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The Penguins have 3 potential bottom 6 centers on the roster for next year (4 if you reallllly want to count Craig Adams). Three of them are priced in the lower salary range, one of them is expecting to get a healthy raise from the 2.2M he received last season.
The player looking to get a raise is Brandon Sutter. His qualifying offer of 2.7M is the minimum he will make next season.
Mike Colligan of The Hockey Writers (who is amongst the best at what he does) thinks that Sutter will fall in the 3.5-4.0M range. I think that is very poor value. Especially considering that Marcel Goc and Nick Spaling are on the roster.
On the surface it probably seems as though Goc is a step down from Sutter, but as you will see with the information below, that is really not the case. The thing to remember about Marcel Goc and his time with the Penguins so far is that he shredded his ankle two games in and we never saw him close to 100% in a Penguins uniform.
Let's take a gander at the numbers:
This may come as a shock but these two players offensive outputs are very similar. Sutter is more aesthetically pleasing to watch but his results are certainly not significantly better. Goc has never hit 40 points like Sutter but the ebbs and flows to their offensive production are identical and not far apart.
Points aren't everything, how are they both at driving the play towards the other team's zone?
Once again they have similar ebbs and flows to the chart but in this case Goc has done just a much better job throughout his career with his possession than Sutter.
Possession isn't everything, how about how many goals are scored when they are on the ice in close games?
For a majority of the sample size Goc is much better again. Goc takes a huge tail dive in the past two seasons. One can point to the fact that he was on a lottery team like the Panthers, but I can do one better.
Goc has been the better possession player throughout the entire sample size. He was still driving play in a shutdown role at a respectable rate on a lottery team. Brandon Sutter had poor possession on the Penguins and his goals for percentage wasn't impressive either, but why was it better?
On ice save percentage between the two players the past two seasons is dramatically different and that can explain the goals for percentage.
In case you are wondering skill does not come into play with on ice save percentages,
it is mostly random.
After all of that information I cannot stress enough, don't fall in love with average hockey players.
When you are a cap ceiling team like the Penguins you need to get value out of your signings.
I ask you, who has better value as a third line center, Goc at 1.2M or Sutter at 3.5-4.0M?
With the Penguins looking for money to get another top 6 winger I would argue that Brandon Sutter's price tag looks like a pretty appealing option to package in a trade.
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Our UFA Hockey Hurts podcast
was recorded yesterday. We covered everything around the league from UFA day. It includes yours truly calling Grabovski and Kulemin to the Islanders.
Thanks for reading!
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