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I’ve made it clear before here that I like Craig MacTavish. I think that he’s a good coach, I think that he’s done an excellent job developing young players into solid NHLers if they have the ability to do so and I think that the Oilers have generally performed at a level commensurate with their talent. Like a lot of Oilers fans, the refusal to slide a fourth F out on the PP has aggravated though. It looks like he’s finally gotten over that or at least bowed to the fact that the best strategy for the Oilers is loading up with forwards on the PP. It’s a credit to MacTavish that he’s adapting his game plan to his personnel - I think that a lot of coaches who weren’t inclined to play more than three forwards and who were the beneficiaries of a five man PP on this goal would just end up giving MAB/Tjarnqvist a lot of minutes. Through two periods tonight, the Oilers have two PP goals against Vancouver, both with five forwards on the ice.

It will be fun to see the ice time splits for the Oilers this year - I was getting mocked in a hockey forum recently for having the temerity to describe Dion Phaneuf as someone who would be the Oilers fourth best ES defencemen, best PP defencemen and fourth best PK defencemen, sort of a 4/1/4. Historically in hockey, players are described as first/second/third/fourth liners and #1, #2 etc. defencemen. It’s a silly way to do it obviously as it’s a gross oversimplification. If you accept that the game has three obviously different facets, then there might be guys who are good in certain aspects but not others. Edmonton’s going to have guys all over the map in terms of where they play their ice this year, like an Earl Weaver platoon. I tend to think that coaching is overrated in terms of it’s impact but this team has so many guys who can be very productive if properly platooned that it’s going to be one where coaching makes a real difference. Conventionally run, this team is probably good for 7th or 8th. If the MacTavish aggressively platoons guys and Lowe snags another defenceman to eat minutes at ES/PK, they could come in significantly higher.

Update: 9:07 of PP time tonight in Vancouver for the Oil. Jason Smith, Steve Staios, Jan Hejda, Ladislav Smid, Marc-Andre Bergeron and Daniel Tjarnqvist got a grand total of 5:40 seconds on the PP. Ryan Smyth, Ales Hemsky, Petr Sykora and Jarret Stoll all played more than that individually. Shawn Horcoff, by the way, got only 3:10. When some bozo phones the Team bitching about Horcoff’s scoring being down and his contract being too much, I hope whoever takes the call points out that he’s an excellent faceoff and one of the guys on this team who can be trusted at ES - it makes more sense to apply his talents there than to the PP, where the Oil are loaded.

Looking over what the Kings have done this summer, it’s not at all clear to me

that they’ve got any sort of a plan. They seem like they’re in a mode where

they aren’t sure whether they’re trying to compete now or putting together a

team for the future. Yesterday’s trade more strongly suggests that they’re looking towards the future.

Taking a look at the Kings roster, they aren’t a particularly young team. I’m

working off the absolutely fantastic

href="http://www3.telus.net/public/dreyes/nhl/">NHL salaries page put

together by some unnamed fan, and he’s got the Kings as having three players

25 or younger. Fair enough, so you’d think that they’re in a compete now

mode.

They got rid of the only proven outscorer on their team though, sending Pavol

Demitra to the Wild in the offseason for Patrick O’Sullivan. That’s a trade

for the future. Then they signed Rob Blake and traded for Dan Cloutier -

moves for now. It’s as if they aren’t quite sure what they’re trying to do

and accordingly have nothing against which to gauge their moves.

I’ll comment on yesterday’s big news here, as opposed to writing another comment about it. I’m not sure that it’s a trade that particularly makes sense for either team. From LA’s perspective, this is officially the earliest any team that was nominally trying to make the playoffs has waved the white flag - has training camp been that ugly in LA? I don’t think that their chances were particularly good anyway but to give away two guys who were playing a lot against the other team’s best players last season (sure, they weren’t great at it but still…you’d think that it has a negative ripple effect as other guys get moved closer to the deep end) and take on 2 years at $2.5MM per for a guy who doesn’t look like he’ll be top 4 in LA? Wow. That’s steep to land a defenceman who doesn’t seem particularly keen to make the jump to the NHL. How long will it take for Jack Johnson to get to Tim Gleason’s level? If you consider that Tverdovsky is grossly overpaid, you’ve got to see a large chunk of his salary as basically an investment in buying the rights to Johnson. Will LA get $5MM + time value of money + risk premium out of Johnson before he gets to be a UFA? I’ve got my doubts.

From Carolina’s perspective, it’s an obviously asinine trade. Tim Gleason will no doubt play a big role (I’d guess he plays tough minutes and is a + doing it) for them but I doubt Eric Belanger is going to be all that significant. Could they have acquired those pieces later on for less than a prospect with the apparent value that Jack Johnson has? I think so. Is there a time in the course of an NHL season where the value of a prospect like Jack Johnson is lower than it is right now? I doubt it.

Carolina is in a relatively soft division in a soft conference - the playoffs aren’t going to be a concern. They could have afforded to wait for some defencemen to shake loose. They’re going to look silly 35-40 games from now, when defencemen of Tim Gleason’s calibre are getting moved for second round draft picks. That wouldn’t have freed them of Oleg Tverdovsky’s contract but I’d think that Tverdovsky could have at least eaten some soft minutes between now and then. I’d have rather have tried to parlay Jackson into a top forward prospect but that’s just me. Strange, strange deal.

Anyway…back to the Kings.

Changes

Dan Cloutier: This is a sort of “Why bother?” trade. As I do when

referring to every goalie move made this summer, I note that Manny Legace was

available for fewer dollars and no draft pick. Instead, the Kings traded for a

very average Dan Cloutier who has the added benefit of coming off major knee

surgery that cost him an entire season, having just turned 30 and is an

unrestricted free agent at the end of the year. The Province

href="http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=4e2f6a68-75ee-45d5-

96f3-de15e4cb365e">reported a few days back that he actually WASN’T being

investigated for a hit and run last year but that’s about the best thing that

you can say for him. A weird and pointless addition - I’d have gone with

Garon/LaBarbera before I spent money and a draft pick to get Dan Cloutier. Signing him to the long term deal just compounds the error.

Rob Blake: Signing expensive veteran defencemen from elite teams? The

patented Doug MacLean Recipe for Success isn’t limited to Columbus. Rob Blake

got a two year $12MM retirement deal from the Kings. It’s funny that they

weren’t willing to pay him five years ago but are more than happy too now.

I’m wondering how good Blake actually is at this point in his career. He was

barely a plus last year at even strength despite playing a pile of ES minutes

with Sakic. When on the ice with Sakic, he was EV+ 32 EV- 24. The rest of

the time he was EV+ 30 EV- 35. There’s no Sakic, or reasonable facsimile

thereof, in Los Angeles.

He wasn’t playing the toughest minutes of the defencemen either. On the PP,

he’s been good the past few years but hasn’t put up numbers that would blow

you away, particularly given the PP that Colorado has iced. I’d be willing to

bet that he’s a net minus next year and doesn’t put up the PP numbers the

Kings are thinking that they’ll get. I’d rather have Pavol Demitra. Hopefully Blake can help the PK.

Alyn McCauley: Maybe Lombardi and Crawford made a deal. Crawford gets

to bring in a favourite from an old job in Dan Cloutier and Lombardi gets to

bring in a favourite from an old job in McCauley. It’s a $4.5MM tribute to

sentiment. McCauley’s been worthless on the PP throughout his career. He’s

only ever shown himself to be a decent ES scorer once and got outscored last

year in SJ despite playing middling minutes. If you take a look at his

career, there’s really only the one big offensive and outscoring year,

2003-04. The Sharks got outrageously good goaltending that season. He can’t

be worth what he’s getting.

