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Taking A Look at the Penguins Bottom 6 Center Options

August 7, 2014, 1:08 AM ET [126 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
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Now that the Penguins have their roster in order I thought that it would be interesting to take a peek at what they have at the bottom 6 center position for 2014-15

The Penguins have four potential options at center heading into next season, they are: Brandon Sutter, Marcel Goc, NIck Spaling, and Craig Adams.

I was reading some of Travis Yost's work the recently and two blogs he wrote caught my attention. In the first blog he covered the 14 players who have become increasingly good at driving possession the past three seasons.

In the second blog he did the opposite, he found the six players who have been sliding in the wrong direction the past three seasons.

He also did a third blog looking at even more players through a similar lens. Tanner Glass makes a cameo and it is worth checking it out.

He used relative Corsi as the means to analyze these players and also included individual charts that documented their Corsi when on the ice vs. when they were not on the ice (Corsi on v. Corsi off). I thought the way he presented his information was done so well that I have decided to borrow his idea for this exercise.





During the past three seasons Brandon Sutter has seen his team do much better in the possession department without him on the ice than with him on the ice, this includes his last season in Carolina. Sutter will need to show improvement in this area for the 2014-15 season. Sutter is an interesting case because statistically speaking (via relative QoT) he has not played with quality linemates during the past three seasons. Steve Downie should provide him with at least one better option than what he has been dealing with the past few years. Sutter should be pretty motivated entering the 2014-15 campaign. The next two years has the potential to make him a lot of dough on the free market in 2016-17.





Marcel Goc comes in looking favorable. Two out of the three years his numbers on the ice are better than than the team's when he is off the ice. The exception is the 2012-13 season. During that season Goc led the Panthers in relative quality of competition and much like Brandon Sutter, did not get have the benefit of quality linemates. Despite playing in that shutdown role with limited help he was only marginally behind his Corsi off number. Over the past two seasons Goc has registered 44 points, Brandon Sutter has put up 45 points. Goc is not a flashy player but he has been playing well under the radar for the past few years.





This topic has been covered extensively, Nick Spaling just doesn't have attractive numbers as far as his possession stats go. A common hypothesis is that Nick Spaling's possession numbers are the result of playing on a bad possession team, this certainly didn't help his cause. My concern is the fact that the Predators (who weren't a good possession team) do significantly better without Spaling on the ice. If the Predators were so bad at possession then why couldn't Nick Spaling do better than what is represented on this chart? I looked to see if his linemates were the issue and he was in the middle of the pack for both the 2011-12 and 2012-13 season. In 2013-14 he actually had some of the better linemates the Predators had to offer. We will see if a change of scenery will do the trick for Nick Spaling in 2014-15.





This chart speaks for itself, the eye test speaks for itself, there really isn't much to add. Craig Adams is a below replacement level player and for some reason Ray Shero thought it was necessary to negotiate against himself and award Adams a two year deal. Lee Stempniak, David Moss, and Brian Gibbons are just three players who come to mind right away who are in the same ballpark cap hit wise as Adams.

So those are the center options for the bottom 6. What are your thoughts about them?

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If you happen to enjoy analytics as well as The Wire, I combined the two and wrote about why people in the mainstream media are fighting so hard against advanced statistics. You can find that here

Thanks for reading!

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