James Tanner: The 47th Best Arizona Coyotes Player of All Time Will Shock You!

confused about the Ray Whitney thing

James Tanner: The 47th Best Arizona Coyotes Player of All Time Will Shock You!
- James_Tanner

Just surprised Datsyuk hasnt made the list yet.

Curious why you are always dumping on Soderberg. I've always thought he was underrated. He plays 16 minutes a night and has 17 goals and 35 points. Also +6, which is 2nd on the roster, behind Goligoski who you also dump on. Kessel is -21 and has fewer goals than Soderberg, in more minutes. Just for reference.

If anyone getting Soderberg's 16 minutes can do the same thing, then why isn't Kessel? Or how about Derek Stepan getting almost 18 minutes and less productive. A guy like Hinostroza was often given bigger minutes and failed to produce the way Soderberg has.

confused about the Ray Whitney thing
- DoubleDown

It was supposed to say Tkcahuk, I don't know why I said Whitney.

Curious why you are always dumping on Soderberg. I've always thought he was underrated. He plays 16 minutes a night and has 17 goals and 35 points. Also +6, which is 2nd on the roster, behind Goligoski who you also dump on. Kessel is -21 and has fewer goals than Soderberg, in more minutes. Just for reference.

If anyone getting Soderberg's 16 minutes can do the same thing, then why isn't Kessel? Or how about Derek Stepan getting almost 18 minutes and less productive. A guy like Hinostroza was often given bigger minutes and failed to produce the way Soderberg has.
- Kooleus

If you look at Kessel's numbers independent of totals, they're better.

Soderberg is just a stand in for your classic overpaid mid-tier NHL player.

In a cap league it would be way smarter to take Goligoski and Soderbergs salary and put it into one elite player and one league minimum player.

In a cap world, you should only pay star players and league minimum players. Everyone in the mid range is a waste of money, with a few exceptions.

If you look at Kessel's numbers independent of totals, they're better.

Soderberg is just a stand in for your classic overpaid mid-tier NHL player.

In a cap league it would be way smarter to take Goligoski and Soderbergs salary and put it into one elite player and one league minimum player.

In a cap world, you should only pay star players and league minimum players. Everyone in the mid range is a waste of money, with a few exceptions.
- James_Tanner

Yeah paying top dollar for Kessel sure looks like a smart plan. So if the key is to pay top-dollar for a bunch of superstars and round out the roster with league minimum guys then why are the Leafs so mediocre? Meanwhile the Blues just won the Cup with a couple guys making $7.5M, another making $6.5M, and then a bunch of excellent depth guys making $2.5-$5.5M (Perron, Schenn, Bozak, Parayko, Jaybo). Caps won the year before with mid-tier guys like Eller, Wilson, Niskanen, Oshie making important contributions. Not sure your theory has any successful examples.

If you look at Kessel's numbers independent of totals, they're better.

Soderberg is just a stand in for your classic overpaid mid-tier NHL player.

In a cap league it would be way smarter to take Goligoski and Soderbergs salary and put it into one elite player and one league minimum player.

In a cap world, you should only pay star players and league minimum players. Everyone in the mid range is a waste of money, with a few exceptions.
- James_Tanner

See. You gotta admit the brilliance here....Dubas thinking to a TEE. And look how the Leafs dominated and were shoo-ins for the cup. Damn Pandemic. Now Leafs will only win 4 Cups in a row before Matthews bolts for Arizona....should have been 5!!!! (Unless they squeeze a playoff in this year, which the Leafs will surely win...then 5 is still available).

Yeah paying top dollar for Kessel sure looks like a smart plan. So if the key is to pay top-dollar for a bunch of superstars and round out the roster with league minimum guys then why are the Leafs so mediocre? Meanwhile the Blues just won the Cup with a couple guys making $7.5M, another making $6.5M, and then a bunch of excellent depth guys making $2.5-$5.5M (Perron, Schenn, Bozak, Parayko, Jaybo). Caps won the year before with mid-tier guys like Eller, Wilson, Niskanen, Oshie making important contributions. Not sure your theory has any successful examples.
- Kooleus

The Blues winning doesn't prove anything, since the Leafs are really the first team to employ the proper strategy.

