RFAs, the Series - Episode 6: Garret Sparks

As the Toronto Marlies get set to open up the 2016 Calder Cup playoffs, we're going to dedicate this episode to the man who will be leading them in between the pipes: Garret Sparks.

Garret between the pipes. Image courtesy of www.theleafsnation.com

Before we get talking about his hockey ability and contract, you should all take a moment to appreciate this post-game interview after his first NHL start, where he recorded a shutout.

Wasn't that adorable?

Sparks got a pretty good opportunity this season when the Leafs were without James Reimer. Jonathon Bernier was struggling, and Sparks took that opportunity to establish himself.

But what did he establish himself as? An NHL starter? A quality backup? A good young kid who won't ever be a consistent NHLer?

None of the above.

What Garret Sparks proved to be was not quite ready, yet. There were a lot of tools he was missing. Namely, shot recovery and puck handling. These are skills he will have to continue to work on.

Of goaltenders who played at least 250 minutes at 5v5 (71 total), Sparks was:

• 4th worst in save percentage
• 3rd worst in Corsi save percentage
• 4th worst in quality start percentage
• 9th worst in high danger save percentage

Stats from corsica.hockey, war-on-ice.com and www.hockeyreference.com

Simply not good enough for right now. 

The good news is there's a lot of promise there. His reaction time, flexibility, and size should allow him to develop the other skills in time. For now though, he doesn't quite belong in the NHL.

So, what?

Two of his closest comparables this season was Anders Lindback (yeah he really was that bad), who made $875k this season, and Keith Kinkaid, who made $725k. I think that's a good place to start.

Ideal: 1 year, two-way contract for $700k 

This seems pretty fair on both sides, and if he does get more NHL time his goaltending services will be very cheap.

Realistic: 1 year, one-way contract for $650k

This contract allows Sparks to take AHL time at an NHL salary, which would be very attractive to him. Additionally, it makes any NHL time he gets come even cheaper. It's possible for the Leafs to like this option even better than the ideal one. Their pocketbooks can certainly handle it.

Pessimistic: 1 year, two-way contract for $875k

This one says, if you make the NHL you get to be paid as much as Lindback, your closest comparable. But, if you don't, you make AHL money. Sparks might be confident enough to be pushing for something like this. It's still a deal the Leafs can certainly handle, but more than I'm sure they'd like to pay if he's in the NHL.

Conclusions

I don't think there's really any situation where the Leafs don't bring back Sparks. It's entirely possible they bring in an NHL backup for Bernier, and let Sparks play in the AHL to start the season. They currently only have Bibeau (who has been less than stellar this year) and newcomer Kaskisuo, who could certainly benefit from some ECHL time.

Either way, I look forward to Sparks' development, and hope he can become a solid goaltender for the Maple Leafs in the future.

Be sure to check out last week's episode on Frank Corrado, and stay tuned for the next episode on Connor Carrick.

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.

RFAs, the Series - Episode 3: Colin Smith

Continuing on from Episode 2: Stuart Percy, today we're going to discuss Taylor Lautner Colin Smith.

A little too similar, if you ask me

Colin Smith was acquired by the Maple Leafs in a trade with the Colorado Avalanche. If you want some insight into him as a player, check out this Steve Dangle article on him. There's some good thoughts in there, not to mention some fantastic highlights.

Steve's ultimate conclusion is that Smith is an exciting prospect for the Maple Leafs. He has a small stature, but has been a points-machine with the Marlies since joining.

He jumped from 0.63 points-per-game (34 in 54) with the San Antonio Rampage (bottom 5 team) to 1.1 points-per-game (19 in 17, so far) with the Toronto Marlies (running away with the league lead). There's a tricky balance there between the benefits of playing with better players. On one hand, he can showcase his passing ability better with teammates who know where to be and can finish. On the other, he has better players around him to set him up, keep him in the offensive zone, etc. I'm tempted to say this falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

At just 22, Smith certainly has some development left to go. He was acquired as a prospect so that shouldn't surprise anyone. It also shouldn't come as a surprise that the Leafs likely intend to hang on to him while he develops.

