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It is very difficult to predict trades with all of the moving parts around the league. Given that fact I will continue to look at some of the free agent options out there for the Pittsburgh Penguins to consider.
Today we will look at longtime former Sabre Drew Stafford.
Stafford’s claim to fame was his 2010-11 season where he scored 31 goals in only 62 games. He accomplished this by shooting 17.3% which is drastically higher than his 11.1% career average.
Here is his HERO chart. HERO charts are usage adjusted but there is only so much adjusting that can be done if you played on the Buffalo Sabres the past few years. Everybody struggled on those teams.
Shot suppression is a mess, but as stated above he did play on the worst shot suppression team that has ever been recorded.
His even-strength offense places him legitimately in the top six conversation.
He has been average throughout his career in the roles he has been given
Early in his career he bounced back and forth between mildly overachieving and mildly underachieving. After the trade to Winnipeg he did not do a very good job on the possession front. He wildly underachieved with an elevated role on a playoff caliber team (30 game sample size including playoffs). To his credit he was able to put up some tangible offense while in Winnipeg. He had 19 points in 26 regular season games with the Jets and added one goal and one assist in four playoff games. His 0.73 points per game with Winnipeg was his best stretch in the department since his big 2010-11 season where he had 0.84 points per game.
Drew Stafford is not what I would consider a first option. He is the kind of player that you start kicking the tires on when you have exhausted all of your main targets and came up empty.
If Pittsburgh is to be a real contender their front office is going to have to hit on some of their main targets, assuming those targets are good players.
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Domenic Galamini created a new chart that helps evaluate a player’s impact on his linemates. It is broken off in to four sections (Better offense/better defense, better offense/worse defense, worse offense/better defense, and worse offense/worse defense)
Lower right corner is where you want to be. Upper left hand corner is not where you want to be.
Domenic has not yet released these charts on his website and was tweeting out some players that he received requests for. Three of those players happened to be Penguins: Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, and Brandon Sutter.
Evgeni Malkin's impact on fwd linemates from 2012-13 to 2014-15 (Weighted rGF60 impact:+0.36, rGA60 impact: -0.04) pic.twitter.com/hxg4wemFpT
— Domenic Galamini (@MimicoHero) June 7, 2015
Sid (with correct labels this time) @GunnerStaal pic.twitter.com/Txo9iQjnc0
— Domenic Galamini (@MimicoHero) June 7, 2015
Nothing new to see with those last two charts. Just confirms that Malkin & Crosby are both very good and Crosby > Malkin overall.
— Domenic Galamini (@MimicoHero) June 7, 2015
Brandon Sutter (yikes) @GunnerStaal pic.twitter.com/ViIOCcDDWt
— Domenic Galamini (@MimicoHero) June 8, 2015
These charts are a nice way to visualize the impact players have on one another. Keep an eye out in the future for when all of the players are available.
Thanks for reading!
Follow me on twitter Follow @GunnerStaal