I don’t think that he has the game to handle tough opposition without getting

killed and he doesn’t have the offence to beat up on the bad players; kind of

a tweener type. He might be able to help the PK though - he played big

minutes on a PP that did a reasonable job of keeping shots down. I don’t see

what else he’ll add. He appears to have made Eric Belanger redundant though.

Oleg Tverdovsky: He’s a body. I’m sure that LA will be trying like hell to give him away though. He’s going to have an awful tough time playing anything more than third pairing minutes at ES and he’s not particularly good on the PP. He’s certainly not going to get PP minutes in front of Lubomir Visnovsky and Blake. If they can’t give him away, they’ll pay him and view it as a capital investment that you get to deduct from their income at tax time.

That’s apparently it. Joe Corvo, Demitra and Jeremy Roenick were big names

pushed overboard; Belanger and Gleason (both of whom played tough minutes) were kicked out today; presumably one of Garon/LaBarbera will follow shortly. I’m as surprised as anyone else by the lack of changes. There’s some discussion that Anze Kopitar will make the team; I doubt he’ll be a difference maker.

Goaltending

There’s talk on CNN/SI that Jason LaBarbera is going to be the odd man out

here. That’s unfortunate. He started strong, struggled through the middle

and then finished up well. LA just completely stopped giving him games, even

though Garon couldn’t stop a puck on the PK to save his life. I’m obviously

biased here, because I’m a fan of LaBarbera and was touting him when he was in

the minors but if he’s going to get dumped, I hope he ends up somewhere where

they’ve got a fragile starting goalie and they’re forced to give him another

thirty starts. I can’t believe that he’d pass through waivers but then,

crazier things have happened. If he’s put on waivers and the Oilers could

flip Jussi for a pick, I’d love to see them snap him up.

Even Strength

Like a lesser version of the Oilers team in 2003-04, the Kings were ok at ES and horrific on special teams last season. I’m at a loss as to how they could possibly be even at ES again this season though - Patrick O’Sullivan may someday be a great player but he’s no Pavol Demitra yet. Demitra played middling minutes last season but the Kings absolutely slaughtered the opposition when he was on the ice - 3.77 ESG/60, 1.88 ESGA/60. When he wasn’t on the ice, the picture was considerably less rosy: 2.35 ESG/60 2.86 ESGA/60. With the young players who are apparently going to be on this team and now the loss of Belanger…it’s going to be worse. As I said above, I don’t think Rob Blake will make a signficant impact. They’re now locked into goaltending that might be marginally better at ES at best. I don’t see how they can match last year and I strongly suspect that they’ll be significantly worse.

Power Play

LA had an amazingly bad PP last year. Looking at it, it’s notable the amount of minutes that guys were able to get without producing at all. JR played 223 of what I imagine must have been soul killing minutes for Kings fans. He produced 7 points in that time. Luc Robitalle was even worse - 8 PP points in 268 minutes (1.79 PPP/60). Of the 13 Kings who saw more than 100 minutes of PP time, only 4 of them managed to top 4.0 PPP/60. That’s some kind of awful.

You’d think that LA’s PP would be significantly better just by deleting 480 minutes from Robitaille and Roenick and that’s probably true. Mike Cammalleri showed some serious game on the PP. Cammalleri has yet to have a bad season in the NHL on the PP - in 570+ minutes (the vast majority of which were last year), he’s over 4.6 PPP/60. He appears to be legit. Lubomir Visnovsky had a great season as well - he’s a bit more of an enigma though, having alternated good years and bad. I don’t really know what to make of him. Other than that, it’s just lots of suck.

I’d imagine that there are going to be an awful lot of young guys on the Kings PP this year - Frolov, Kopitar and O’Sullivan would all seem like good bets to get minutes. The Kings might as well give them to the young guys - you aren’t going to win a bloody thing with a PP built around Sean Avery. Young guys are generally bad bets for PP production - the Kings would be well advised to invest the time in them though, so as to hopefully have them understanding how to succeed on the PP in a year or two.

Penalty Kill

Also the suck last year, although moreso because of Garon’s Conklinesque inability to stop pucks. Interesting note - it’s the second year in a row that LA’s starter has struggled with his save percentage on the PK. Cechmanek had similar difficulties although he did quite well at ES. One wonders if it’s systemic or if it’s just goalies having bad year.

LA gutted their PK today - Gleason played over 300 minutes last year and Belanger played 258 (most amongst Kings forwards). They can fill the Gleason minutes I think - they’ll slide Blake out there. Presumably McCauley takes Belanger’s minutes. The loss of these guys will dampen the impact that Blake and McCauley make even more. I figure that they’ll get better goaltending on the PK and improve. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were league average or so - it really was mostly the goaltending last year.

Outlook

Tougher division. Significantly weaker team. As always, tough travel. It’ll be a long season barring two or three young players taking massive steps forwards. Realistically, the Kings are looking to the future. Good thing that they’re spending $8.5MM of Phillip Anschutz’s money on Dan Cloutier and Rob Blake now, although Anschutz has money to waste on bring soccer to the US so surely he can afford to spend a little to see that Blake’s retirement is just a little bit nicer. This seems like a team without a real plan, although they do have some nice young talent. They’re wasting an awful lot of money now though. With Aaron Miller and Brent Sopel free agents after this year, LA is likely going to be moving some defencemen at or before the trade deadline.

Chris Boersma, who writes the cool Hockey Numbers site, made a statement that I can’t believe is true in Tom Benjamin’s thread discussing my comments on Special Ed. De Boersma wrote

2. The Canucks likely lost ~20 PPG (or 2-3 wins) last season as a result of missing Jovanovski. That would’ve been enough to make the playoffs.

It’s a statement that, right off the bat, fails the sniff test. Jovanovski missed 38 games last season. Pro-rating those 20 PPG, we’re talking about Jovanovski adding 5 wins to the Canucks on the PP alone above, not replacement level players, but over the Canucks best available options to fill his minutes, who are presumably above replacement level. If you think that Jovanovski adds some value at even strength and on the PK as well, that just adds to the cost of him being out.

Once you actually look at the numbers, the statement becomes even harder to swallow. Let’s take a look at what we know.

1. In the games that Jovanovski played last season, the Canucks spent 438.85 minutes on the PP.

2. Of those 438.85 minutes, Jovanovski was on the ice for 243.53 of them. That works out to 55.5% of the time that the Canucks were on the PP that Jovanovski was on the ice.

3. With Jovanovski on the ice in those games, the Canucks scored 31 goals. That’s a rate of 7.64 PPG/60. When Jovanovski was not on the ice in those games, the Canucks scored 26 power play goals. That’s a rate of 7.99 PPG/60. Overall, their rate in games where Jovanovski played was 7.79 PPG/60.

4. In the games that Jovanovski didn’t play, the Canucks scored 39 power play goals. That works out to 6.64 PPG/60.

5. If the Canucks had scored PP goals at the same rate when Jovanovski was out as they did when he was healthy, they would have scored 46 PP goals instead of 39. That’s 7 goals, not 20.

So…is it fair to say that Jovanovski’s loss cost the Canucks even those 7 goals? I’ve got my doubts. First of all, it’s probably within the realm of normal variation. Second, Naslund was struggling with a groin injury at the same time as all of this was going on. Naslund is a guy who I really think drives the Canucks PP. Third, Jovanovski wouldn’t have been on the ice for all of those 350ish minutes that the Canucks spent on the PP while he was hurt. If he played 55% of the time, we’re slicing things up even thinner, although we do need to acknowledge the ripple effect - when Jovo goes down, guys move up the ladder. Next thing you know, Bryan Allen is getting PP minutes.