So, what?

What do you do with Smith then?

He would likely come into next season as the Marlies' number one center. A good opportunity for a young player. What kind of money do you give a player like this coming off of his entry level contract?

Ideal: 3 year $850k AAV, two-way contract

This locks Smith up for the rest of his likely development track. At the end of this contract, you can have a strong evaluation of him as a player and whether you want him to be part of your future or not. Ideally, during this time, he will establish a job in the NHL on a cheap contract. This would be ideal for the Leafs. 

A two-way contract would mean he would make substantially less in the AHL (where he would likely be). Not that MLSE needs to pinch pennies, but players like Smith are the reason two-way contracts exist.

Realistic: 1 year $600k AAV, two-way contract

This is the contract Sam Carrick got last season coming out of his ELC. While Smith has had far better AHL numbers, Carrick was up with the NHL club for 16 games before signing this contract. Smith has only played 1 game at the NHL level. As such, this seems like a pretty realistic contract, which would again be a two-way deal.

Pessimistic: 1 year $800k AAV, one-way contract

This pessimistic case has Smith's agents successfully arguing for a substantial raise due to his AHL performance. Since this is a one-way contract, it means he would get the same amount whether he was playing in the AHL or NHL.

While this is the worst case, it really wouldn't be all that bad.

Conclusion

At these prices, it's pretty obvious the Leafs will bring Smith back. No matter what the contract ends up being, keeping Smith around is unquestionably the right move. Even if he resembles a Twilight co-star.

Keep your eye out for the next episode, which will cover the previously mentioned Sam Carrick.

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.

RFAs, the Series - Episode 1: Nazem Kadri

This kicks off what's going to be a long series covering the Maple Leafs' current restricted free agents (RFAs) and what should be done with them.

The Leafs cleared out a lot of contracts they didn't want anymore in the Grabner and Phaneuf trades. This leaves them with a good amount of room for next season to stay under the 50 contract maximum. As such, a lot of these are going to be suggestions of bringing players back. The question will then be for how much and for how long.

Today we're going to talk about Nazem Kadri, the electric, sandpaper-type center for the Leafs.



The most prominent word that comes to mind for some with Kadri this season would be "disappointing". For me, it's "encouraging" or even "advantageous".

As I covered in part in my fanpost on Pension Plan Puppets, Kadri is having a weird season. The graphs there show his low shooting percentage, and his high possession numbers. The shooting percentage is something we're likely to see rise back to his career average, Here are the relevant images from that post:

Year	iCF60	SVACF60	SCF60	xGF60	GF60
2014-15	15.17	57.84	29.78	2.62	2.5
2015-16	19.92	63.94	33.13	2.69	2.05
Differential	4.75	6.1	3.35	0.07	-0.45

The basic conclusion was, that because of this data (really good possession numbers and really low shooting percentage) he'll likely be able to score much better next season. 

I'm glossing over the data analysis because most of it is in the post I mentioned. So go check that out if you want the nitty gritty on what these numbers mean.

Because of all of this, the Leafs have an opportunity to take advantage of Kadri's lack of production to get a good offensive center at a cost-effective price.

So, what?

Good question.

What do you do with that? 

Of course, I want to say he's a really good player who is snake-bitten but there's some legitimate arguments that his career production has never been at top-line level, barring his shortened season (where he had the opposite case of a very high shooting percentage with very low possession numbers). 

The logical thing to do is assume he's somewhere in the middle. An offensive-minded, blood-boiling centreman. 

As much as I love advanced statistics, though, I don't believe they factor into contract negotiations as much as I'd hope. A lot of what a player's value is is perception of impact as opposed to actual impact. As such, I haven't proposed comparables and will, instead, look at each player in as much of a vacuum as I can create.

His current contract is a one-year, $4.1 million deal. I'll propose and break down ideal, realistic, and pessimistic cases for contracts below.

Ideal: 4 years at $5 million AAV

This is where you really take advantage of an opportunity. Argue to him that his production stunk and you don't think he's that good. But you want to give him some comfortability and see if he can flourish without worrying about his contract. Who knows, it might work?

