In my 20+ offseason questions, numbers 10 and 11 noted below relate to Derek Stepan. With Derick Brassard locked up long-term, my view on what Mats Zuccarello should receive well known and having covered Marc Staal last week, the decision on Stepan looms as one of the biggest that the organization needs to make. Yes, you can add in Carl Hagelin and his pending RFA status to that, but to me, it pales in comparison as to Stepan, given the expected impact on the team.
The two questions posed were: 10. Did his playoff performance provide enough assurance that Derek Stepan is or can be a true #1 center? Does his lack of size and speed, especially when compared to Kopitar and Carter, solidify the view that the Rangers need to acquire a big, scoring center to fill that role?
11. Based on 10, does NY have to try and sign Paul Stastny? Trade for Jason Spezza or Eric Staal or Joe Thornton? Or acquire another "top" center to maximize the lineup talent?
This offseason, beyond the status of the BIG THREE RFAs, much of the discussion on the Rangers centered, no pun intended, around their lack of depth down the middle and need for a top center. During the regular season and playoffs, there were several comments running through the top centers in the league and how Stepan did - or more precisely in the view of money - did not compare to those individuals. I am not going to convince you one way or the other, since if you mind was made up that he is or he isn't, what I wrote won't sway you to the other side.
I will agree with you that Stepan is likely not a 90-100 point center. He probably won't be an 80-point producer. His flaws include a lack of elite skating ability, though he is not as bad as everyone makes him out to be, though he would benefit from power skating lessons. In addition, he is weak on faceoffs, winning less than 50% of his draws. While I would recommend he works with someone to get better, he had the opportunity to learn from Brian Boyle and Dominic Moore and either didn't take advantage of that chance or did and still wasn't able to improve.
All that said, the still are positives that while he may not be a prototypical "number one" center, he can fill that role and does so fairly well for New York. If you want to say he is a 1b or a top-second line center, it's hard to argue with it, but that doesn't diminish his value. If you look at the truly elite centers, they are hard to find, and even though LA and probably Pittsburgh have two that can be viewed as elite, many of the other "top" centers, save for a few, are not necessary a step above Stepan.
Positives:
Solid production:
Larry Brooks wrote the following:
Do you know how many players under the age of 24 as of last Feb. 1 recorded at least 101 points over the last two seasons?Six, and one of them is Derek Stepan.
Included within those 101 points is 44 in the lockout shortened 2012-13 season and 57 last year, second on the team, while playing with a slumping Rick Nash. Of those 57, he led the team with 40 assists and notched 18 points on the power play. Those numbers also came about following a slow start, which might have been due to his holdout before he signed his bridge deal and adapting to a new style under coach Alain Vigneault. The Bleacher Report noted that he tied for second on the team with 15 points in the playoffs, including playing the several games against Montreal and the entire versus LA with a broken jaw, which shows his toughness.
Defensively responsible:
We talk a lot about his defensive prowess but sometimes it gets overlooked. We believe that Stepan is a possible Selke candidate, based on his strong own zone play. That strong play has filtered across to Rick Nash on his line and resulted in Stepan also seeing time on the penalty kill.
Negatives:
Lack of skating ability:
This one has been one of the main criticisms of Stepan since he joined the team. To an extent, I think it's accurate, but I also believe it has been overblown. Stepan has shown the ability to get loose and score on a breakaway while also find a way to create off-man rushes with his skating ability. I still think he would benefit from power skating lessons, like what Brian Boyle did a few season ago, but I don't think it's as big of a black mark against him as it was in years past.
Weak on Faceoffs:
This one gets no argument from me. Stepan has historically struggled between the dots. As a rookie, he won just 38.5% of his draws in 2010-11, but he did rise to 44.5% the following year ad 45.9 % in 2012-13. Unfortunately, this past season, he took a slight step back to 45.2%. As the team's defacto top center, or even if he was the #2, that number is just unacceptable. Stepan must be closer to or above 50 percent in the faceoff circle. The ironic thing is that he had mentors he could have learned from last year in Brad Richards and Boyle and Dominic Moore, yet didn't. What might be scarier is if they did work with him and he still struggled. This area is one that adversely impacts Rangers' fans view of Stepan and one that could hold him back from getting viewed as a top-line center.