It’s tough to say just how valuable Jovanovski is on the PP because we don’t have a good idea yet of what replacement level production is on the PP. I’d think that it’d be heavily influenced by the players that you’re playing with, to be quite honest, which is why I’ve never really been all that impressed with Jovanovski’s PP production - I don’t think he puts up numbers like a guy getting as much PP time with Naslund/Bertuzzi should have. It’s a gut feeling based on the numbers but he seems like he should do more with the guys he’s had the opportunity to play with the past few years - if he’s really an elite PP QB and if elite PP QB’s are that essential. I’m not sure that he is or that they are. His absence certainly didn’t cost the Canucks 20 goals on the PP.

It seems like I write a version of this every time a goalie other than Manny

Legace signs a contract but I don’t understand the decision that the Kings

made to sign Dan

Cloutier for 2007-08 and 2008-09 at $3.1MM per. It doesn’t make sense for

four reasons.

First, Dan Cloutier has proven himself to be at best a slightly better than

average goalie. His save percentages have never been significantly better

than the league average. His gaudy win numbers are pretty much a function of

the fact that he played behind some great offensive teams in Vancouver. I

don’t care about the lack of playoff success but he’s not an elite goalie.

Odds are that he’s either entered or entering the decline phase of his career,

given his age.

Second, Cloutier’s best season in terms of save percentage saw him at 100.3%

of league average. LaBarbera/Garon last year were about 99.8% of league

average. A Cloutier/Garon tandem costs $2.7MM this year. A Garon/LaBarbera

tandem costs $2.0MM. If you figure the same shot rate as last season,

Cloutier for 60 games at his best performance and Garon for 22 games matching

the performance that Garon/LaBarbera provided last season (wherein LaBarbera

produced the better numbers), the Kings come out about 9 goals better. I’m

inclined to think that that’s not a bad gain for 700K more but it’s going to

be a stretch to achieve that kind of benefit once Cloutier’s raise kicks in

and the Kings either have to pay a good backup $900K or so, or a lousy one

$450K. I have a hard time seeing Cloutier making sense from an efficiency

perspective at that price.

Third, as I’ll mention in the Kings discussion I’m working on, LA isn’t really

a team that seems to be trying to win now. Why lock into an expensive average

goalie with a team that isn’t yet competitive? Even if LA’s forwards all

develop at once, they’re going to be carrying roster deadweight. Why

commit?

Fourth, if you look at what next summer’s UFA market looks like, it really

seems strange to commit now. Assume that LA hadn’t re-signed Cloutier.

Notable UFA’s next summer as of right now would be Cloutier, JS Giguere, Manny

Legace, Martin Biron, David Aebischer and Robert Esche. Teams without a

“proven” starter under contract or owned as an RFA would be Phoenix, Detroit,

LA, and St. Louis. Maybe toss Anaheim or Montreal in there if Bryzgalov or

Huet bomb out.

Anaheim isn’t going to be hot into the UFA market - they’ve already got

$24.73MM committed to 9 guys. Montreal has $19.6MM committed to 8 guys.

Phoenix has $21.5MM committed to 9 guys and tons of key UFA’s and RFA’s.

Detroit has a bunch of guys going UFA. The lineup to throw big dollars at a

goalie is not going to be a long one. LA is an attractive market for a lot of

reasons. Why then, would the Kings hand out this contract at this time?

There were a few people during the lockout who argued that a big part of the

NHL’s problems was the incompetence of management. The inability of league

GM’s to recognize and take advantage of the relative glut of goalies last

summer and now extending towards next summer is indicative of this problem.

It’s a buyer’s market and the sellers are still winning out. This isn’t a

great move by a team that hasn’t made many good ones over the summer.

Obviously, it can be argued that as so many goalies are getting big money,

they’re worth it. The difficulty that I have with that position is that

goalies are getting the big dollars despite the presence of cheaper, nearly

as attractive alternatives. We saw it this summer when the Oilers and

Sens spent big money on goalies with various flaws (age and limited track

record) and the Leafs gave out a three year contract and gave up a pretty nice

trade chip while Manny Legace begged for a job (and eventually took one with

way less security and money). We’ll see it again next summer - I don’t see

how the goalie market can be all that hot, given the lack of available jobs,

lack of available cap room and quantity of goalies available. It’s a weird,

weird decision.

(Thanks to the NHL Salaries

list guy - along with hockeydb, one of

the truly indispensible NHL resources.

Chris De Boersma has a really interesting post up about controlling diving that I think is fantastic. He basically sets out a framework that, to me at least, makes it clear why people are so willing to dive - the benefits probably far exceed the costs, even with the possibility of getting a penalty and ending up on Colin Campbell’s shit list. It’s a pretty compelling argument and well worth reading.

I have nothing to say on the Tie Domi divorce, other than to say that this story is an entertaining primer on the whole thing and provides a good rundown on Belinda Stronach’s dating history. Several bits in particular worth noting:

She [Domi’s wife Leanne] also is asking for $30,000 in monthly spousal support — an exuberant amount, Feldstein said.

The battle over flout/flaunt has already been lost - those words are pretty much used interchangeably. Same goes for pretty much any homonym you can imagine; “playoff birth” has been used in some of the best papers in Canada. Apparently, the next step in the continuing evolution of the English language towards a single word that means everything is the melding of exuberant and exorbitant.

The writer of this story might want to catch up on the current vernacular as well, so as to avoid writing sentences that are unintentionally salacious. For instance, in the conveniently provided rundown of Belinda Stronach’s dating history, she writes:

The pair [Stronach and Peter McKay, Canadian Foreign Minister] hooked up

Raised eyebrow.

along with several others,

Two raised eyebrows!

to reunite Canada’s political right in late 2003.

Oh…never mind. You really shouldn’t use the phrase “hooked up” in a story about marital infidelity.

I really think that Domi and Stronach could work out. They’ve got a shared interests in sucker punches, giving them something in common.

I could go on like this for a while but I won’t. Thanks to the commenter at CiO for pointing out the story and to the CiO boys for not posting about it before I did.

Update: My dad points out in the comments that my whining about the Free Press’ use of the word exuberant was wrong. He’s right, although it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it used in that manner. I’m still inclined to think that the lawyer quoted should have used exorbitant. The context is as follows:

She also is asking for $30,000 in monthly spousal support — an exuberant amount, Feldstein said. “You need to appreciate that when lawyers draft an application, they ask for more than they expect to get. It’s a negotiating tactic,” he said.

It seems to me that exorbitant or extravagant would be more appropriate. I’m left wondering what exactly he means.

In any event, I was wrong about the meaning of the word exuberant and extend my apologies to Sun Media. Please stop with the fecal metaphors.

When Craig MacTavish was talking before the playoffs last season about not wanting Dallas again, I thought that he was crazy. They were clearly a lot weaker than Detroit, having had amazing shootout success and outperforming their goal differential by a lot. I think that this is the year they start to fall off the mountain but it’s not going to be as far as many think.

Dallas was analogous to the Oilers in a lot of ways last season. They outshot their opposition by a lot at ES but had their results held back by goaltending. Edmonton had the significantly better PP, which is strange (the Oilers were about half a goal differential better per 60) and both teams were strong at preventing goals on the PK, again by virtue of their shot prevention as opposed to their goaltending. Dallas’ goaltending wasn’t historically bad like the Oilers but, for all the hype about Canadian Olympian Marty Turco, it’s been a while since he’s stopped the puck like a $6MM man. I’d be willing to bet that they’d take that contract back if they could - he’s signed for big dollars through 2009-10.

I don’t see why Dallas would be picked to fall off that much. The only area where I can see them being really susceptible to some bad luck that drives them lower in the standings is in the shootout but it’s tough to bet against the collection of shooters that they have - Modano, Jokinen and Zubov are fantastic. They’re going to have a great record in the shootout and it’s going to boost them higher in the standings than where they’d be on talent alone.

