Archive for September, 2009

As you’ve likely heard by now, Mats Sundin has elected to retire rather than drag all of us through a hellish repeat of last season, where he simply wouldn’t make up his mind. That sentence comes off as harsh toward Sundin, who was less to blame than the insatiable Canadian hockey media, and who leaves the game with a stirling reputation. There’s bound to be some chatter from the usual nitwits about how he isn’t a hall-of-fame player because he never won the Stanley Cup, but those people are clearly forgetting that it’s a team sport (and also Sundin’s gold medal from the 2006 Olympics, quite possibly because they blanked out the all-Scandanavian final). The first overall pick from the 1989 draft should be a first-ballot member of the HHOF after a stellar career – with good portions of it coming in one of the most scrutinized jobs in professional sports: captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Jerry Moyes is the big(-ish) winner in Judge Redfield T. Baum‘s ruling on the bids by Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie and the NHL on the beleaguered Phoenix Coyotes. Balsillie’s bid was thrown out entirely and he now looks as likely to ever own an NHL franchise as say, me. The NHL, on the other hand, was not completely rejected; the league was advised to change their bid because they had specified which creditors would be paid – without a cent going to Moyes or ex-coach Wayne Gretzky. There’s no chance Moyes or Gretzky are going to make back the money they’ve lost on the Coyotes (particularly Moyes), but because Baum has insisted that it would be “unjust” to deprive Moyes and Gretzky of their share of the proceeds they now apppear likely to end up with some money. Whether this changes how palatable the NHL’s deal is to other parties – notably the City of Glendale – remains to be seen.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have claimed forward Chris Bourque off of waivers from the Washington Capitals. J.P. of Japers’ Rink points out, quite correctly, that the loss of Bourque isn’t a big deal but the lack of cap space which made it happen is. While J.P. downplays it, over in Pittsburgh they – well, nevermind, they’re also downplaying it. The fact of the matter is that while Pittsburgh seems set at centre for the next ten years, they a) don’t have a ton of cap space and b) always seem to be running out replaceable wingers, and that makes Bourque a fit. He certainly has a better shot at cashing in on his potential alongside Sidney Crosby than he would have on the Capitals’ lower lines.

Meanwhile the Phoenix Coyotes added (another) bruiser to their lineup, snatching Paul Bissonnette off of the waiver wire. In addition to possessing many doubled consonants in his last name, Bissonnette possesses a stats line from last year that includes 176 PIM and 16 points in 57 AHL games.

The San Jose Sharks have replaced ex-captain Patrick Marleau with former Los Angeles Kings captain Rob Blake. Joe Thornton, who allong with Marleau had his letter stripped, apparently satisifed coach Todd McLellan‘s demands for leadership and had the “A” returned to his jersey, while veteran defenceman Dan Boyle was also named as an alternate captain. Over at Fear the Fin they think that this is all leading up to an eventual Joe Pavelski captaincy. On the one hand, I suppose this is interesting news to some fans, but on the other hand I have difficulty caring. It seems to me that a guy with real character, a team leader, is going to be an asset in the room regardless of whether he has a letter on his jersey or not. The fact that McLellan felt the need to publicly humiliate Marleau and Thornton by taking their letters away always seemed to me to be most likely motivated by a desire to appease the (rather upset) fanbase rather than out of any real dissatisfaction with Marleau’s leadership.

In other captain news, both the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs have chosen not to name a captain, meaning that players in the two markets with the most intense media scrutiny won’t have a designated spokesman. While this undoubtedly relieves the pressure on some players, it’s bound to push others more into the spotlight.

Lastly, the Coyotes have also added Robert Lang, in what I think is a rather good move. There’s some injury concern with Lang (whose season ended with a sliced Achilles tendon) but the fact of the matter is that he’s a legitimate NHL player with a varied skillset on a team that desperately needs players of that description. Lang was on pace for 64 points, and ignoring this past season it’s been a decade since he’s managed less than 50. Lang played top competition last year and helped propel Sergei Kostitsyn’s offensive totals from miserable all the way up to mediocre. Despite the Canadiens lousy season last year, he may miss them sooner rather than later.