It's too early to tell if teams will be smart enough to employ this technique, but mathematically it's the correct game-theory approach to a salary cap.

And the Leafs - who finished 12th despite the 28th goaltending, have team stats that suggest they're right there with the Bruins and Tampa if they don't have to play nine games without their two best defneseman, and if their star goalie doesn't have his worst career season.

Whoamack!

The Blues winning doesn't prove anything, since the Leafs are really the first team to employ the proper strategy.

It's too early to tell if teams will be smart enough to employ this technique, but mathematically it's the correct game-theory approach to a salary cap.

And the Leafs - who finished 12th despite the 28th goaltending, have team stats that suggest they're right there with the Bruins and Tampa if they don't have to play nine games without their two best defneseman, and if their star goalie doesn't have his worst career season.
- James_Tanner

You have a lot of IF's to defend the Leafs awful roster construction. Other true contending teams faced way more significant injuries than Toronto, yet still managed to outperform the Leafs. Pittsburgh comes to mind.

Also strange to claim that Toronto is the first team to build a top-heavy roster of "stars" surrounded by plugs. Isn't that what Colorado did last year...MacKinnon, Rantanen, Landeskog, Barrie and then not much help after that. Playoff failure. Then in the offseason they specifically tried to improve their mid-tier talent with guys like Kadri, Burakovsky, Donskoi. Lo and behold, they jumped from 16th in the NHL last year to 4th this year. Pretty sure there are many other examples of the Leafs blueprint that failed over the years...

I understand the basic logic behind the strong link game / only stars and league minimum players philosophy, but I think until we get a much larger sample size of teams that are actually putting that philosophy into practice I’m … skeptical.

Right now it’s fairly accurate to say that, if you plucked a first-line AHL guy and put him on your NHL second line, your team probably wouldn’t really be all that much worse for the switch. And I agree that the skill gap between, say, the 100th and 400th-best forwards in North America is narrower than most people seem to believe.

But I’m not sure we can make a logical leap from there straight to “mid-range players don’t matter and are a waste.”

In that above scenario our minor leaguer would only be on the ice about 3/10 of the game, and even then just 1/5 of the players you have deployed. So even if he’s a bit worse than a “legit” second liner, he’s only ~6% of your team deployment from a “man-minutes” perspective. And he’s surrounded / supported / carried / shielded by linemates who presumably are meaningfully better than replacement level on average.

One or two sub-replacement level players can be hidden in a lineup or have their limitations mitigated by superior linemates, so the numbers they put up might not look much different than what any other sub-elite player could be expected to achieve given the same deployment.

But when you construct a team where the entire bottom 1/2 to 2/3 of your roster is replacement-level players, will those plugs still perform indistinguishably from legitimate mid-range NHL talent given the same minutes and opportunity? I’m skeptical. I don’t know that our assumptions about how players below the “elite” threshold are more or less interchangeable will hold up if teams start to actually be built that way in general.

I do think that, in terms of the NHL’s current player economy, stars are generally underpaid and mid-range vets are generally overpaid. That's a market inefficiency that smart teams should and do exploit. I’m not sure that means going full-Toronto on your roster construction is the right answer, however. That seems like an overcorrection to me.

The Blues winning doesn't prove anything, since the Leafs are really the first team to employ the proper strategy.

It's too early to tell if teams will be smart enough to employ this technique, but mathematically it's the correct game-theory approach to a salary cap.