This deal is really nice because it buys 2 years of UFA time where Kadri's negotiating position is much stronger. It also aligns so that the timing isn't lined up with the expiration of Marner or Nylander's contracts. 

Realistic: 1 year at $4.1 million AAV

Bring him back on the exact same deal. It's not going to be feasible to give a young, confident player a pay cut. This is the best non-long-term case. Argue his production sucked so he doesn't deserve a raise, but he's getting an opportunity to prove he deserves one. He realistically doesn't deserve one after this season anyways. This is nice because, again, it's not lined up with Nylander or Marner.

Pessimistic: 2 years at $4.75 million AAV

In this case, Kadri successfully convinces management that he's worth a raise and is part of the future. I'm certain all parties understand it wasn't a good season, but we know his possession numbers are really good, so his agent could utilize that tool to win over management. 

This deal is unfortunate because it brings Kadri right up to UFA expiration. So the contract after this one would be much more expensive. Or, potentially, you lose him when you can't afford him anymore. Certainly pretty far from the ideal case, but not out of the realm of possibilities

Conclusion

There are certainly many opportunities to sign Kadri back to the Leafs. I, personally, would jump all over the opportunity to bring him back, even at the pessimistic contract. As with every post in this series, we'll have to wait and see.

Stay tuned for Episode 2 where we'll talk about Stuart Percy.

The Hockey PDOCast: Ranking the Broadcast groups from around the league

Let me be completely, unambiguously clear: this is not my content.

This is content from Hockey PDOCast's Dimitri Filipovic and Travis Yost.

I'm writing this mostly to catalog it for myself so I can refer to it later. I'm choosing to put it on my blog instead of, say, in a Word document, for two reasons. 1) It relates to the Leafs, as does this blog, and 2) Someone, somewhere, might find this written version helpful.

Also to note, this episode is a month old but I'm just getting to it now because I somehow missed it. The Hockey PDOCast is a must watch for me. I've listened to every episode and they're all fantastic so if you're a hockey fan who is even a little bit interested in the analytics perspective (which, if you're here, you either fit that bill, or are my mom), you should check it out.

So to start, here's the link to the podcast where @DimFilipovic and @TravisYost make this ranking if you want to listen to their hilarious and insightful breakdowns:
 

And if you wanted to check out the written listing, here it is. They were ranked by entertainment and amount of information given for the most part. Bin 1 is really bad and Bin 5 is really good.

Bin 1:

Pittsburgh (over-the-top homerism, following terrible narratives, a lack of interesting information)

Colorado (extreme homerism)

Anaheim (complaining about officiating, lack of information)

Bin 2:

Columbus (Jody Shelley tangents)

St. Louis (constant interjections)

Detroit (Osgood in-studio "Learning a Hockey Language")

Florida

Tampa Bay (unremarkable, Rick Peckham a bit over the top)

San Jose

Arizona (don't call the game well)

Washington (homers, just okay)

Calgary

Vancouver

Edmonton

Bin 3: 

Minnesota

Winnipeg (Dennis Beyak is very good, Shane Hnidy is not good)

New Jersey (Daneyko towering over is hilarious, otherwise not good)

Boston (too much homerism, superiority complex but starting to humble, very exciting, good information)

Montreal

Buffalo (seamless transition from Rick Jeanneret)

NYR (good but not great, solid broadcast quality, Sam Rosen has a great voice)

NYI (good but not great, solid broadcast quality

Nashville (not a strong opinion, Carter Hutton is amazing)

Philadelphia (completely unremarkable)

Bin 4

Carolina (John Forslund is amazing)

Chicago (Pat Foley is amazing, Eddie Olczyk says dumb stuff sometimes)

LA (Miller is okay, intermission with Jim Fox on key play)

Bin 5: 

Dallas (Dave Strader  is amazing, Daryl Reaugh [Razor] is amazing)

TSN 1 (Ray Ferrarro is the best colour guy in the league, Gord Miller also amazing) [Ottawa/Toronto]

TSN 2 (not to mention Chris Cuthbert and Jamie McLennan) [Ottawa/Toronto]

Overarching takeaway:

Player interviews are terrible

I moved Minnesota and Winnipeg into the 3rd bin because one was high on Winnipeg while one was low, and there wasn't really any consensus on Minnesota.

