Both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin will miss the NHL All Star Game in Columbus. They have both sustained lower body injuries and will not be making the trip.
While part of me does feel bad about Columbus missing out on so many star players at this event, the other part of me feels as though the teams/players don’t owe anything to the league. I mean if the league can’t protect them from predatory scrubs like Zac Rinaldo then why should they go out of their way to accommodate a fluff event that really serves no tangible purpose to anyone outside of the host city?
When you think about what has happened with Pittsburgh’s high profile players’ health over the past few seasons how could you possibly blame them for giving their guys some rest?
Since the opening of Consol Energy Center in 2010, the Penguins have lost 1,525 man games to injury or illness, the most of any NHL team.
— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_Trib) January 22, 2015
That is an incredible number.
Because Crosby is bowing out of the all-star game it is mandatory (per league rules) that he sits out the next Penguins game. Crosby will miss the game against Winnipeg. This rule was put in place a few years back and it forced Detroit to play without Pavel Datsyuk and Nicklas Lidstrom coming off the break.
I don’t believe for one second that Crosby is willing to sacrifice a regular season game to skip out on the all star game festivities. It has been reported that Crosby has been playing with a minor ailment lately.
Sources say Sidney Crosby underwent an MRI at the beginning of the week. Played the following 2 games. 1/2
— Louis Jean (@LouisJean_TVA) January 23, 2015
Crosby was re-evaluated by the @penguins doctors today that advised him to rest or run the risk of agravating the injury. @TVASports
— Louis Jean (@LouisJean_TVA) January 23, 2015
Evgeni Malkin has also been playing dinged up for quite some time and while he is eligible to return to the lineup against Winnipeg unlike Crosby, it is unlikely he does. Pretty amazing that Malkin hasn't been at 100% considering the kind of season he is putting together, Geno Machino indeed.
The Penguins are nothing without Crosby and Malkin. Crosby and Malkin are what make the Penguins the Penguins. This is a perfect time for the organization to be selfish and rest players while also minimizing the number of games they are out.
Some people may be upset by this, oh well. The league and its fans should want two of the top five players in the world healthy for the playoffs. That is real entertainment, not a pickup game.
I’m not anti-all-star game guy, it will probably be on my TV in the background, but I don’t blame anybody who pulls out of the event due to injury concerns and nor should you.
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A few days ago on Twitter I promised an article about Sean Bergenheim because I feel like he is exactly the kind of bottom six player the Penguins need to be successful in the playoffs. From the time I tweeted that out all the way up to the present moment somebody else already did all the hard work for me.
Former Hockeybuzz colleague Travis Yost wrote an excellent piece about both Sean Bergenheim and Erik Condra and highlighted why both are great trade targets for teams who have Cup aspirations. You can find that article here
Let’s work through some quick criteria to isolate for players with excellent underlying numbers. We will pull out forwards who have logged at least 2000-minutes since 2010. The forwards must have been on the ice for 53% of shot-attempts (we’ll use Corsi%) and 53% of scoring chances. The forward must also have been a quality relative player. That is, his team must have measurably benefited from a possession and scoring chance standpoint with the player on the ice. We’ll set +1.0% Relative Corsi% and 1.0 Relative ScoringChance% as additional parameters.Who are we left with? Just 43 players.
Our criteria did an excellent job at qualifying only high-end possession and scoring-chance drivers. There’s only one problem – the list is littered with first-line or top-six talent, a group of either untouchable players or forwards who are going to cost a king’s ransom to acquire.
Giving up a lot for bottom six forward help doesn’t sound like an ideal plan for the Penguins nor should it. But the great part about using advanced metrics is that you can sift through and find some players that fall through the cracks and who can provide great value. Here is what Yost found:
We are left with two players in Florida’s Sean Bergenheim, and Ottawa’s Erik Condra. Both players are on expiring contracts with small cap hits. Both players have been healthy scratched this season. Both have been shopped by their general managers (here and here.
Here is what I wrote about Erik Condra in Hockey Prospectus 2014-15
Over three seasons with the Senators, Erik Condra has an impressive 53.8 Fenwick-close percentage. Only one Ottawa player with 500 minutes played had an equal or better rate in the 2011-14 timeframe, and that was superstar blueliner Erik Karlsson, at the same mark. Nice possession stats aside, the former Fighting Irish forward will need to improve offensively to become a complete player. His 1.20 even-strength points per 60 minutes rate is pretty low, though some of that can be written off to poor puck luck.
To put that 5v5 points/60 into perspective Brandon Sutter is currently at 1.26 this year.
If you are going to play bottom six forwards who do not provide consistent offense like Brandon Sutter, Nick Spaling, Craig Adams, Zach Sill, Bobby Farnham, and Andrew Ebbett, why not find guys who won’t do any worse offensively but can actually drive play towards the other team’s zone? Good possession players with lower offensive outputs are better than crappy possession players with lower offensive outputs. Always look to improve.
Playing “shutdown… defense doesn’t mean body checking everything that moves. It means keeping the other team from scoring. Bergenheim and Condra are players have the puck a lot more often and are able to suppress both shot volume and scoring chances.
That is what matters and that is what the Penguins brass should be focused on when filling out their roster as they head towards the playoffs.
The nice part about Condra is that he appears to be having an "off year" in Ottawa. This will negatively impact his trade value for Ottawa. Somebody like myself won't be scared off by that. I will trust the overwhelmingly larger sample size of success.
Lastly, if you are one of those folks looking for “clutch… playoff performers. Well, there’s this
The information is all out there. You just have to do your homework. Travis Yost did the homework for a lot of teams with that blog.
Thanks for reading!
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