And the Leafs - who finished 12th despite the 28th goaltending, have team stats that suggest they're right there with the Bruins and Tampa if they don't have to play nine games without their two best defneseman, and if their star goalie doesn't have his worst career season.
- James_Tanner

Unless you are writing this with a load of sarcasm, I'll have to disagree. I think this strategy works well in basketball, because said stars play almost the entire game. In hockey, playing half of the game is called a herculean effort.

You simply cannot tie up that much salary in so few players. I'm pretty sure you are not a fan of them, but look at the Blackhawks. Once the Toews and Kane contracts kicked in they had to fill in with guys like (an over the hill) Kunitz, Brandon Manning, John Hayden, Brandon Mashinter, and a heavy rotation of rookies. They also were never able to retain the services of some of the mid-tier guys that were big contributors to the success of the team.

Yeah paying top dollar for Kessel sure looks like a smart plan. So if the key is to pay top-dollar for a bunch of superstars and round out the roster with league minimum guys then why are the Leafs so mediocre? Meanwhile the Blues just won the Cup with a couple guys making $7.5M, another making $6.5M, and then a bunch of excellent depth guys making $2.5-$5.5M (Perron, Schenn, Bozak, Parayko, Jaybo). Caps won the year before with mid-tier guys like Eller, Wilson, Niskanen, Oshie making important contributions. Not sure your theory has any successful examples.
- Kooleus

You're really not finding it that difficult to poke holes in Tanner's ideology are you?

I understand the basic logic behind the strong link game / only stars and league minimum players philosophy, but I think until we get a much larger sample size of teams that are actually putting that philosophy into practice I’m … skeptical.

Right now it’s fairly accurate to say that, if you plucked a first-line AHL guy and put him on your NHL second line, your team probably wouldn’t really be all that much worse for the switch. And I agree that the skill gap between, say, the 100th and 400th-best forwards in North America is narrower than most people seem to believe.

But I’m not sure we can make a logical leap from there straight to “mid-range players don’t matter and are a waste.”

In that above scenario our minor leaguer would only be on the ice about 3/10 of the game, and even then just 1/5 of the players you have deployed. So even if he’s a bit worse than a “legit” second liner, he’s only ~6% of your team deployment from a “man-minutes” perspective. And he’s surrounded / supported / carried / shielded by linemates who presumably are meaningfully better than replacement level on average.

One or two sub-replacement level players can be hidden in a lineup or have their limitations mitigated by superior linemates, so the numbers they put up might not look much different than what any other sub-elite player could be expected to achieve given the same deployment.

But when you construct a team where the entire bottom 1/2 to 2/3 of your roster is replacement-level players, will those plugs still perform indistinguishably from legitimate mid-range NHL talent given the same minutes and opportunity? I’m skeptical. I don’t know that our assumptions about how players below the “elite” threshold are more or less interchangeable will hold up if teams start to actually be built that way in general.

I do think that, in terms of the NHL’s current player economy, stars are generally underpaid and mid-range vets are generally overpaid. That's a market inefficiency that smart teams should and do exploit. I’m not sure that means going full-Toronto on your roster construction is the right answer, however. That seems like an overcorrection to me.
- Sven22

Good post, time will tell.

One thing is that we see every time there's expansion: players who wouldn't have otherwise gotten first line, PP minutes become stars.

Opportunity is one of the biggest differences between star players and very good players who could make the jump.

I also don't think that any AHL player is necessarily better than Carl Soderberg or Alex Goligoski. I just know for a fact that in a cap league if you swap Goligoski and Soderberg out for one league minimum player and one seven million dollar player, you are coming out way, way ahead of the game.

Unless you are writing this with a load of sarcasm, I'll have to disagree. I think this strategy works well in basketball, because said stars play almost the entire game. In hockey, playing half of the game is called a herculean effort.

You simply cannot tie up that much salary in so few players. I'm pretty sure you are not a fan of them, but look at the Blackhawks. Once the Toews and Kane contracts kicked in they had to fill in with guys like (an over the hill) Kunitz, Brandon Manning, John Hayden, Brandon Mashinter, and a heavy rotation of rookies. They also were never able to retain the services of some of the mid-tier guys that were big contributors to the success of the team.
- Chunk

The Hawks got screwed because there were terrible at identifying talent.