Changes

I like a lot of the moves that Dallas has made in the offseason. They’re a team with a lot of money tied up in a few players (Modano, Zubov and Turco eat up $13.145MM in cap room between them) so they need to find reasonably priced bargains elsewhere. I think that they made a lot of smart bets this year.

Eric Lindros: One of these years, he’s going to have a healthy year and put a ton of points on the board. He’s been unfairly maligned throughout most of his career (I like anyone with the guys to stick it to the junior hockey system and NHL) so I wouldn’t mind seeing this be the year. Except that he’s in Dallas.

Last year was obviously a bust for Lindros, what with the wrist injuries. I was surprised that the Leafs didn’t bring him back. He presumably falls under those injury exemptions in the CBA, so you can do things capwise with him that you can’t do with, say, Mike Peca. He’s a gamble to be sure, but considering that John Ferguson was essentially employing a Three True Outcomes style as a GM this summer, you’d think that he’d have been willing to roll the dice on Lindros. Except for one thing: there was a report earlier this summer in Toronto that Ferguson was telling people that he couldn’t fit Lindros under the salary cap. As the story goes, he was unaware of the exceptions and so forth. That’s not a good sign for him - it probably makes him the equivalent of a Three True Outcomes guy who can’t hit or lay off breaking stuff - they don’t tend to do well.

Back to Lindros. If healthy, he’s got the ability to dominate. I took a look at his scoring rates and even the battered version of Lindros has come close to hitting the 3.0 ESP/60 mark and that was in the old NHL. Generally speaking, he’s been a good but not great PP guy as well. When you think that they can slide him into the Arnott role, playing against nobodies…I’d say that if healthy and he gets the bounces, you could hear discussion of him as an MVP candidate. It’s far more likely that he’ll suffer some bizarre injury but he’s a fantastic gamble. Dallas has done a nice job of protecting themselves against an injury to Lindros as well…

Patrik Stefan: OK, maybe getting a guy with concussion problems as insurance for your guy with concussion problems isn’t the smartest play in the world but what are the odds that they both come down with serious concussions? Stefan seems to have peaked offensively at about 17 but he’s quietly become a useful NHL forward. He’s dirt cheap at 900K per, coming off a season in which he was an EV+ player for the first time in his career and he’s coming into a situation where he should be playing with better players. As far as guys who you can snag for 900K go, he’s a good one, I think. He’s no good on the PP but Dallas won’t be looking at him to play that role.

Jeff Halpern: The one that’s a bit questionable. A four year $8MM deal? Wow. I’m really not a fan of long term contracts for guys on the wrong side of 30. Had a good year last year on a bad Caps team though. Dallas is going to be pretty strong down the middle this year. Had a superficially reasonable looking season on the PP but it was probably Ovechkin driven. Dallas now has three centres who played big minutes on the PK last year in Barnes, Modano and Halpern. Outside of goalie, it’s tough to find a spot on the Stars roster where the time doesn’t have options if someone gets hurt or struggles.

Matthew Barnaby: A weird signing. He got killed last year in Chicago playing soft minutes. He’s 33, a pain in the ass to have around and takes an obscene amount of penalties. That said, he’s posted good EV +/- years in the past and continues to be a good offensive player at ES - he was up over 2.0 ESP/60 his last two seasons in the old NHL and came in at 1.85 ESP/60 on a Hawks team that was just average at scoring goals last year at ES. That’s not bad. Paired with the right guys and given soft ice time, the Stars might get some useful minutes out of him.

Darryl Sydor: Taken back from the Lightning after a tough season, he’ll benefit from having less responsibility in Dallas. Another good acquisition, especially with the going rate for defencemen of his reputation last summer. I like it when teams pick up guys and then are able to reduce the importance of the role that they played previously - hopefully, they’ll get a serious bounce back season from him.

Goaltending

Dallas made a fairly significant mistake locking up Marty Turco long term. He’s been an averagish goalie for two seasons now. At $6MM/per, that’s a fairly serious problem. Dallas is apparently going to go with Mike Smith as their backup next season - one good year in the AHL at 23 isn’t exactly a glittering resume for a prospect goalie. The goaltending probably doesn’t project to be much more than average but that’s more than enough for Dallas to lock up home ice into the playoffs. If Turco has a good year, they’ll challenge for the division; a bad year and they’ll fall to 7th or so.

Even Strength

This team has been awesome at evens and that will continue. Vic Ferrari wrote a few days back about the Ripple Effect, where a great player makes everything easier for everyone else because their responsibilities get decreased. Mike Modano is that kind of player, despite being insufferable. He was an elite ES scorer last year at 2.72 ESP/60 and the Stars outscored the opposition 53-26 when he was on the ice. He played tougher minutes than anyone else on the team. When you play the other team’s best players and destroy them like that, it leaves an awful lot of minutes against the other team’s lesser players with the Stars already enjoying a big edge. You can’t help but benefit from it. I’m parroting Vic here but whoever ends up getting the Arnott minutes should go wild.

They’ve brought back their key defencemen as well as their key forwards. They were 4th in the NHL last year in ES play. They’ll do well again - just how well depends on how well Lindros does, I think.

Power Play

Good top end talent but not much after that. The loss of Arnott cost them someone who performed very well on the PP last season. Niko Kapanen was a significant loss as well, as he did well in limited time on the PP. I’m trying to figure out how they intend to patch that. I’m wondering if they’ll ramp up the minutes that Modano plays on the PP and shift some of his penalty killing time over to Halpern and Barnes.

I don’t think think the PP there shapes up as well next year. Lindros, if healthy, is obviously a plus. Outside of that, I don’t expect the additions to help, which means that they’ll either be giving more minutes to guys who were non-factors last year or more minutes to the guys who were. I’d be inclined to cut back on MOdano’s ice time myself.

This is where you can start to see how the cap has affected the Stars. In the past, they’ve had sure thing offensive players complementing Modano. They don’t anymore and have decided to try and get more out of their money by rolling the dice. The loss of the contributions of Guerin, Kapanen and Arnott won’t be made up by Lindros, even if he stays healthy. It’s damned near impossible to replace 800 minutes of 4.39 PPP/60 offence, which is what the three of them provided.

Look for the Stars PP to slide this year, unless treated with liberal doses of Modano. Even then, that will probably only keep the condition at a chronic level.

Penalty Kill

My argument to take the PK minutes away from Modano is based on the idea that more players have a hope of coming close to filling his role on the PK than they do on the PP or at ES. If you want to create the most goal differential possible, it seems to me that this probably makes the most sense. Taking a look at the Stars pre-season TOI sheets, it appears that Henrik Lundqvist’s brother Joel is getting a very long look - he’s playing a ton of shorthanded minutes.

The Stars PK is succesful because they don’t give up a lot of shots. It’s a model that I like because I think it’s less likely to break down. It’s not dependent on the goalie being good - they can succeed even with bad goaltending because the other team isn’t getting the opportunities. If one guy is struggling, he’s more readily replaced. This should be a testable hypothesis by the way, the idea that good PK’s relying on shot prevention are more likely to be sustainable than good PK’s relying on save percentage. It’s something to watch for this season, although the change in personnel from team to team will make that somewhat more difficult.

As for Dallas, they haven’t lost anyone good and I’ll imagine that they’ll be good at this again.

Outlook

Dallas went a different direction than a lot of teams when it came to dealing with the cap. Rather than go with the best that they could afford and then cheap fill-ins, they took a lot of educated gambles. I don’t think that they can reasonably expect to achieve the results that they did last season but if things work out, they may well win the division. I’ve got them second in the division, which is still good and puts them in a good position for the playoffs.