Not an "Elite" Center:
If you view an elite center as one who scores 100 or 90 or even 80 points, then yes, Stepan is not a top center. If you look who notched that total last year, and this list is impacted by injuries, as well as several who feel just short, only Crosby, Getzlaf, Giroux and Seguin hit that mark. Those that fell just short or would have hit the mark if not for injuries were Backstrom, Pavelski, Thornton, Malkin, Tavares and Stamkos.
Stepan is clearly a notch below all those. If you take a look at the top-two centers for each team, excluding those mentioned above, Stepan probably is below: Ryan Kesler, David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron, Eric Staal, Jonathan Toews, Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon, Ryan Johansen, Jason Spezza, Pavel Datsyuk, Anze Kopitar, Jef Carter and Paul Stastny. He is closer to on par with Ryan O'Reilly, Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Mikko Koivu, Kyle Turris, Logan Couture, Tyler Bozak, Nazem Kadri and Valtteri Filppula, with Henrik Sedin possibly in there as well if he rebounds from a poor 2013-14 campaign.
From the lists above, there are 10 names in that first paragraph, 13 in the first part of the next one and nine in the last sentence. That's 32 names in total. You could probably argue that Stepan fits in close to some of the 13 and clearly in with the nine but is a pretty good amount below the 10. What does that all mean. Based on the above list, Stepan should be viewed somewhere with the top-30 or so centers, meaning he would be a #1 center depending on the team. For New York, he is that #1. Whether you believe he will or can be elite is another matter altogether. One of those 10 centers are definitely not coming through the door. Same with the next 13 or the next nine, and even if some of them did, many would not necessarily be an upgrade over what the Rangers currently have as the pivot on the top line.
If you look at the 10 from the first lists, all save for Seguin - who looks underpaid at $5.75 mil per year - and Tavares - grossly underpaid at $5.5 mil per season - are well above $6 mil per season. In addition, from the other two lists, several are above or near that magical $6 million threshold that many of us believe that Stepan can and will want after this season. What I am trying to point out is while many don't believe Stepan is a true #1 center, he can and has filled that role in New York. Maybe not as well as several on the 32 on that list would have, but pretty darn close to many, whereby viewing him as a top-center is not that far of a stretch, especially if his point total moves from let's say 57 to 65 this year.
Brooks wrote the following which is true: "If Stepan has any kind of a season this year (and why wouldn’t he?), the Rangers’ No. 1 center will be in line to nearly double his cap hit from its current $3.075 million when he becomes an arbitration-eligible Group II free agent next summer." Stepan is making $3.875 mil this year in salary, which will be the starting point for arbitration next year when he will be an RFA if a deal cannot be worked out. Assuming he has a reasonably good year, asking for at least five million and maybe more would be out of the realm of possibility. Given that Brassard was an RFA and wanted $5.5 mil before getting a long-term deal at $5 mil with salaries of $7 mil this year and $6 in 2016-17, if Stepan has 12 more points than Brassard as he did this year, would $6 mil really be a ridiculous ask?
Plus, if you compare him to several of the names above, even if that so-called second tier of #1 centers, $6 mil with a rising cap is pretty reasonable. Now you could use the aforementioned negatives against him and say give him less than that for a short term deal, but then you run the risk of losing him after the deal expires. Instead, you could be proactive, sign him for close to $6 mil a year for five years and lock up at worst a 2a and possibly a top-line center for what would be a reasonable contract with the expected rise in salary and production out of Stepan in the future.
Whichever way New York goes, I hope this gets done sooner rather than later avoiding arbitration earlier than the last minute that seemingly has become GM Glen Sather's pattern.
I have covered a good portion of the 20+ offseason questions, with just a few remaining that I will cover of the next few weeks. Besides those, which will cover JT Miller and Hagelin as well as the one I will write on the special teams following Rangerdanger94 suggestion, let me know what else you might like me to cover. We are still in the doldrums of the summer with a month to training camp, but happy to start the puck sliding on additional blogs moving forward.