I’m surprised that another team with questions up the middle didn’t take a long look at Lang.

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Cam Ward is a very good goaltender. I’d put him in the top-fifteen in the NHL without any hesitation. But is he a top-five goaltender?

Judging by the size of the contract he received from the Carolina Hurricanes today, they think he is, but I’m having some difficulty seeing it.

First, let’s look at the contract itself. The deal is reportedly worth $37.8 million over six years, starting in 2009-10. That works out to an average of $6.3 million per season. Going by this handy chart (courtesy of nhlnumbers.com), that makes Ward the second-ranked goaltender by cap hit and the 12th-ranked by actual salary. The reason for the discrepancy is that the deal escalates, paying Ward $5.0 million in its first year and $6.8 million in its final year. This can be perceived as a negative for both Ward and the club, as Ward doesn’t get his money up front, and if something untoward happens (like Ward’s play dropping off, perhaps due to injury) he costs a lot. As a rule, it’s in the interests of both parties to wager the big money at the start of the deal.

The most important item in all of this is that Ward simply doesn’t have the track record to deserve that kind of money or to be placed in the highest echelon of NHL goaltenders. I took a long look at the best goalies in the NHL back in July, and scrolling down (and down, and down) to Ward I said the following:

Cam Ward parlayed a nice Stanley Cup run in 2005-06 into a starting job that he wasn’t yet ready for. He came into his own this past season and is on a steady upward curve that should land him somewhere in the top-15 NHL goaltenders.

It’s a conveniently forgotten fact that Cam Ward bears a large portion of the blame for the Hurricane’s post-Stanley Cup struggles. Ward was brilliant during the ‘Canes’ Cup win (15-8-0, 2.14 GAA, .920 SV%) but as the numbers show, Ward’s play didn’t come close to that level as Carolina’s starter in the two seasons following:

2006-07: 30-21-6, 2.93 GAA, .897 SV%
2007-08: 37-25-5, 2.75 GAA, .904 SV%
2008-09: 39-23-5, 2.44 GAA, .916 SV%

Last season, for the first time since the Cup run, Ward looked like a dominant (rather than average) goaltender. Maybe this year was a breakthrough season for Ward, but in these cases I always go back to this paragraph at mc79hockey.com:

I think that the line between the tenth best goalie in the NHL and the twenty fifth best goalie in the NHL is a pretty hazy one and that there’s an awful lot of movement around that line from year to year. Some years the pucks hit you, some years they don’t. Ken Holland alluded to this during the Stanley Cup finals, saying:

“My feeling is if you can get one of the five or six best goalies in the league you can spend the money. We can’t get into those guys, and the difference between the eighth goalie in the league and the 15th goalie, it’s a big difference in money. It’s not a big difference in performance.”

In Short

I have two basic concerns:

Was this last season a breakthrough, or an aberration?
Will Ward continue to develop into an elite (read: top-five) goaltender, or will he be a top-15 guy?

If either of those questions turns out to have a less-than-ideal answer, than this contract is going to hurt the Hurricanes more than it helps them. Given the items working in the Hurricane’s favour (Ward’s under contract for another year, a restricted free agent after that, and the cap’s likely to drop in what would have been his contract year) I think they made a mistake signing him to this deal now.

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I was surprised yesterday when the Montreal Canadiens demoted Sergei Kostitsyn to the minors.

I was somewhat less surprised today when it was revealed that Kostitsyn had been suspended by the club after refusing to report to the AHL. I was also unsurprised to note that Kostitsyn supposedly reacted by demanding a trade .

The threat of skipping town and playing for the KHL has given some European players added leverage, but contrary to reports that Kostitsyn might be looking at such a jump himself, agent Don Meehan has said that Kostitsyn has ruled out defecting to the upstart league.