They’ve got some interesting players coming but obviously no replacements for Zubov and Modano are coming down the line. Dallas’s time as an elite team is slowly coming to a close - I like that rather than purchase a sort of guaranteed mediocrity with someone of the Pierre Turgeon class, they decided to roll the dice a bit. You can’t win the Stanley Cup without guys giving more value than they’re worth - you can’t do that without cheap young talent or veterans who you buy cheap who give you more than you’d expect.

The Western Conference’s answer to the New York Islanders, it’s going to be a very long year in the desert. For all the flak that Charles Wang gets for the way that he’s staffed his hockey team, Steve Elkman (or whoever owns this team; Elkman isn’t mentioned on the site) seems to somehow slide under the radar despite running an operation that’s nearly as goofy.

The entire hockey operations side of the franchise is apparently an elaborate spoof of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. Seriously. Check it out:

Mike Barnett, General Manager: Gretzky’s agent.
Barry Smith, Associate Coach: No obvious connection..
Ulf Samuelsson, Assistant Coach/Satan: Gretzky’s team mate with the Rangers.
Grant Fuhr, Goaltending Coach: Gretzky’s goalie.
Tom Kurvers, Director of Player Personnel: No obvious connection.
Eddie Mio, Director of Player Development: Professional Gretzky crony; Gretzky was his best man or vice versa or something.
(Seriously, a Director of Player Personnel and a Director of Player Development? Why not combine the jobs and get one real goalie?)
Steve Peters, Video Coordinator: No obvious connection.
Rich Sutter, Professional Scout: Brother Brent played with Gretzky in 1984 Canada Cup; presumably, that’s the one Gretzky thinks he hired.
Gus Badali, Amateur Scout: Gretzky’s former agent.
Keith Gretzky, Amateur Scout: Once appeared on the cover of the abysmal The Hockey News with Wayne.
Charles Henry, Amateur Scout: No obvious connection.
Willy Lindstrom, Amateur Scout: Played in Edmonton with Gretzky.
Steve Lyons, Amateur Scout: Played in the International Hockey League with Mike Zanier, best known for sitting on the Oilers bench as they won the Cup while Fuhr was in the dressing room taking medication for his shoulder injury.
Blair Reid, Amateur Scout: No obvious connection.
Greg Royce, Amateur Scout: Played junior with Marty McSorley.

Unbelievable. Gretzky has learned well from the equally nepotistic Oilers. I suppose that there aren’t tons of glittery ex-Winnipeg Jets or Phoenix Coyotes out there to hire and god forbid that you end up using something like merit to hire people. It’s a good thing that no one cares about this hockey team – I can’t imagine how awful it must be to cheer for a team that’s so poorly run.

The Coyotes front office is built on Friends of Gretzky. While that’s fine in principle, the problem is that the F.O.G. haven’t shown any particular aptitude for assembling a hockey team. While Charles Wang has taken a lot of heat for the operation that he runs, it’s about time for the hockey media to start asking some questions about the Coyotes as well. It’s funny that there was such a media feeding frenzy over the gambling thing – Gretzky appears to have been blameless there but he should be held largely responsible for their awful hockey team.

As for this year…it’s going to be ugly on the desert. Tough schedule, an unimpressive collection of forwards and bad goaltending? Not a recipe for success.

Changes

Ed Jovanovski: Jovanovski falls into the MAB camp, I think. The offence that he adds at ES is perhaps underrated – he’s consistently been one of the best defencemen in the league in ESP/60. I’m not so sure that he’s got the game on the PP though. He’s hovered in the 4.0 PPP/60 range for the past few seasons (other than 2003-04, when he put up 1.52 PPP/60) which is good but considering he’s spent so much time with Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi, who’ve put together amazing seasons the past few years, I’m not sure how good he is. If I was guessing his PPP/60, I’d come down in the 3.5 PPP/60 range, which isn’t worth what he’s getting.

He got torched at ES last year; Phoenix doesn’t have the forwards or the goaltending to prevent it from happening again this season. I don’t know how GM’s figure out what the dollar value of a particular player is but I can’t figure out how you come to the conclusion that Jovo is a $6.5MM player. Even more to the point, I can’t figure out how you can figure that he’ll be a $6.5MM player five years from now. I can understand overpaying a player when you’ve got a window to win a Stanley Cup and you think that he’ll make a real difference. I can’t figure it out in a situation like this.

Nick Boynton: Got ripped apart on the Bruins last year. I assume that he played tough minutes - the B’s didn’t have much in the way of D. It may get easier for him in Phoenix, if the ‘Yotes continue to toss Zybnek Michalek out there when the going is tough.

Should eat some PK minutes; he’s not a PP guy. He’s a horse though.

Owen Nolan’s Remains: Out of hockey for two years and coming off a major knee surgery that apparently did not heal particularly well, this seems like a poor gamble to me. I read Tom Benjamin’s comments on the signing to the effect that it’s only money the Coyotes risk on him but still…$1.25MM is $1.25MM. They could have got Manny Legace for a few bucks more and addressed a real problem.

The one thing I’ll say in Nolan’s favour is that he was a consistent offensive producer, even into his old age. Although he wasn’t worth his contract, he was producing more than 2.0 ESP/60 and 4.0 PPP/60 for the last few years, including 2003-04. If he can still play, he’ll be a very good addition. I have a hard time thinking of guys who took two years off at his age though and came back without having lost serious chunks of their game. I understand that Phoenix needs to hit some home runs because of the money that they’ve got tied up in guys like Jovanovski and Joseph but this is like the guy in Vegas who’s at the end of a bad weekend making a few bets that involve spending pretty much everything he has left on a longshot in a vain attempt to break even.

Jeremy Roenick: Why? Roenick was part of a large clump of Kings forwards in terms of playing tough minutes behind Eric Belanger, Sean Avery, Tom Kostopoulos. He was absolutely terrible offensively at ES though, his third consecutive season where he’s declined in terms of ES offence. He was beyond terrible on the PP, falling below 2.0 PPP/60. He’s cheap at $1.5MM but he’s another case of the Coyotes basically hoping for a miracle. Teemu Selanne’s are not that common.

He says that he didn’t care and was unmotivated last year. We’ll see if he cares this year or if that even matters – the decline started before last season when he supposedly stopped caring.

Georges Laraque: He’ll be popular. They’ll barely be able to use him, unless special teams time falls significantly. Like most of the Coyotes, he’s overpaid given his role. I hope that Gretz and MacT can come to a gentlemen’s agreement to start the fourth lines when Phoenix comes back to Edmonton so that Laraque can be announced as a starter. He’s one of the faces of a fun era in Oilers history and he was always fun to watch. I hope he does well. At the very least, if he could take a run at Chris Pronger, it’d be appreciated.

Mike Johnson: One of three Coyotes forwards to play any kind of significant minutes and be a plus last year along with Nagy and, surprisingly, Mike Comrie. Johnson looked to have the hardest minutes of the three. I don’t know that I’d have been that eager to see him leave - he’s about half the price of Laraque/Roenick, played about as many minutes as they did last year combined and has been a solid EV player with some touch on the PP the past couple of years. A productive forward and a cheap one at that.

I guess the other changes are of the cast of thousands type. God, teams like this go through a lot of hockey players over the course of the season. There’s an awful lot of churn, to little effect.

Goaltending

The goaltending isn’t going to be good and has the potential to be awful. Curtis Joseph started out last season like he was 25 again before hitting a big slide. Through the first 500 shots he saw, he had a .926 save percentage. On his last 1191 shots his save percentage was .891. He hasn’t been anything special in terms of save percentage since 2000-01 and you have to think that it’d be foolish to expect anything more than average goaltending at best from him in 2006-07. He’s suffered a lot of injuries over the years as well. Signing Curtis Joseph for 2005-06 at $900K was a smart gamble for the Coyotes and one that paid off well, taking the season as a whole. Signing him for $2MM in a year when they don’t look to be competitive at all and when there were better goaltending options available for the asking is a poor, poor move.

