Not only do the Senators have no idea how to keep their best players around, but they have also been inept at constructing effective depth throughout the lineup for years now. The frustrating thing is that they have had effective bottom-six forwards on their team before, but they are usually given the short end of the stick and moved too quickly. You can add Nick Paul to the long list of players who have been mismanaged as he was placed on waivers yesterday:
Paul (OTT) on waivers too
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) February 3, 2019
Now, let’s not get my words mixed up here. I’m not saying that Paul is a fantastic player, nor do I necessarily think he would definitely be a solid depth contributor. However, he’s expected to be a fourth line centre (or winger), and as of now, I think he has done a more than adequate job to keep his spot. Furthermore, although we can’t predict what he is going to do in the future, he hasn’t even been given a good enough chance to showcase what he can do. So if he gets claimed on waivers, it will be a wasted four and a half seasons of trying to develop him into an NHL player.
Even if he clears and gets sent down to Belleville, it’s pretty clear that the Senators don’t see him as a good option moving forward.
Yes, Paul has not produced anywhere near the offense you would like to see, with just 2 points in 20 games, but he has been one of the unluckiest players in the league, plus he should be valued for his defense anyway. Out of 678 skaters with more than 150 minutes played at 5v5, he has the 15th-worst on-ice SH% (4.04%), meaning that he is not scoring, but neither are his teammates. And on the defensive side of things, it looks even worse:
According to https://t.co/l8pisDhfCj, 638 skaters have played more than 150 5v5 minutes this season. No skater has suffered more from their goalies not making saves (84.62 Sv%) than Nick Paul.
— Graeme Nichols (@6thSens) February 3, 2019
When you combine those two stats, you get Paul sitting dead last in PDO at .888. So yeah, you could say he’s been a bit unlucky this season.
It’s not as if he isn’t creating quality scoring chances or is allowing too many of them, either. His corsi, scoring chances, and high-danger scoring chances percentages are as follows: 52.12%, 53.38%, and 53.85%. You can’t make the argument that those shooting and save percentages deserve to be low, because he has been doing everything well on the ice besides the main objective, which is to score. He just happens to be incredibly unlucky.
Amongst all 23 skaters for the Senators, he leads the team in shot attempts against per 60 at 56.32 (for reference, Tom Pyatt was the worst at 76.55). Not every forward is going to be able to produce a lot offensively, but having an actual defensive weapon like Paul can be useful. In addition, Bill Comeau’s SKATR Comparison Tool shows Paul as a solid play driver but no point production to show for it just yet.
One could say that these underlying stats are too small of a sample and that Paul probably isn’t actually good. That’s the point though...the fact is that the sample is too small because of Guy Boucher’s stubbornness. In the 20 games that Paul has played, he has received fewer than eight minutes of ice-time ten times. That’s half of his games played. And he has only played more than ten minutes just five times, plus there were several times when he wasn’t even on a real line due to having just eleven forwards. So how is that putting him in a position to succeed? Even as a fourth line centre, you can’t do very much in just 8:28 of ice-time.
The funny thing is that even though he has only two points, his ice-time has been so minuscule that he is actually ahead of Magnus Paajarvi in points per 60 (0.71 to 0.34). That obviously isn’t good, but as I said, it’s difficult to get any sort of momentum going when you are only getting a handful of shifts per game. Paul was coming in and out of the lineup too, so that can’t be good for his confidence. Meanwhile, Paajarvi has been dreadful but has missed just two games this season most likely because he’s a “veteran.…
Paul is not a key part to the Senators core, nor will he ever be. But there’s no downside to seeing what he can contribute as a fourth liner, and every indication seems to show that he can be a useful depth option. Paajarvi is a UFA this summer, so why should he (or any number of underperforming depth options) get precedent? This is the Senators we are talking about here though, so it’s no surprise that they are unable to differentiate between the effective depth players and the ineffective ones.