RFAs, the Series - Episode 5: Frank Corrado

Continuing on from the previous episode on Sam Carrick, we're going to talk about former Vancouver Canuck: Frank Corrado.

Oh, what could have been. Image courtesy of www.vancouversun.com

This pre-season, the Vancouver Canucks management decided that there wasn't room on their team for the future superstar defenseman, so they placed him on waivers. The Leafs were successful in claiming him on waivers, and it was at that point that the Frank Corrado ERA began.

Much better. Image courtesy of www.foxsports.com

Obviously, I'm overselling to poke fun at the Canucks, so let's pull back to reality and truly evaluate Frank Corrado.

After a succession of posts where there was no NHL advanced data to go on, we finally have a player who has played enough games to have a meaningful sample size. But, since advanced metrics don't really factor into contract talks much, I'll be skimming them over. This series is for contract analysis, not full player analyses. Unlike Peter Brandt in Moneyball, I can't do 47 51 player evaluations in one day (despite reminding a lot of people of Jonah Hill). 

So, here's a fun little graph from Corsica:

Graph taken from http://www.corsica.hockey/skaters/. Data is Score, Zone and Venue adjusted from 5v5

This is a distribution graph. So, the big hill part is how the league spreads out in terms of rel xGF% (possession stats with shot location data factored in). You can see the peak of the hill, and most of the area of the hill, is on the negative side of zero.

Meanwhile, Frank Corrado (the solid blue line) sits on both the right side of the peak and the right side of zero. This is good news. It means that, in terms of rel xGF%, Corrado is better than the majority of the league.

He's not in the elite portions of the graph near the far right, but above average is a good sign for the 23 year old defenseman. 

Corrado faltered slightly in the more traditional scoring stats, scoring only 6 points in 38 games. However, it still seems he has had a respectable season.

So, what?

How does Corrado fit into the organization's future? 

He's young enough to fit the timeline, so that's not of concern. Where the concern comes in is the glutton of young, bottom-pairing defensemen that the Leafs have. Harrington, Percy (who I wrote about here), and Connor Carrick all are worthy of NHL time. Loov and Valiev are right on their heels as well. Not to mention potentially adding free agents to the mix (Zaitsev, anyone?)

It really seems to come down to lefty vs. lefty and righty vs. righty. Harrington vs. Percy, Carrick vs. Corrado. I'll go ahead and assume the Leafs want to leave those battles to training camp and not try to decide them in the offseason. As such, it makes sense that they would try to bring him back.

But, at what dollar value? What length of time?

Here are the 3 typical perspectives, ideal, realistic and pessimistic:

Ideal: 1 year at $700k AAV

Corrado played only half a season, and only scored 6 points. He really doesn't have a strong case for a lot of money. He's coming off of a $632,500 contract, so this would be a small raise for him. It's not really NHL money, but remember, this is the ideal case.

Someone may make the point that I compared Corrado's situation to Percy's here, and yet Percy's ideal contract was $900k and Corrado's is $700k. The disparity, for me, comes from the fact that Corrado got a legitimate NHL shot and, by traditional metrics, was average or worse. The success of Percy's AHL campaign vs. the lack of such success of Corrado's NHL campaign. Once again, remember, this is the ideal case.

Also, I'm just now realizing that the "Ideal" case should have been the "Optimistic" case this whole time. Whatever, who needs directly opposite words when you have other synonyms, right?

Realistic: 1 year at $900k AAV

Now we're talking about getting close to bottom-pairing, "Stuart Percy" kind of money. It's still a 1 year "prove it" deal, but it's enough money to say they think he belongs. This seems a very agreeable number for Corrado's contract.

Pessimistic: 1 year at $1.5M AAV

Yet again, we're going to reference the Percy post, because I'm bringing back the strategy of paying Corrado more than he's worth to prevent him from being claimed on waivers. Once again, in this pessimistic case, we're assuming he's not good enough to make the team and are trying to protect him as such. It's a sneaky strategy, but one that could pay off for the Leafs if opportunity were to open up for Corrado later in the season (like if Matt Hunwick gets traded partway through the year, or someone has a long term injury). 

Conclusion

I think it's fairly obvious at this point that Corrado comes back to the Leafs organization next year, and since he's waiver-eligible, he will probably make the big club. I'm excited to see what he can do in a full-year campaign. I'm also really excited to see how these battles for the couple D-man spots on the Leafs roster shake out. It will be a very interesting preseason, undoubtedly.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where we'll talk about young goaltender and former Twitter funny-man, Garret Sparks.

RFAs, the Series - Episode 4: Sam Carrick

Picking up from the last episode on Colin Smith, today we're going to talk about another Marlies centreman: Sam Carrick. He's tough, he's energizing, and he's a lot of fun to watch if you're a fan of old school hockey.

Sam Carrick taking warmups, from mapleleafs.nhl.com

As mentioned above, one of Sam's most notable characteristics is his toughness. Check out this fight from his most recent NHL game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, back in 2015.

Sam's only regular season NHL fight, a resounding win over J.T. Brown

He's not just a fighter though. His grit extends to other areas of his game, like fore-checking and defensive zone play. At the end of the day, though, Carrick remains, at best, a replaceable NHL forward.

Once again we're in a situation where Carrick hasn't played enough NHL games (only 16) to be statistically relevant. Additionally, he hasn't played a single NHL game since signing his most recent contract, a 1 year deal worth $600k. That makes the data from his 2014-15 NHL stint somewhat useless.

So, what?

Once again we're in a situation where we have to rely on our qualitative instincts. Doing these posts has definitely made me wish I had access to the Maple Leafs' proprietary AHL data. 

Anyway, here are some contract scenarios for Sam Carrick for next year. If you've been following these posts you're sensing a theme, but I'll repeat nonetheless. We'll do an ideal, a realistic, and a realistic case, to make sure we cover our bases.

Ideal: AHL contract

Sam hasn't shown anything of promise this season in terms of making progress towards a regular NHL gig. Since this is the ideal case, this suggests that one of two quite ideal things happen: one, Carrick decides he loves it in Toronto he wants to stay without an NHL deal; or, two, no one else is willing to offer him an AHL deal. These are far from impossible cases, but certainly optimistic.

The reason the Leafs would even want to bring Carrick back is, again, ideal. They'd have to value his contributions to the team atmosphere as well as those on the ice. Enough to let him fill one of probably two contested center spots on the Marlies.

Realistic: No contract

Realistically, Carrick probably doesn't get signed by the Leafs organization in any capacity. With Tony Cameranesi probably gaining one of those center spots, the Leafs would likely rather take a chance at turning someone else's trash into their own treasure than bring Carrick back. His season this year has left a lot to be desired, and it really doesn't look like he has much of a future with the Leafs organization.

Whether he gets signed by another organization is up in the air, though. I could see Brian Burke signing him in the name of truculence, or Ottawa attempting to get back some of that peskiness they once had by signing Carrick. Either way, he may not be the Leafs' concern.

Pessimistic: 1 year $600k

Another repeat deal, like I suggested in the Nazem Kadri post. Since this is the pessimistic case, it means management disagrees with basically everything I said in the realistic case. They would want Carrick back, enough to allow him to take an ELC spot. However, even in the pessimistic case, Carrick does not earn a raise.

Conclusion

Either way, whatever happens with Carrick won't be entirely notable. At least, not this Carrick. Later on in this series I'll cover name-sharing-but-not-related defenseman Connor Carrick. For today, reflect on whether Carrick means anything to this franchise going forward, and stay tuned for Episode 5, where we'll talk about former Vancouver Canuck, Frank Corrado.