In the link above, the Globe & Mail’s Sean Gordon also points out that coach Jacques Martin was trying to send a message with the Kostitsyn demotion, and given how well that went over with Kostitsyn last time ( Gordon characterized it as ‘toys being launched from the stroller’) it’s easy to wonder if Bob Gainey and company didn’t almost expect a trade demand.

The problem – both for Kostitsyn and the Canadiens – is that the trade market for small forwards who:

are seventh-round draft picks
have repeatedly demonstrated an unwillingness to cooperate with their team
have never cracked either of the lofty 10-goal or 30-point plateaus

simply isn’t all that big.

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There was quit the stir in Oilerland when 2004 first round draft pick Rob Schremp was waived by the Oilers and subsequently claimed by the New York Islanders. In a lot of ways it was a bit disappointing to me not to see a similar ruckus when the Lightning put Boston Bruins‘ 2005 first round pick Matt Lashoff on waivers yesterday. Of course, there are already a few disappointing ’05 draft picks floating around out there, but Lashoff has a few arrows in his favour, and in many ways has had similar comments along his career as Schremp did. The Hockey News has consistenly ranked Lashoff as a top prospect (39th and 45th league-wide in their 2007 and 2008 editions of Future Watch) so he’s had some press, he has some pedigree, and along the way he’s put up points and had some success in the minors too.

Here are Lashoff’s numbers over the last three seasons:

AHL

2006-07: 64GP – 11G – 25A – 36PTS, -2
2007-08: 60GP – 9G – 27A – 36PTS, +11
2008-09: 35GP – 5G – 16A – 21PTS, -3

NHL

2006-07: 12GP – 0G – 2A – 2PTS, -6
2007-08: 18GP – 1G – 4A – 5PTS, -2
2008-09: 28GP – 0G – 8A – 8PTS, -6

As one might expect from the numbers, Lashoff has offensive potential and defensive deficiencies; those two facts seem to be the consensus among NHL observers, and that was certainly the message coming from Bruins management during Lashoff’s time with the team. Two excerpts from this year’s McKeen’s Yearbook reflect that consensus. First, the good:

“…skilled, offense-minded blueliner… excells as a powerplay pointman as he has a knack for opening shooting seams and a powerful one-timer… makes a good, quick first pass and is getting better at integrating himself into the attack without compromising his positioning… boasts excellent acceleration and top speed as well as improved balance…”

and next, the bad:

“…still a work in progress defensively… labours backing up and handling the speed of the rush – and can be slow pivoting and getting to dump-ins… shaky on retrievals… gets pressured into poor decisions and impulsive clearances under a heavy forecheck…”

The problem with picking up a player like Lashoff is that he needs to stay on the roster, or else Tampa Bay gets first shot at him when he’s sent back down. Unfortunately, most teams can’t afford to develop players at the NHL level, and of those that can, the Avalanche already have Kyle Cumiskey and the Islanders already have Jack Hillen. In short, Lashoff probably deserved waiving, and I imagine he’ll clear.

The Lightning’s trade of Mark Recchi and a second-round pick to the Bruins for Lashoff and Martins Karsums (who was demoted earlier in training camp) looks worse all the time.

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Rob Schremp‘s time with the Edmonton Oilers organization has finally come to an end.

It’s probable that no player with such little on-ice NHL impact has generated as much discussion, spilled ink, and controversy as the Oilers’ 2004 first round draft pick. I’m as guilty of discussing Schremp ad nauseum as anyone.

In fact, the very first post I ever wrote was about Rob Schremp, a detailed year-by-year comparison to other OHL scoring stars of years past. MY best-case scenario then, and the player I’d compare him to now, is Jason Dawe.

I’d also highly recommend (if time permits) reading the prospect profile I did of Schremp back in February. I consider his entire career, year-by-year, with quotes from his coaches and statistical comparisons to a host of other players.

