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Penguins Assistant General Manager Tom Fizgerald was on TSN 1050 in Toronto yesterday and had a number of intriguing answers to questions that I have some thoughts about. The quotes I pulled were from
@Hope_Smoke’s twitter account.
It's not easy losing a 40 goal guy like James Neal. He was a high character guy who got along well in the room. We needed to shed a big contract and improve our depth. In moving Neal we think we've addressed that.
Well, I can understand moving a “big” contract but the contracts he brought in exceed Neal’s cap hit and if you’ve read my blog for the past few months, I am not sold on Nick Spaling as a quality player who fits the description of improving depth. I believe the trade would have made more sense if it was Hornqvist for Neal straight up and the Penguins used that space for a guy like Stempniak. The Penguins didn’t need to invest 2.2M into what Spaling will bring the team. As for the character stuff, I’m not in the room, but we’ve all heard the whispers about Neal. The team really doesn’t have much to gain by burying Neal publicly.
We tell our kids, we want you coming into camp believing that you can fight for a spot. If you can take Craig Adams' job we'll give it to you"
Well if true, this is great news for Penguins fans, because there is literally no chance that somebody doesn’t step up and play better than Craig Adams. Pretty damning that Fitzgerald singled out Adams by name.
We use analytics as a tool. We are all hockey guys. Our eyes aren't painted on, we do go watch players play, but then there's another side that can give you value of what that player has done, what that player has made and is he a player that we should go after because of shot attempts, gets into scoring areas whatever those analytics say
There are other algorithms in analytics that I have come to know, particularly this summer, where you could use it for salaries. You could use it for things like is a guy overvalued or undervalued. If you ignore it [analytics], then shame on you. We use it & are learning from it. We don't know all the answers, but we're willing to learn and looking to benefit from it on the ice. The modern day players want more information. If they want info we need to give them info because they want to get better.
We knew what those two guys [Orpik & Niskanen] would get on the open market & we were out of it.
This all sounds great to me on the surface. However, it isn’t as simple as just using analytics. Not all numbers and data are useful; you have to be using the data correctly. Without knowing the specifics of what the Penguins are using I can’t really say if they are on the right path or not. There is cause for optimism though and I would point to a number of the bottom six forward signings that were made. Mostly all have value in my eyes except for the aforementioned Nick Spaling.
We value Fleury as an elite goalie in the NHL. He had a great year last year. He had a disappointing 2012-2013 playoff. Fleury had real good playoffs for us last year. He played real strong for us in the playoffs. We trust Fleury. He's a damn good goalie and he's an elite goalie in the league.
Ha, well by now you know where I stand on this. I don’t agree with that assessment at all. Here’s the catch though, what else can Fitzgerald say? It serves no benefit to trash Fleury publicly. If the Penguins truly felt this way about Fleury he would already have an extension.
Mike might be a rookie head coach but he has been in this league for a while. We feel very fortunate that Mike was available and interested in our job. He's a puck possession guy. He's going to allow our players to carry the puck into the zone." I think our guys will enjoy how Mike wants to play. Will it translate from junior to the NHL? Coaching is coaching." Statistics will show you that we played more in the offensive zone, but how do you get the puck in there?
The process of the coaching search doesn’t matter at all, just the end result. Everything so far that I have heard about Johnston is incredibly encouraging. Coaching is coaching and if players don’t respect him because he is coming from the junior ranks that speaks volumes about the player, not the coach.
The comments about the offensive zone show that the Penguins understand they need to enter the zone with possession more often to generate more offense and that is a good thing. Dumping the puck in and “getting to their game” generates half the amount of shot attempts than carrying the puck in with possession.
Training camp is on the horizon, should be plenty to discuss in the near future.
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While the search for the next Senators writer continues I will be sporadically writing some Senators related material for the website. I wrote about Jason Spezza which you can find
here.
Thanks for reading!
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