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The Penguins have some decisions to make with their unrestricted free agents this offseason. Periodically I am going to take a look into a specific UFA situation and how I feel the Penguins should act moving forward.
Today’s spotlight will be on Brooks Orpik.
Orpik has played 11 seasons in Pittsburgh which has included 703 games played in the regular season. Orpik is one of the lone holdovers from the “X-Generation… which churned out more below average NHL players than it did competent ones.
Orpik and his 4 year 15M contract have expired and the soon to be 34 year old’s future with the Penguins is in doubt. Should it be in doubt? Would the Penguins be making a mistake by letting him hit the open market?
Let’s take a look at some of the trends that have shown up with Orpik’s play.
The first graph is going to take a look at his Rel Quality of Competition from the past 7 years.
The chart shows that over the course of time Dan Bylsma has elected to use Orpik more and more in a shutdown role. After the departure of Scuderi and Gill following the Penguins Cup victory in 2009, the Penguins needed somebody to step up and fill those minutes. Orpik was the guy that the Penguins chose. Orpik’s skill set looked the part with his big hits and physical play.
How did he fare in that shutdown role? Probably not as well as some people would think:
Orpik’s possession starts to plummet as he takes on a much tougher role with the Penguins. Orpik was never really one of the Penguins better possession players even before he was in a shutdown role, but you can really see how the role negatively impacted his numbers further.
The past few years the puck has been in the Penguins zone far more when Brooks Orpik has been on the ice as opposed to when he hasn’t.
In hindsight it probably would have been a wise decision for the Penguins to have traded Orpik as opposed to him finishing out his contract with the Penguins. I’m sure there would have been enough teams with a high enough perceived value of Orpik that they would have gotten an OK return. However, considering that Ray Shero thought Douglas Murray was worth 2(!) 2nd round picks, the possibility of Orpik being on the move was always slim to none.
For me, letting Orpik walk is one of the easier decisions of the offseason for the Penguins. The Penguins will probably not feel his loss in the lineup at all, in fact they will probably be better for it by giving a younger more talented player a chance.
Thanks for reading!
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