He goes now to the New York Islanders, which is probably a best-case scenario for him. The Islanders are awfully thin up front, and on top of that injuries mean that Doug Weight will likely miss the season opener and Kyle Okposo might. Dominik over at Lighthouse Hockey thinks of this as a no-risk and possibly high-reward move, and he’s absolutely right.

Schremp’s a useful player in a narrow sense, and could do well on the Islanders powerplay. My guess this morning was 40 points and a minus-15 rating, meaning that I think he’ll do slightly better in the big league than he did last season in the AHL (where he put up 42 points and a minus-26 rating).

In other news, the player who perhaps best exemplifies what Rob Schremp isn’t, Liam Reddox, also shows up on the waiver wire (albeit a day later). Rumour around Edmonton has it that the St. Louis Blues may be interested, although I haven’t seen anything official to confirm that. Reddox is a useful fringe player who could someday develop into a very decent checking-line winger; I was impressed by his effort in training camp, if not his size or hands. I’d put his odds of being claimed at somewhere in the neighborhood of one-in-four, especially since Colin Stuart is also on the wire this morning.

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The Calgary Flames put a trio of forwards on waivers today, and there’s a case to be made that all three could be appealing to rival NHL clubs. Jason Jaffray, Jamie Lundmark and Colin Stuart were all waived, although Randy Sportak of the Calgary Sun suggests that not all three will be assigned to the Flames AHL-affiliate Abbotsford Heat.

Colin Stuart

Of the three, Colin Stuart is the only one without a two-way contract. His offensive ability is, to put it mildly, lacking, and he’s never cracked the thirty-point mark at even the minor-league level. Last year, Stuart played 33 games for the Atlanta Thrashers, mostly as the left-wing on a line which featured Marty Reasoner and Colby Armstrong. I’ve mentioned before how most teams run a power-vs.-power alignment, where their best players play against other teams best players. John Anderson in Atlanta did not do that last season, and looking at hockeyanalysis.com it’s interesting to see which forwards Stuart played against the most:

Alexander Ovechkin
Alexander Semin
Stephen Weiss
Richard Zednik
Sergei Fedorov
Steven Stamkos
Michael Frolik
David Booth
Vaclav Prospal
Martin St. Louis

That’s quite the murderer’s row, and behindthenet.ca ranks Stuart first among Thrashers forwards in Quality of Competition last season. Despite that, Stuart finished the season at a very respectable plus-3. He’s listed at 6’2″, 205lbs, and was creditted with 59 hits in only 39 games last season. He should be claimed – perhaps even by division-rival Edmonton, a team in need of a physical and defensive forward. His cap hit is incredibly modest: 483,333 dollars.

Jamie Lundmark

Even more surprising than the decision to waive Stuart is the decision to waive Jamie Lundmark (pictured above), who came into his own down the stretch last season, making the most of a 27-game call-up (27GP – 8G – 8A – 16PTS, +2). Lundmark is slated to earn a very modest 600,000 dollars at the NHL level this season, but his two-way deal means that the Flames will be on the hook for a much smaller amount if he makes it to the minors (as they are likely hoping).

Given that Lundmark managed most of his scoring while playing on the Flames’ second line (with Daymond Langkow and Todd Bertuzzi), it’s entirely possible that he could continue scoring at a very reasonable rate without playing with bonafide stars. Here I have to wonder if a team like the Nashville Predators – both desperately in need of some second-line scoring and also unable to break the bank on a scorer – will put a claim in.

Jason Jaffray

I think Jaffray makes it down to the minors. I saw him play a fair bit in Vancouver, and while it’s obvious he’s a talent he was also rather badly miscast in a fourth-line role. He’s put up some pretty significant numbers over the last three years in the American Hockey League, but he might be one of those guys who is now type-cast as a minor-league journeyman. He’s got decent size, but he isn’t fleet of foot and the fact of the matter is that once a player gets into his late-twenties he simply doesn’t get the opportunities that teams give to younger prospects.