If Joseph needs to be relieved as the starter due to ineffectiveness or injury, it’s not good for the Coyotes. They’ve somehow managed to sign three backup goalies - none of them are any good. David LeNeveu was averagish last season at ES and poor against the PP. He’s never been much of anything in the minors and I don’t see any reason to think that he’s a legitimate NHL goalie. Phillipe Sauve’s main utility last season was demonstrating the truth of the proposition that the Flames are a bad team without Kiprusoff in net. Mike Morrison was good for comedic relief, what with his Mayor Quimby accent and the hilarious sight of MacT pulling Ty Conklin in the shootout against Dallas. He sucks. None of their backups have proven to be anything more than replacement level NHL goalies. The Phoenix goaltending has the potential to be an absolute nightmare. I expect them to be well below average.

Even Strength

The Coyotes were not a very good team at ES last year. Put briefly, they were 25th in the league in -0.34 ESGD/60. For a team with a lot of supposed offensive players, they couldn’t score goals, ranking 22nd with 2.42 ESG/60. They couldn’t prevent them allowing 2.76 ESGA/60 which placed them 22nd in the NHL. They got consistently outshot – 20th in the league in ESSD/60 with -1.66. The Coyotes were just thoroughly bad – their ESSV% stunk at .908, which was good for 25th in the NHL. They can’t blame their problems on bad luck shooting or anything either, as they ranked in the middle of the league for ES shooting percentage.

Is there any hope of it getting better for the Coyotes? As I said above, the goaltending doesn’t look to be very good next season. They’ve added Ed Jovanovski, who doesn’t come with a reputation of bringing very much to the table defensively. They dealt Mike Johnson, who’s put up good EV numbers on bad Coyotes teams for the past three seasons. Nolan is the only addition with a track record that suggests good things at ES but again, he hasn’t played in two years. They don’t seem to have a lot of guys who might break out either - Fredrik Sjostrom and Josh Gratton are the only Coyote forwards under 25. Lots of these guys are minor talents who are on the wrong side of 30 - Scatchard, Reinprecht, Ricci, Roenick and Nash are all over 30. Ricci is a corpse at this point - he got bombed last year. There isn’t a core of guys here who could develop and turn things around that I see. They’ve got a nice group of defencemen but they’re going to be spending an awful lot of time getting pucks out of their own end only to see it immediately returned. I see it being ugly for Phoenix at ES this year.

Power Play

I’ve left some of the guys who the Coyotes have had leave in there in order to illustrate a point. Lots of the preseason mags are thinking that Phoenix has made big adds to their PP for next year. I look at it and I can see that Jovanovski has been good in the past, but look at the performance that Phoenix got from their defencemen last season. Three defencemen at 3.97 PPP/60 or better, which is very good. That’s a ton of time with solid performances from the defencemen. Jovanovski was better than that - he’ll presumably take Mara’s place but it pro-rates out to about 5 points better over the 438 minutes that Mara played. $4.5MM more.

Even if assuming that the move makes sense because you’d expect some regression from Morris, Ballard and Mara…Phoenix’s PP last year was middling and didn’t take them anywhere. Phoenix almost seems to have paid to have a higher degree of certainty of continued mediocrity. They “fixed” the part that they did well at, leaving actual holes unaddressed.

Look at the forwards as well. The Coyotes got respectable production from Mike Johnson - who’s going to fill that hole? Owen Nolan? Jeremy Roenick? Maybe. Those were expensive gambles though - Mike Johnson could have presumably been brought back for equivalent money. You almost start to wonder if some of the moves that Phoenix made (Roenick and Laraque in particular) were made as much with an eye on getting on the sportscast in Phoenix in front of the Suns on occasion.

Phoenix gave a lot of PP minutes to bad players last year. Part of that was due to necessity - the Coyotes drew a ton of penalties and there’s only so much that you can play the guys who are good. Drawing fewer penalties (which I assume is likely; they had the second most PP TOI in the NHL) would probably bump up their PPGD/60 as you get rid of some of the minutes handed out to bad PP players but it’ll still leave the Coyotes worse off - there isn’t a team in the world that doesn’t put up better GD on the PP than they do at ES.

It’s a shame for Ladislav Nagy and Shane Doan that they’re locked into this disaster - they’d both be much larger stars if they played in Canadian markets or American markets that cared about hockey. Their numbers on the PP last year were fantastic and even Doan was tolerable at ES as he played tough minutes with bad goaltending and was only -.20 ESGD/60 or so. They’re about the only two elite players on this team - after that it’s a lot of expensive flotsam and guys who are just nothing.

Penalty Killing

It was bombs away on the PHX PK, despite getting goaltending that was close to average. They just gave up a ton of shots. They return largely the same crew of PKers who gave them that performance last season.

I’d be interested to see if shot rates tend to be consistent from year to year on the PK. I’ve no idea if penalty killing is a talent or if it’s something that any smart player who can skate can pick up. I’d be inclined to think it’s the second and that it could be improved over time. One of the things I’m going to be watching this year is whether or not teams that were good at preventing shots on the PK last season remain so.

My thoughts on the Phoenix PK are tied to the goaltending. I doubt the shot rate changes significantly so it’s going to be a question of whether the goaltending holds up. My money would be on no.

Outlook

Adam Proteau of The Hockey News wrote a piece filled with a list of the Oilers faults in justification of The Hockey News picking the Oilers to be terrible. It was an asinine piece but he included some weasel words to the effect that the disparity between 8th and 12th will be tiny. I agree with that but Phoenix (9th according to The Hockey News) isn’t going to be in the mix. I don’t know how you can cover hockey profesionally, examine this team in any degree of detail and conclude that they’re a better team than the Oilers. It should be impossible. The Bible of Hockey? Not so much. An utterly worthless publication filled with a rehash of beat writers’ thoughts.

As bad as I think that this season might be, next year looks to be even worse. When you’ve got two elite forwards both signed to relatively cheap contracts and you haven’t been able to make a go of it…you’re just not very good at what you’re doing. With Doan and Nagy both free agents at the end of this year and the Coyotes at $42MM for this year’s disaster, I have a hard time seeing how they can bring them both back. In short, this year is going to be bad but next year’s going to be rock bottom.

I’ve written before here that I mostly like the moves that the Blues made this summer. Since I wrote that, they’ve added Oilogosphere cult favourite Radek Dvorak for on a one year $1MM contract. Good decision.

I don’t think that it’s going to be enough to make any sort of a difference in terms of making the playoffs but they could be a decent darkhorse - if Nashville ran into trouble, the Blues are the team I could see sliding past them and into the bottom end of the playoffs. The most likely scenario involves the Blues being 10-15 points out at the trade deadline though. If that happens, they’d be well advised to sell off the soon to be UFA talent that they have - the Blues aren’t a young team and there’s no point keeping these guys together if there isn’t going to be a playoff berth at the end of the season. Whether they’ll be smart enough to do that remains to be seen but if Dvorak, Martin Rucinsky Bill Guerin, Jamal Mayers, Keith Tkachuk and (future Oiler?) Eric Brewer are still on the team after the trade deadline, the Blues management will have seriously dropped the ball.

Changes

Doug Weight: It’s tough to say what, if anything he’ll add. He couldn’t score much at ES last season. If they can bump him down to play the soft minutes and the Blues seem to have a lot of guys who they can put up

Manny Legace: 5 years as league average or better. A good signing and one that Kevin Lowe, John Ferguson Jr., Dean Lombardi and John Muckler should prefer to the deals that they actually made with starting goalies.

