The Blue Jackets have remained quiet on the NHL free agent front but continue to make noise in the undrafted free agent market signing London Knights defencemen Jacob Graves to an entry level contract.
Graves is the prototypical Blue Jackets defecemen. He’s big standing 6’2, and is a defensive defencemen. Graves, 21, in his overage season in the OHL, finished fourth among d-men with 104 penalty minutes. He doesn’t bring much of an offensive game, scoring just 21 points in 69 games, between Oshawa and London. He had a good playoff run with the Knights as they won the Memorial Cup. Graves had 10 assists in 18 playoff games.
Graves adds to the long list of big shutdown defencemen the Blue Jackets already have, with Dillon Heatherington, Ryan Collins, Gabriel Carlsson, Sam Ruopp and Andrew Peeke. The move is a curious one as the team not only has a ton of similar players, but Graves cannot return to the OHL and doesn’t appear to have a spot at the AHL level.
Last week I speculated that perhaps Michael Paliotta was let go because there wasn’t room for him at the AHL level, yet the team brings in another defencmen. I've seen the Knights play 10 times this season and in none of the games did he really stand out to me. As of this writing Graves doesn’t look ready for the AHL and is likely headed to the ECHL.
The frustrating part of this whole thing is this team continues to make the same mistake over and over. They don’t seem to realize that that these low scoring defencemen almost never work out. Look at the current d-core of the Jackets. Seth Jones was close to a point a game player his draft year, Ryan Murray dealt with injuries but still had 31 points in 46 games, Jack Johnson was over a point per game with the US National Team Development Program. Yes those were all top five picks, but even David Savard was a point per game player as a 19 year old in the QMJHL. Heck Dalton Prout, had 21 points in 23 games in his overage season with Barrie, was dealt to Saginaw and finished the season with 31 points in 52 games. This is obviously a small sample but this has been proven
before that the defencemen most likely to make the NHL are the ones that produced offense in Junior.
Looking at the Draft Expected Value over at
prospect-stats.com it gives Graves just a 2.19% chance of playing in the NHL based off of 137 comparable players. He was not given an expected pick values as DEV suggests he should not have been drafted. He has only three successful comparables: Brad Staubitz, Deryk Engelland and Dalton Prout. So even if Graves is the exception, don’t expect much more than a low end third pair defencemen.
In the grand scheme of things this is a very minor signing, but it shows the Blue Jackets philosophy in evaluating defencemen, and takes up a contract spot. Teams only have 50 contract spots for NHL players and prospects. They should not be wasted on non-prospects. The Jackets would have been better off signing Graves to a PTO and assigning him to the ECHL.
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