They also have money to replacement players like Brent Seabrook.

The NHL is a game driven by stars. Furthermore, I'm even more right than usual here because the NHL undervalues defensive players, so every summer quality fourth liners like Spezza, Shore, Wilson, Aberg etc. are available for free.

Any argument about the Leafs that doesn't factor in injuries, a coaching change, and still being the 12th overall team despite the 28th best goaltending is ignorant or disingenuous.

They are very clearly a top team in this league. Colorado is a team that is propped up by very high save percentages. They really aren't anywhere near as good as the Leafs.

The Hawks got screwed because there were terrible at identifying talent.

They also have money to replacement players like Brent Seabrook.

The NHL is a game driven by stars. Furthermore, I'm even more right than usual here because the NHL undervalues defensive players, so every summer quality fourth liners like Spezza, Shore, Wilson, Aberg etc. are available for free.

Any argument about the Leafs that doesn't factor in injuries, a coaching change, and still being the 12th overall team despite the 28th best goaltending is ignorant or disingenuous.

They are very clearly a top team in this league. Colorado is a team that is propped up by very high save percentages. They really aren't anywhere near as good as the Leafs.
- James_Tanner

You've repeatedly stated that it's all about goaltending. Time and time again. So how can they be a top team with the 28th best goaltending?

You have a double standard with how you're applying the goaltending factor to both teams.

Gotta hand it to ya James. You are one of the only people doing anything worthwhile to come to this site for right now. Keep it up.

You've repeatedly stated that it's all about goaltending. Time and time again. So how can they be a top team with the 28th best goaltending?

You have a double standard with how you're applying the goaltending factor to both teams.
- MJL

Not to mention that it seems James will never be able to figure out that if you don't have other capable players on the ice when your stars are resting, even a good goalie will get shelled with enough dangerous chances to give said goalie stats somewhere near the bottom of the league.

What you fail to acknowledge is the link between the 28th best goaltending and the
poor roster construction? Anderson didn't just become a bad goalie. But the other 5 players on the ice contribute greatly to the success of a goalie. You don't seem to get that. You think Kuemper is the greatest goalie on the planet without recognizing the defensive system in front of him. You complain about the Coyotes not stacking all of their best offensive players on the same line without understanding the impact on their goals against. Switch Anderson and Kuemper and you'd see Anderson looking like a star while Kuemper would be getting run out of town in Toronto. Again, Toronto invested way too much money in Matthew, Marner, and Tavares. This caused mid-tier guys like Kadri and Gardiner to get squeezed out, and replaced with minimum wage talent. The defense is awful. The defensive structure is awful. So Anderson's stats suffer. But you blame it on bad luck or someone suddenly being a bad goalie. Next time you want to spend half your cap on 3-4 forwards, perhaps identify guys that play a 200-foot game and can lead by example. Like say investing heavily in Crosby-Malkin-Letang, or Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Lidstrom, or Bergeron-Marchand-Chara. Instead the Leafs invested in guys who think its fun to try and get 100 points but don't care about playing a 200-foot game and leaving their goalie and defense out to dry.

The Hawks got screwed because there were terrible at identifying talent.

They also have money to replacement players like Brent Seabrook.

The NHL is a game driven by stars. Furthermore, I'm even more right than usual here because the NHL undervalues defensive players, so every summer quality fourth liners like Spezza, Shore, Wilson, Aberg etc. are available for free.

Any argument about the Leafs that doesn't factor in injuries, a coaching change, and still being the 12th overall team despite the 28th best goaltending is ignorant or disingenuous.

