It's a firestorm out there in Jets social media is burning hot but if you took a poll I bet many of those reacting to the new of Petan being sent down to make room for Matt Hendricks would say 'I'm not surprised'.
The writing was on the wall but it's not without a few valid questions that many wish the head coach would have to answer.
First Petan is waiver exempt unlike Armia, Dano, and Copp who all require clearing waivers. Maurice even mentioned 'waiverability' in his statements today. He also said most in the bottom six had not done anything to differentiate themselves. Now remember Brendan Lemieux remains with the club right now while Lowry and Perreault are out.
Now back to the 'differentiating' of players.
Here are your bottom six group by even strength minutes:
Dano 33:24 in 5 games played Lowry 40:51 in 4 games played Petan 45:52 in 6 games played Armia 46:55 in 5 games played Copp 67:31 in 7 games played Tanev 67:30 in 7 games played Matthias 70:31 in 7 games played
Here is the same group with PP time:
Armia :00 Tanev :00 Dano :04 Copp :04 Mathias :07 Petan 7:28 Lowry 10:45
Here is PK time
Petan :00 Dano :25 Armia 5:43 Tanev 11:49 Lowry 12:52 Copp 12:55 Matthias 13:40
So two skilled players such as Petan and Dano get less PP time than Lowry who is also doubling his PP time with PK time. Now using those same three players, the same logic of usage can be applied to even strength time and how Dano gets 6.5 minutes a game, Petan 7 and Lowry 10. There something curious going on here.
Part of the issue is that there is a belief that Paul Maurice does not use his players, particularly his bottom six based on their attributes to how they can contribute but to how they fill a role he deems necessary. Adam Lowry would be a prime example of this logic.
He's big, has a bit of a mean streak and decent enough hands that he can pot a few goals and be somewhat efficient. So play him more but on the PK and PP units too, almost to equal minutes seems to be Maurice's logic. Consider this though, Lowry has 4:14 less PP ice time than Ehlers in 3 less games played!!
On the PK Joel Armia is by far a better player than Lowry and Tanev yet he gets so little time in comparison. At first I thought it might be a size issue where the coach, Paul Maurice, is far to enamoured with size to see the faults of his players. Unless your name is Dano or Petan that does not seem to be the case. This is the combined PK minutes from the 2016 to the 17-18 season with all forwards who played minimum 50 minutes and adjusted.
What you see here is the order is set by ice time with Lowry having the most. Yet by expected goals (adjusted) he is only out performed (in the bad way) by Tanev and Matthias. The same two guys who either are right behind him in PK minutes or ahead of him.
So what we have is a player who the coach believes has skills he clearly does not yet refuses to play his skilled players in situations where they actually benefit the team. See above for: Wheeler, Scheifele, Little and even Copp. Remember this is a team with a brutal PK unit historically so take that into account too, fixing it with the wrong players seems to be the solution.
This is why the removal of a player like Petan raises so much ire from Jets fans when he is replaced by the likes of a Hendricks. It's not because fans dislike Hendricks, they dislike what he means to the coach and to the potential results of the hockey club. Hendricks will likely get a lot of PK time tomorrow and perhaps he excels but does anyone really believe that's sustainable?
Thats what Hendricks did in the same time period on the PK in 67 minutes of time on a playoff calibre team.
The fire and brimstone, the torches and pitchforks come from Jets fans because they have seen this show before with Thorburn, Glass, Slater, Peluso, Matthias, and a whole cast of others and there has been no success yet it likely happens again now.
Not including this season the best year for the Jets PK was -13-14 and still only the 55th best in the entire league when looked at from 11-12 t0 16-17. That's simply awful. That year they were 10th in the league which is damn good, at least for them. This is what it looked like- pretty big difference in talent no?
Case closed.