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 2: Stuart Percy

Continuing the series from Episode 1: Nazem Kadri, this episode will cover up-and-coming Maple Leafs defenseman Stuart Percy.

Now that's a game face

Percy was drafted 25th overall in 2011 by the Maple Leafs. He is now in his fourth year playing professionally in the Maple Leafs organization, primarily with the Toronto Marlies. Over this time, he's seen two stints with the Maple Leafs: one in 2014 to start the season, with 9 games; the second was this season after the trade deadline as an injury replacement for 3 games.

12 NHL games over 2 seasons is hardly enough data to utilize for analysis. Additionally, his AHL stats don't present much to analyze either. He scored some points, but isn't exactly a world-beater at that level. Suffice to say, we don't have a whole lot to go on.

Qualitatively, however, we can see that Percy sits pretty deep on the depth chart. Rielly, Gardiner, Marincin, Corrado and Hunwick all unquestionably go into next season ahead of Percy. After that, you get into Connor Carrick, Viktor Loov, and Scott Harrington, who will likely compete for those 6th and 7th spots in the D-core.

As a right handed shot, Carrick probably gets an advantage. Loov is waiver exempt, meaning he can be sent down to the minors without another team being able to claim on waivers. Percy and Harrington, however, will both be waiver eligible, so if they do not make the team, they could be claimed by other teams.

This puts Percy in a tough spot.

So, what?

What do you do with Percy, then?

For curiosity's sake, I put him into Corsica's Similarity Calculator (a fantastic new stats website, linked in the sidebar). It brings up comparable players for Percy based on advanced stats. One of the strongest comparables was Stephane Robidas, back when he was good. So that was marginally interesting. However, given Percy's lack of NHL time, it means very little.

Despite the lack of information available, we can still make a best guess as to what the Leafs might do. Here are 3 scenarios, again from the ideal, realistic and pessimistic perspectives.

Ideal: 1 year at $900K AAV

This is the ideal situation because it means the Maple Leafs found a way to fit him into their roster for the 2016-17 season. Obviously, retaining an asset for a good price like this is going to be ideal. If they can't do that, we move onto the other cases.

Realistic: Traded at the draft

At last season's draft, we saw Griffin Reinhart traded to the Edmonton Oilers for 16th and 33rd overall picks. Being that this is the realistic option, we'll go ahead and say no one will be stupid enough to make that trade for Percy. 

Realistically, Percy will have a formidable challenge to make this team. The Leafs could either use him to acquire additional picks, or include him in a trade with another team to trade up in the draft. Getting assets back or improving the assets you get at this draft would be a nice way to make use of Stuart Percy as an asset.

Pessimistic: 1 year at $1.2M AAV

This is the pessimistic case because we're assuming the Leafs can't find a worthwhile trade. This puts the team in a position to bring Percy back and hope he can impress. Being that this is the pessimistic case, we can also assume that the Leafs do not figure out a way to guarantee him a spot. This puts him at risk of not making the team and being placed on waivers. This is obviously not ideal. 

If I'm the Leafs, assuming the contract is only going to be 1 season, and I'm cornered into this situation, I might look at paying Percy far more than he's worth in hopes that he doesn't get claimed on waivers. Hence, the $1.2M price tag. You may even be tempted to go higher than that. It certainly could put some teams out of consideration for claiming him.

Conclusion

The Leafs are in a difficult position with Percy. I'm hopeful that he has a place on this team as a 7th defenseman next season. And, yet again, we'll have to wait and see.

Stay tuned for the next episode on newly acquired prospect Colin Smith.