They are very clearly a top team in this league. Colorado is a team that is propped up by very high save percentages. They really aren't anywhere near as good as the Leafs.
- James_Tanner

What talent was poorly identified? I will happily agree that the contract given to Seabrook was a waste (I said so the day it was signed), but that is not the reason that they are not currently competitive.

What is your definition of a star, and how many of them do you have to have on your team? You have Taylor Hall and Phil Kessel, and to a lesser degree Clayton Keller up front, and OEL and Hjalmarsson, and Gligoski, and Chychrun on the back end with two very good goalies. Define what you are talking about and I guess we can have a discussion.

Finally, I didn't mention the Leafs once in my comment. I simply laid out the reasoning for my position as outlined in the failings of the Hawks.

Good post, time will tell.

One thing is that we see every time there's expansion: players who wouldn't have otherwise gotten first line, PP minutes become stars.

Opportunity is one of the biggest differences between star players and very good players who could make the jump.

I also don't think that any AHL player is necessarily better than Carl Soderberg or Alex Goligoski. I just know for a fact that in a cap league if you swap Goligoski and Soderberg out for one league minimum player and one seven million dollar player, you are coming out way, way ahead of the game.
- James_Tanner

In my opinion, the reason why I would say depth is important is that while one depth player won’t win you many games they can certainly cost teams games. If you buy a player closer to that 100 mark vs the 400 mark, you’re paying for less mistakes that lead to goals against while also getting better odds at a goal for while your stars aren’t playing. Given that the total ice time of your bottom 3 lines averages around to just over 2/3rds of the game you need a safer bet that they won’t cost you. It would be like if lucic made league minimum you would be like paying an extra million for someone more competent.

I think the strategy on cap management all depends on how you’ve decided build your team, 2 different examples:

While Calgary’s stars are lower tier and were paid right before contracts skyrocketed, that allowed them to pay more for their replacement players. We have actually gotten lucky with that depth when our stars were cold early in the year, they managed to make up for it.

A team like Toronto that has the luxury of having two top lines that should at their salary be playing just over 2/3rds if the game will also have to short change their lineup somewhere. I think dubas made 2 bad decisions in relation to this: paying 2 of Johnsson, kerfoot, kapanen over 3 million (given one of them was expected to play in the top six before engvall/mikayev stepped up) resulted in shortchanging your defence which is more important and making his bottom six all the same type of players-offense first guys that are more prone to mistakes or bad coverage in their own zone. The money saved could have been used to acquire better defensman than guys like marincin, holl, dermott and I’ll add ceci to the list even though dubas did sign him to a 4.5 million dollar contract.

As far as your coyotes goes, if 7 million dollar impact players were easy to get every team would have them. For example Arizona just traded for Hall and the odds are that he will be leaving into free agency anyway. So for the coyotes who may only end up with just first liners rather than elites they may as well try to build a lineup that won’t cost them games when their better players aren’t on the ice

Building deep has a history of working while the top heavy option has good reasoning behind it(but can be flawed as the margin for error in decision making when it comes to the rest of the roster is larger). The reality is both of these teams has an equal chance to win the cup because skill and depth are tied for 3rd in importance behind #2- ability to stay healthy/take a beating from your opponent and #1 -whoever is on a hot streak

Not to mention that it seems James will never be able to figure out that if you don't have other capable players on the ice when your stars are resting, even a good goalie will get shelled with enough dangerous chances to give said goalie stats somewhere near the bottom of the league.
- Tonybere

The NHL consists of about 900 players, give or take. Of these 900, maybe 100 of them have any impact on games. This is easily discernible by looking at WAR/60.

But how much difference is there really between the non-elites? Hardly anything. If you took some random AHL player, gave him the jersey of a random NHL player and put him out on the second line, no one would notice.

Do you think anyone could watch Denis Malgin and Carl Soderberg and tell who was better? There just talent is so pure at this level there just isn't much of a difference between anyone. Some, sure. But not much.