In his favour, Jaffray had a pretty good training camp, but I think it’s a fair bet that he clears waivers and shows up sometime later this year as an injury call-up somewhere.

The Small Matter of Brian McGratton

In the sentence above, “small” is used in the same way that a 6’6″ man might be labelled “Tiny”.

From Battle of Alberta, where I first saw the news of these three showing up on the waiver wire:

Mostly, it’s just galling that the Flames gave a one-way contract to a guy who can only “help his team” by fighting, even though he’s not yet recovered from shoulder surgery, and has the substance abuse baggage noted above. Jaffray and Lundmark were waived today, both of whom would help the Flames score/prevent goals and win games from the 4th line more than McGrattan could hope to. It’s a real blot on what was otherwise a pretty solid summer by management.

Given my opinion on enforcers without other on-ice skills, I find it very difficult to disagree with Matt’s assessment quoted above. The three guys above (Stuart and Lundmark in particular) are actual assets in the part of the game that gets points for teams: scoring and preventing goals. The fact that Stuart adds both size and toughness in addition to the whole scoring and preventing goals thing is just the icing on the cake.

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Anton Stralman was first drafted in 2005, although he was eligible in 2004. The Toronto Maple Leafs invested a seventh-round pick in the young Swede, who was playing 1st Division hockey in Sweden. Two years later, Stralman had his break-through season, putting up ten goals and 21 points in 53 games for Timra IK of the Elitserien (the top Swedish league). Interestingly, nine of those ten goals came with the man advantage. Stralman’s regular season performance was followed by a strong showing at the World Championships, and in 2007-08 he made his NHL debut with the Leafs.

Stralman played limited minutes, both at even-strength and on special teams. He was mostly a third-pairing defenceman when he made it into the lineup at all, and he put up only nine points and a minus-10 rating in 50 games. With Tomas Kaberle, Bryan McCabe and Pavel Kubina established and effective options for the Toronto powerplay, Stralman didn’t get a chance to expand on his role until McCabe went down with a broken hand. He finished strongly, with five of his nine points coming in the final weeks of the signal.

In 2008-09, the situation improved quite a bit. Stralman only played 38 games, but he managed 13 points and a minus-2 rating. Again, he played in a relatively sheltered role; facing lower-tier opposition and getting a lot more starts in the offensive than defensive zone. He did make good use of that positioning; putting up the best Corsi rating relative to ice-time of any Toronto defenseman (Corsi measures territorial advantage by tracking shots for and against).

Those numbers fit in well with what we know of Stralman’s skill-set. Stralman isn’t blessed with high-end acceleration (although he has plus speed and very good lateral movement) but he is elusive and has a nice set of skills with the puck. He’s not a big player, particularly for a defenceman (listed at 6’1″, 180lbs) but he doesn’t shy from contact and is a willing shot-blocker. The icing on Stralman’s powerplay skill-set is his slap shot, which is both quick and accurate.

Stralman was traded to Calgary by the Maple Leafs this past summer along with part-time NHL’er Colin Stuart and a seventh round pick in exchange for Wayne Primeau and a second round pick. The move was a salary dump by the Flames, who had come incredibly close to the NHL’s salary cap at the end of 2008-09 and simply couldn’t afford to pay a player like Primeau 1.4-million dollars.

Yesterday, Stralman was traded again, this time to the Columbus Blue Jackets, in exchange for a third round draft pick. All parties did well in the trade: Calgary in acquiring a useful piece for a player who wouldn’t crack their roster, and Columbus in adding a young and cheap (Stralman represents a 731,666 dollar cap hit) defenceman who can provide a right-handed point shot to their consistently miserable power play. The real winner in all of this though is Stralman, who is going to get heavy minutes on special teams and an all but guaranteed roster spot for the first time in his NHL career – just as his contract expires.

