovalchuk frenzy and it slipped my mind. A second member of this year’s World Juniors edition of Team Canada has been suspended indefinitely by the QMJHL for a vicious elbow to he head of an opponent.

Marco Scandella, a Minnesota Wild prospect who formed one half of Canada’s shutdown pairing at the World Juniors (Travis Hamonic was the other half) caught Rimouski forward Alexandre Durette in the face with his elbow as the latter attempted to chase down the puck in the offensive zone. According to the Globe and Mail, Scandella’s elbow shattered Durette’s visor and left the 17-year old forward with facial lacerations and a concussion.

The newspaper also quotes Scandella’s coach, Marc-Andre Dumont, who defended his player’s actions:

“Both guys were skating for a loose puck, and Marco got there first. He was trying to protect the puck … both his skates stayed on the ice, his knees were bent, and his elbow was parallel to his body.”

The immediate comparison is to Patrice Cormier, but while this is was still a brutal play, Scandella’s hit wasn’t as blatantly dirty as Cormier’s (video at the end of the post) and at least it arose from a puck battle. That said, this should and likely will result in a season-ending suspension for Scandella.

Here’s the video, although I should warn there are some disturbing pictures at the end of it.