Radek Dvorak: Good add. Dvorak had an off year playing in front of terrible goaltending while suffering injury difficulties and was still EV+ 36 EV- 40. He’s a great bet to play tough minutes for the Blues this year and be a + while doing it.

Martin Rucinsky: Yeah, I’m not wild about this signing. He’ll add some skill to the PP, I guess, but he hasn’t been anything special on the PP lately other than last season. He should send Jagr a cut of his earnings - his season last year was completely out of line with his career.

Jay McKee: I don’t have much of a read on McKee. I think that this was a terrible signing for the Blues just because buying expensive defencemen when you’ve got a sketchy team and aren’t really that close to competing in a hot market for defencemen seems like a waste of money. Oh AND he has concussion problems? $16MM for four years? It’s enough to make you think that concussions are contagious and that Larry Pleau was infected before making the deal.

Dan Hinote: By my math, Dvorak played more minutes last year, played harder minutes, did better in terms of EV+/- and was a significantly better offensive player. They got the same money but Hinote got three years. Weird.

Patrick Lalime: 1700 minutes of suck last year buried the Blues. His save percentage was pretty much the same as that posted by Jussi Markkanen, Ty Conklin and Mike Morrison. shame the bunch at the Hockey News can’t figure that out.

Scott Young: EV+ 26 EV- 48. Rarely, if ever, saw the ice against anyone good. Got a ton of minutes. He was very good on the PP but got bombed to such a degree against nobodies at ES that you have to think the loss is good. He scored just 1.03 ESP/60 but put up 4.23 PPP/60 on a bad PP.

Goaltending

The Blues goaltending was bad last year, only marginally better than the Oilers in terms of save percentage. They did a nice job of addressing the problem, I think. As you can see from the table attached Curtis Sanford was adequate and everyone else (mainly Chicago Blackhawks free agent signing Patrick Lalime) was horrible.

I doubt that Sanford is anything more than an average NHL goaltender during a good season - his save percentage when the Blues were shorthanded last year was high and he’s 27 years old - but if he has a good year, he’s an excellent backup. Manny Legace, who the Blues stole for $1.4MM has an excellent track record as far as posting save percentages and assuming that he’s the starter, the Blues should start out 30-40 goals better than they were last year. That’s a big difference and a smart move by the Blues.

Even Strength

St. Louis was respectable at keeping the shots down at ES last year - their rate of 30.68 ESSA/60 was good for 17th in the league. Nothing wrong with that. They were done in by their terrible goaltending and finished 30th in the league in ESGA/60. Assuming that the goaltending is fixed - I think it is - they’re well positioned to make a big move.

The Blues couldnt’ score goals at ES either - their rate of 1.87 ESG/60 was also the worst in the NHL. Vic mentioned in the comments to a previous post that the Blues adopted a shoot at all times approach; this may well have been true, as they were 23rd in ESS/60 - clearly, they had a low shooting percentage at ES.

Have they fixed this? Many of the forwards who the Blues have brought in have shown the ability to put points on the board at ES before. Radek Dvorak had an off year last year, posting 1.73 ESP/60 against good quality opposition. That would have placed him in the top five on the Blues. Bill Guerin had a similar season at ES, scoring 1.72 ESP/60 and playing a reasonable quality of minutes. Neither of these guys played in front of goaltending that was anything special but they both managed to be close to even in terms GF/GA.

I’m not wild about the Rucinsky addition, but he’s shown that he can score at ES. I think that St. Louis has enough forwards who can handle good opposition that they can hide him and play him against the other team’s weaker players. I’d expect St. Louis to be seriously improved when it comes to their ES GD.

It’s probably a bit much to expect all of these guys to be healthy for the entire season - Dvorak, McKee and Rucinsky have run into injury problems of late. Still though, I’d figure that they’re significantly. My guess is that they’re going to be a low event ES team but one that’s significantly closer to even than they were last year.

Power Play

The STL PP was all kinds of bad last year but there’s reason for optimism, I think. Guerin and Weight are respectable on the PP. Rucinsky has been respectable in the past. Tkachuk has skill on the PP. It’s pretty slim pickings after that though. One almost thinks that the strategy in STL next season might be to have Weight, Guerin and Rucinsky play as much as humanly possible on the PP. They don’t have anyone who can really play the point out of their defencemen, so it might make sense to play Weight there. Kitchen showed a willingness to run 4F last season - the Blues were fourth in the NHL in their percentage of 5 on 4 goals scored with 4F on the ice.

Looking at the numbers from last year, you can see why the Blues had problems last year. Their defencemen in particular added nothing to the party. McKee won’t fix that, Brewer will continue to suck…there’s no reason not to run four forwards out there.

The addition of Weight, Guerin and Rucinsky outweighs the loss of Scott Young, IMO. They aren’t good enough to make this team better than average on the PP though, particularly given the terrible second tier talent. I see the Blues at somewhere around 20th in terms of their PP this season. It’s a marginal improvement.

By the way, I was wondering about Jay McClement as well. According to Hockey’s Future, he’s a prospect who might pan out as a checker. I’d guess his good season was the doing of sample size.

Penalty Killing

A very average penalty kill last year, in all aspects. I figure they’ll be around the same, barring a hot/cold goalie. The improvement isn’t going to come from this aspect of the game.

Outlook

There’s just not enough here, particularly on the PP. They’ll be significantly better at ES. This is a team that’s basically guaranteed to be worse a year from now, given the ages of the players involved. Sell ‘em at the deadline Larry.

With Rick Nash hopefully healthy from the start of the season, the Blue Jackets hope to avoid the start that destroyed their season last year. Nash appeared in just 7 of the Blue Jackets first 35 games as Columbus started out 9-25-1. At that point of the season, the Blue Jackets were -59. Through the final 47 games, the Jackets went 26-18-3. They were -3 over that time.

Not surprisingly, the Jackets were very good in one goal games during those final 47 games of the season. The Jackets were 17-10 in games decided by one goal, which included going 6-2 in shootouts and 4-1 in OT. It seems fair to say at the very least that they had some serious good luck on their side – they got 55 points out of a situation where you’d only expect a team to get 46 or so before OTL and SOW. In fairness to the Blue Jackets, they’re probably the type of team who could be expected to do well in situations like shootouts – they’ve got some nice top end talent.

It’s interesting to take a look at the Blue Jackets when they were horrible during the first part of the season as opposed to when they were horrible during the latter part of the season. Here are the offensive rates:

You’ll notice a stunning turnaround in terms of shooting percentage in every facet of the game. The shooting percentage posted by Columbus at ES through the first 35 games of the season would have been far and away the worst ES shooting percentage in the NHL over the course of the entire season; the number that they posted in their final 47 games would have topped Ottawa for the best ES shooting percentage in the league over the course of the entire season. Very schizophrenic. In terms of their shot volume, Columbus didn’t improve at all – they actually got fewer shots/60 at ES.

A look at their defensive stats reveals the same thing. The Blue Jackets didn’t improve the rate at which they allowed shots – they got worse and they were bad to begin with – but the rate at which the pucks went into the net improved dramatically at ES. Things were pretty much the same on the PP and SH but the change was so dramatic at ES that the Jackets were really able to take advantage. From posting a save percentage at ES that would have been the worst in the NHL over the course of an entire season through their first 35 game, the Blue Jackets posted an ES save percentage that would been the sixth best in the NHL over the last 47 games.

Their save percentage against the PP was actually very good all year long – they ended up eighth in this department. They appear to have been virtually defenceless though as their high rate of shots allowed wiped away the benefit of having goalies who can stop shots on the PK.