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We’ll start with what is quite possibly the greatest hockey story ever, from The Score’s own Andrew Stoeten: the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings have a player named Wheaton King. That’s right, Wheat King plays for the Wheat Kings.

Theo Fleury has decided to call it a career after being released by the Calgary Flames. Still, it’s much better to end things after some preseason success with the team he’ll always be associated with than as a suspended Chicago Blackhawk. It should also help with sales of his new book, expected to come out this fall.

Down Goes Brown with – hands-down – the best Google screenshot I’ve ever seen.

From Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy comes this great video of NHL duputy commissioner Bill Daly being extremely candide on Jim Balsillie and the current predicament of the Phoenix Coyotes. The most important point? Basically that the chief job of Daly and Gary Bettman is simply to do the bidding of the NHL Board of Governors, and that it’s the Board, not Bettman, blocking Balsillie’s path. So the next time someone opines that they hate Gary Bettman, feel free to explain to them that they really hate the owners of the NHL. Or don’t.

Also pointed out by Wyshynski is this awesome exchange between Hockey Buzz’s Columbus Blue Jackets blogger Eric Smith and someone claiming to be Blue Jackets’ forward Nikita Filatov:

Smith: @NikitaFilatov is a FAKE! Just talked to Filatov and he asked me “What is Twitter?” Said he is going to check it out though.
Filatov: Eric Smith says account is fake, don’t listen. He is hack journalist who pretends to know me.

Normally, I’d go with the blogger here, but he does work for Eklund and Filatov’s account is verified, so who knows…

According to journalist Michael Russo, it appears that ex-New York Islanders forward Andy Hilbert is the Minnesota Wild‘s final cut of training camp. He has apparently been offered a two-way contract, and if he accepts he’ll be waived and sent to the Wild’s AHL affiliate in Houston. Cue my obligatory reference to why someone should claim him on waivers.

In a slightly surprising move, the Montreal Canadiens have decided to demote Sergei Kostitsyn to the Hamilton Bulldogs. I wonder if that will stop a friend of mine from differentiating between the Kostitsyn brothers with the nicknames “Big Tits” and “Little Tits”. I’m thinking not. Lions in Winter has decided that this makes the younger Kostitsyn the new target for everyone who doesn’t have Alexei Kovalev to beat on anymore.

Over in Canucks-land, the fight between the Gilbert Brule and Jannik Hansen in last night’s tilt between Vancouver and the Edmonton Oilers will have some lasting repercussions: Hansen will be out four to six weeks after breaking his hand on Brule’s face. Some have suggested that this means Cody Hodgson gets a roster spot, but over at Nucks Misconduct they’re betting on Tanner Glass (AHL numbers from last season: 44 games played, four goals, 13 points, 100 PIM). Given Glass’s relatively limited skill-set, I’ll go with Canucks Army and guess that Hodgson sticks, at least for nine games.

Lastly, following teams like the Leafs, Oilers and Canucks this fall, the story has been the same: junior players getting sent back to junior because it’s in their long-term interest. According to the good folks at Mile High Hockey, the Colorado Avalanche have something totally different in mind: keeping both of their highest picks from this summer’s entry draft. For the sake of Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly, I hope things work out a little differently for them then they did for, say, Gilbert Brule.

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Waiver Wire Finds is going to be an occasional feature on Hockey or Die! For the next few days, as players around the league get put on the open market as they’re cut from their NHL clubs. Logic suggested starting with a more notable player, like the Flyers Randy Jones or (The) Rob Schremp, but given as my track record so far indicates, I’ll brook no interference from logic.

Instead, I’ll start with the mostly unknown Tyler Weiman, who was just cut by the Colorado Avalanche. Weiman was a fifth-round pick of the Avalanche in 2002, and had an unremarkable junior career as the starting goaltender for the rather miserable Tri-City Americans. His career record in Tri-City was 67-97-18, on a team not blessed with an overabundance of talent. Aside from his 2003-04 backup (one Carey Price) his most notable teammates were probably Montreal Canadiens prospect Shawn Belle and minor-league enforcer Jon “Nasty” Mirasty.