What you fail to acknowledge is the link between the 28th best goaltending and the
poor roster construction? Anderson didn't just become a bad goalie. But the other 5 players on the ice contribute greatly to the success of a goalie. You don't seem to get that. You think Kuemper is the greatest goalie on the planet without recognizing the defensive system in front of him. You complain about the Coyotes not stacking all of their best offensive players on the same line without understanding the impact on their goals against. Switch Anderson and Kuemper and you'd see Anderson looking like a star while Kuemper would be getting run out of town in Toronto. Again, Toronto invested way too much money in Matthew, Marner, and Tavares. This caused mid-tier guys like Kadri and Gardiner to get squeezed out, and replaced with minimum wage talent. The defense is awful. The defensive structure is awful. So Anderson's stats suffer. But you blame it on bad luck or someone suddenly being a bad goalie. Next time you want to spend half your cap on 3-4 forwards, perhaps identify guys that play a 200-foot game and can lead by example. Like say investing heavily in Crosby-Malkin-Letang, or Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Lidstrom, or Bergeron-Marchand-Chara. Instead the Leafs invested in guys who think its fun to try and get 100 points but don't care about playing a 200-foot game and leaving their goalie and defense out to dry.
- Kooleus

From November 21st, the day the Leafs changed coaches, Toronto allowed less high-danger chances per game than the supposedly good at defense Coyotes. Also they allowed less than Dallas.

Both teams got league-best goaltending.

In my opinion, the reason why I would say depth is important is that while one depth player won’t win you many games they can certainly cost teams games. If you buy a player closer to that 100 mark vs the 400 mark, you’re paying for less mistakes that lead to goals against while also getting better odds at a goal for while your stars aren’t playing. Given that the total ice time of your bottom 3 lines averages around to just over 2/3rds of the game you need a safer bet that they won’t cost you. It would be like if lucic made league minimum you would be like paying an extra million for someone more competent.

I think the strategy on cap management all depends on how you’ve decided build your team, 2 different examples:

While Calgary’s stars are lower tier and were paid right before contracts skyrocketed, that allowed them to pay more for their replacement players. We have actually gotten lucky with that depth when our stars were cold early in the year, they managed to make up for it.

A team like Toronto that has the luxury of having two top lines that should at their salary be playing just over 2/3rds if the game will also have to short change their lineup somewhere. I think dubas made 2 bad decisions in relation to this: paying 2 of Johnsson, kerfoot, kapanen over 3 million (given one of them was expected to play in the top six before engvall/mikayev stepped up) resulted in shortchanging your defence which is more important and making his bottom six all the same type of players-offense first guys that are more prone to mistakes or bad coverage in their own zone. The money saved could have been used to acquire better defensman than guys like marincin, holl, dermott and I’ll add ceci to the list even though dubas did sign him to a 4.5 million dollar contract.

As far as your coyotes goes, if 7 million dollar impact players were easy to get every team would have them. For example Arizona just traded for Hall and the odds are that he will be leaving into free agency anyway. So for the coyotes who may only end up with just first liners rather than elites they may as well try to build a lineup that won’t cost them games when their better players aren’t on the ice

Building deep has a history of working while the top heavy option has good reasoning behind it(but can be flawed as the margin for error in decision making when it comes to the rest of the roster is larger). The reality is both of these teams has an equal chance to win the cup because skill and depth are tied for 3rd in importance behind #2- ability to stay healthy/take a beating from your opponent and #1 -whoever is on a hot streak
- RedC21

Just a couple of points about reputation and how almost all assessments are based on them: Justin Holl and Jake Muzzin put up something like 55% expected goals while paired together and taking the least offensive zone draws on the team. On a team of bad defenders, they got pretty extreme minutes and put up elite numbers.

Travis Dermott has played about 130 NHL games and if you compare him to players his age who've played similar games, he's nearly the best.

if you compare him to other third pairing players he's nearly the best.

if you compare him to all defenseman over the last three years, he's in the top 20-40 of almost every catagory.