It should be clear from this that what success the Blue Jackets did have in their final 47 games – and for this franchise, going -3 goal differential for that span is a huge victory (probably earned Doug MacLean a few hundred thousand more as well) – had nothing to do with taking control of games but with cashing in a ton of chances while their opposition was shut down. I have a hard time imagining that they can repeat their performance over the course of the entire NHL season; I don’t think that they’re going to lead the league in ES shooting percentage and be top six in ES save percentage in the coming season. If the Jackets are going to show substantial improvement, they’re going to have to spend significantly more time shooting at the opposing team than they did last year and cut down significantly on the shots allowed - even with all of the good things that they had going for them in their last 47 games and their ludicrous schedule, they were still just mediocre.

This really comes down to what you think is sustainable. I’d have a lot more faith in the Blue Jackets performing well this year if they had achieved their results on the basis of playing the other side evenly as measured by shots, as opposed to a superior performance in terms their ES shooting and save percentages. I’ve got a strong suspicion that the former is a far superior predictor of future success than the latter.

Changes

Ty Conklin: I’ve got nothing further to say about Ty Conklin. Thanks for showing us that you could raise your game to match limited opportunities to hurt your team.

Fredrik Modin: An interesting addition. I don’t know a whole lot about Modin other than the fact that the Toronto media hated him and then he went to Tampa Bay. He’s done quite well at ES the past few years though – a solid EV + from 2002-03 until today. I don’t think that he’s going to bring much in terms of the PP but I think he’s a good addition to Columbus who should make them stronger at ES. He looks to be pretty much nothing but a shooter on the PP – 12 goals and 4 assists. I can’t see him fitting into a top unit role in Columbus on the PP, particularly because he doesn’t look like he’s anything special there, whereas that was a legitimate strength (and perhaps legitimately so) for the Jackets last year. I think that this was a good move – they probably needed to add about five new forwards though.

Anson Carter: I like to imagine that the decision to grab him was part of elaborate set-up to teach Rick Nash a lesson similar to the one learned by Ebeneezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol.” Anson Carter will be playing the role of “Nash Future”, a guy who wanders from bad team to bad team, scoring 25-30 goals wherever he plays, never playing tough competition, never winning, never being re-signed and forced to latch on with yet another bad team until his talent finally deserts him.

Unfortunately for Jackets fans, Doug MacLean probably signed him because he thinks that he’s good.

The Jackets had a really hard time playing in the other team’s end last season and Carter is a guy who needs to play with guys who can get and keep the puck in the other guy’s end. He played with the Sedin’s last year, two guys who specialize in doing just that and had a solid season. I don’t see the guys on Columbus who he can play with who will provide him with that sort of an opportunity to have no responsibilities other than shooting.

I can’t see him getting the opportunity on the PP that he got in Vancouver either. The Sedins are good offensive players and did big things on the PP in terms of creating chances. Carter’s a goal scorer on the PP, something that Nash excels at - the role of shooter is kind of already spoken for. I refuse to believe that signing Radek Dvorak wouldn’t have made more sense for this team - he’d have been miles cheaper and he can be effective against good opposition.

Entertainingly, Doug MacLean described Carter as a power forward in the press release announcing his signing. I think that he’s been described as a power forward by every team that’s acquired him in the past few years, despite rarely hitting anybody. I have no idea how he acquired this reputation - he’s not a power forward.

That’s it for additions who might make some sort of positive contribution. Gilbert Brule might make the leap to the NHL this year but he’s 19 years old. I find it amazing that a team can be this bad and then bring back essentially the same roster. Simply amazing. Whatever you say about Doug MacLean, he’s clearly not a hypocrite – he’s not going to hold others to standards of performance that he doesn’t meet himself.

Goaltending

With the departure of Marc Denis, Columbus will have their second starting goalie in their history. Pascal Leclaire is the presumptive starter. I’m ok with MacLean’s decision to ditch Denis and install Leclaire as the starter. While Leclaire wasn’t great as a 20/21 year old in the AHL, he had a good year in 2004-05 in limited playing time in a tough AHL and another good season in the NHL last year. He costs about 25% of what Denis costs, so it’s a decision that I think makes sense.

Behind him, they’ve got the Jiri Dopita of goaltenders in Fredrik Norenna (rumoured to be really good internationally but no one has the slightest idea what he’d do in North America). As noted above, they’ve also got Ty Conklin.

Leclaire had better pan out.

Even Strength

I’ve attached a chart with ES shooting percentages for the relevant Blue Jackets from last season during their horrible stretch and the mediocre stretch. The first shooting percentage column is from the horrible stretch and the second one is from the mediocre stretch. If you think that Jason Chimera is a 15.7% ES shooter…you’re probably one of his parents. Other highlights from one of the luckier stretches that I can imagine are Rostislav Klesla’s 8.9%, Vyborny’s 18.5%, and Fritsche’s 12.1%. I’d be surprised if more than 2 or 3 of the guys who had a significant number of shots can match their shooting percentage rates again.

I don’t see how one can realistically expect Columbus to be significantly better this season than their 3rd worst ESGD/60 in the NHL from last season. It looks like they’re still sheltering Nash but he at least managed to post a + last season after being terrible the year before. For the Jackets to move forward, they’re either going to need to sigificantly upgrade the players who actually do play against the good players or Nash is going to have to be able to hold his own against the best players. Since they didn’t really upgrade their supporting cast, in order to improve, they’re going to need to see Nash take a leap in who he can play against without getting destroyed, pouring the soft minutes back onto the weaker players.

Columbus at least has some young players other than Nash who might improve but it’s hard to see Dan Fritsche, Alexandre Picard, Gilbert Brule and Alexander Svitov making the difference. It would take a miracle for this to be a good ES team.

Power Play

I was surprised to see that even the PP was terrible in Columbus. Will it be any better this season?

Probably not. Their PP was putrid during the horrible stretch and merely bad once Nash returned. The fact that Adam Foote got as much ice time on the PP as he did while scoring at about the same rate that noted offensive dynamo Steve Staios does at even strength…amazing. He’s like Neifi Perez of the PP. I’ve included Pascal Leclaire for the sole purpose of noting that Foote was closer to Leclaire in 2005-06 then he was to the next worst Jacket player on the PP, Ron Hainsey.

Columbus doesn’t looks to have a good first unit but after that, it gets truly ugly. Anson Carter should chip in with some goals on the PP but Zherdev leaving takes one of Columbus’ “threats” on the PP. That was David Vyborny’s second good year in a row last year - he may well keep it up. Berard has generally been good. Nash is already an elite PP player. After that though, lots of ugly. Where is the additional scoring going to come from? Even if guys like Picard and Brule make the team, young players rarely do anytthing on the PP.

Penalty Killing

Why would you expect the PK to improve? They need to get the shots against down. Conklin isn’t going to help that. Carter isn’t going to help that. Modin might but he’s just one man. The same coach and other personnel return to the team that had the 28th worst rate of PKSA/60. The one bright spot that they had was a PKSV% that ranked 7th in the league. That’s a pretty sandy foundation. They’ll be below league average again - the goaltending will determine if they’re bad or terrible.

Outlook

Lowetide ripped on The Hockey News’ pick of the Blue Jackets for 8th in the West and he’s absolutely correct. The Hockey News is irrelevant and the Blue Jackets draft high again. Hopefully it’s someone else calling out the names.

You almost have to feel bad for their fans at this point but the lack of an outcry over the way in which this team has been run is unbeliveable to me. If MacLean was running the Maple Leafs, even the rich people sitting in the expensive seats who are only really there to be seen would be burning him in effigy. Minnesota, Nashville and Atlanta, all of whom entered the league at around the same time as Columbus are light years ahead of the Blue Jackets, who have little to show for their time in the NHL other than a team that’s still nowhere near the playoffs.

If everything goes well, Columbus will come close but not make it. If the goaltending goes south, the Jackets might be picking #1.