Weiman worked his way up the professional ranks, blowing past the Central Hockey League (33-6-5, 1.80 GAA, .938 SV%) and then splitting 2005-06 between the ECHL and AHL. In 2006-07, he entrenched himself at the AHL level, and has played there for three seasons. He has one NHL game to his credit (in 2007-08) but has generally outplayed his backups at the AHL level, including once-highly touted prospect Justin Peters and former first round pick Jason Bacashihua

Last year marked a breakthrough season for Weiman:

2006-07: 54GP – 27 – 22 – 3, 2.99 GAA, .905 SV%
2007-08: 31GP – 9 – 19 – 1, 3.32 GAA, .903 SV%
2008-09: 44GP – 21 – 20 – 2, 2.46 GAA, .915 SV%

That .915 SV% compares nicely with a few other tweeners (Red Wings’ backup Jim Howard, Bruins prospect Tuukka Rask and Thrashers prospect Ondrej Pavelec, among others) and all of Weiman’s numbers are well clear of his backup, Jason Bacashihua (13-21-3, 2.77 GAA, .905 SV%).

Weiman’s numbers certainly don’t indicate that he’s a shoe-in for an NHL job, but teams with questionable backups o training camp injuries could certainly do worse than to take a look at him. One possibility is the Philadelphia Flyers, who have Johan Backlund (who has had indifferent results in the Elitserien the last few years) currently slotted in the backup position for the injured Brian Boucher.

It’s probably a long-shot that Weiman gets claimed, but he could very well be of help to a team in need of help in the backup position.

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Why is ______ Still Unemployed? is a recurring feature hear at Hockey Or Die! In it, we look at some of the most useful free agents still looking for a job as teams open up training camp. We continue today with Manny Fernandez, most recently of the Boston Bruins.

Asking The Expert

In my quest for answers, I turned to the writer of the Stanley Cup of Chowder, SBNations’ Boston Bruins’ website, and he passed along the following scouting report:

Last year, we saw two very different versions of Manny Fernandez. For the first half of the season, we saw a confident veteran goaltender that was a reliable 1A to Tim Thomas in the Bruins’ goaltending tandem. Then there was the late season Manny Fernandez that was dealing with back and knee problems, looking very shaky in goal, and refusing to talk to the media. If Manny can stay healthy, he can be a solid NHL goaltender again, but that is a big if. If Manny wanted to put his ego aside and take less money to be a backup somewhere, he might have a chance to sign somewhere but I’m not sure if that is the situation he is looking for at this point in his hockey career.

By The Numbers

The statistical tools at our disposal for goaltenders are more limited than the tools we have for other skaters, but there are still a few things worth trying. The first thing we can do is use Yahoo’s split stats to compare Fernandez’s performance pre- and post- all-star break:

Pre All-Star: 14-3-1, 2.07 GAA, .928 SV%
Post All-Star: 2-5-2, 3.64 GAA, .875 SV%

Such a drastic drop-off in performance is probably attributable, to some outside factor, and we see that the injuries mentioned by our expert above coincide nicely with the decline in Fernandez’s game:

January 10, 2009: Missed two games – undisclosed
January 27, 2009: Missed four games – back injury

Those injuries have Fernandez contemplating retirement. In May, Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe reported the following:

Fernandez said he will consult with doctors to help determine whether his back might flare up again next season. He will then decide, with his family’s input, if he wants to continue his career.

It would be a shame if Fernandez were forced to retire; when healthy, he’s been among the best goaltenders in the NHL since the lockout.

It seems clear that the reason Manny Fernandez is still a free agent is because his health is such that he isn’t sure if he wants to keep playing. It doesn’t have much to do with performance.

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