10 Free Agency Targets For San Jose
Needs: Top 4 D, Starting(ish) goaltender, 3rd Line forward (and if there’s time/money, a better production option for Logan Couture’s wing)
In no particular order of who should be targeted first, here are my ten targets for the Sharks in free agency for 2015. Obviously, signing all of them is ludicrous, but this is the pool that I’d pick from to make the Sharks better on all of the above needs.
Cody Franson
Andrej Sekera
Christian Ehrhoff
Michal Neuvirth
Jhonas Enroth
Daniel Winnik
Erik Condra
Patrick Eaves
P.A. Parenteau
Michael Frolik
The Brenden Dillon Contract
The San Jose Sharks re-signed Brenden Dillon to a five year deal worth $3.27M per season yesterday. This is a solid deal for the Sharks – even though there are plenty of Dillon skeptics out there that would just as soon seen him go elsewhere.
Dillon came over in the Jason Demers trade in late November, when the Sharks were sitting with a record of 10-10-4. He was immediately given the task – as a young, 24 year old defender – of babysitting a transitioning Brent Burns. That’s no small feat, given the significant majority of 5v5 TOI Dillon played with Burns was prior to the calendar changing to 2015. Burns got more comfortable and more effective on defense as the year went on, but Dillon got a lot of the troubled minutes.
Assignment be damned, the Sharks went on a 10-4-1 streak with Burns and Dillon paired together – which brought their record to 20-14-5, seemingly turning the season around. Well, that’s when Todd McLellan really got the itch to start switching the lines up. Vlasic was paired with Burns and Dillon spent the rest of the season getting a heavy dose of the struggling Justin Braun and the 19 year old Mirco Mueller – with a dash of Tennyson, Hannan and Irwin.
A 24 year old defender, brought into a new system at the quarter mark, spent the remaining games of the year trying to figure out how every single defender on the Sharks played – and how to find chemistry with them in the scheme he was still learning.
For this pie chart, start at the top right (dark blue) with Braun and move clockwise down the legend for color coordination.
Looking at his defensive partners – and knowing his time with Burns was early in the season – it’s no wonder his goals for % is low. Justin Braun had the luxury of playing 62% of his 5v5 time with Vlasic, while underperforming during a disappointing individual season. Chemistry is a big thing – knowing where your partner is going/what he’s going to do – and Dillon was a victim of Todd McLellan’s bingo ball drum that made the lines.
While playing with players for a min 100 TOI, Dillon and his partner were 52.9% or better for three of them.
It’s worth noting that with Mueller, Dillon was 52.6% CF% away – which is 0.1% higher than Mueller was away from Dillon, meaning they just didn’t work well together as a pairing.
Dillon was 51.5% away from Tennyson, 51.1% away from Braun and even managed to stay above 50% (50.7%) without the high-flying Brent Burns. He was also one of only three Sharks defenders to have a dCorsi60 of over 1.4 (Vlasic and Burns are the other two) with only Matt Irwin (0.22) rounding out the over-performing group for players with at least 25 games played. He also enjoyed a negative ZSO%rel.
Is the dollar amount a little high? Not for a five year deal that eats up some UFA years. Brenden Dillon is worth this contract – and it’s over 500K less per season than Braun, who struggles to function without Vlasic.
If there’s one thing Doug Wilson is good at its getting value out of in house contracts – and it pains me to compliment Doug Wilson. Brenden Dillon will be an important defender for the Sharks this year and the expectation is there that he makes a good step forward in coming into his own on a blue-line that isn’t so unfamiliar – with hopes he finds a stable partner.
Thanks for reading.