So, fellow Leafs fans, we did pretty well with TSN.

Unfortunately, CBC and Sportsnet were not mentioned at all, so I'll leave that as an open question: Where would you put CBC and Sportsnet?

An alternative strategy for bringing Stamkos home to Toronto

The dream

The speculation of "Stamkos to Toronto" has died down a bit lately, but the dream remains alive for many Leafs fans. It will remain so until something definitive happens, be that the Lightning signing him, trading him, or someone finally snaps him up on July 1st when he becomes an unrestricted free agent.

Let's put aside whether or not going for Stamkos would be the best strategy for the Leafs. There is, of course, an argument that saving that money for their up-and-comers and sticking to the plan of building through the draft would be the wisest decision. But, I'd like to not get into that and focus on the "how".

How do you get Stamkos to Toronto?

Are you picturing dump trucks full of money? Perhaps recreating the "offer he can't refuse" scenes from the Godfather with Lou Lamiorello taking Marlon Brando's place?

Lou as The Godfather. From: https://twitter.com/John_Grigg/status/624225124217188354

Joking aside, there are several legitimate strategies. I'm going to list the options, and then focus on one in particular that hasn't been talked about enough.

1. Offer him more salary than anyone else when he's a free agent
2. Trade for him from Tampa at the Trade Deadline
3. Offer him a package of other incentives (endorsements, coming home, Babcock) to get him for less money than others offered
4. Trade for him after the playoffs but before July 1st

Wait, after the playoffs? But, his contract is about to expire. Why would you want to give up assets if you can just sign him after July 1st?

This is the option I want to get into more detail on. Once the playoffs have ended, teams are allowed to trade again without restriction. So, Toronto could offer a small package of assets to get Stamkos on, say, June 26th. But... why?

The reasoning is two-fold.

First, if you trade for him, he's your unrestricted free agent, which allows you some extra options in contract negotiations. The maximum length for a contract is 8 years when extending a contract that already belongs to you (i.e. the very recent Kopitar signing in LA). However, when signing a contract on the open market, the maximum is 7 years (i.e. the painful memory of Clarkson signing in Toronto). An extra year on the contract has to be considered attractive to Stamkos, and might allow us to sign him at a lower salary cap hit for the extra year longer.

Second, if you trade for him, he's your unrestricted free agent. This allows you to talk to him without anyone else to make other offers. Getting a Stamkos deal done before July 1st comes and he hears a Calgary or Philadelphia make a crazy offer for him would be a huge advantage.

We've seen recent examples of this working and not working. Dan Boyle to NYI (didn't work), Carl Soderberg to COL (worked) (though I'm not sure I'd call Soderberg at $4.75M until 2020 a success), Halak to NYI (worked) and a couple others I'm forgetting.

Tampa Bay will be interested in this deal because at that point, July 26th, they're probably out on Stamkos. If he was going to sign there he would have by then. So this affords the Maple Leafs an interesting opportunity.

So there you have it. A simple and as-of-yet unexplored strategy for bringing Stamkos to Toronto. What do you think?

On Morgan Rielly's future development comparables, specifically Keith Yandle

Introductions

Leafs Nation has high hopes for Morgan Rielly, as they should. Recently, there was a post written by Andrew Berkshire on the question: is Morgan Rielly trending to be a No. 1 defenseman? I agree with his conclusion that he's close with some flaws, and that it may not be a question of whether or not he can be that top-pairing defenseman much longer.

Where I wanted to expand on this was with PPP writer draglikepull's response to a discussion on that article, pointing out this:

@JPNikota @ryanfancey I see him at this point as turning into a kind of Keith Yandle. Great offensive d-man who doesn't do heavy lifting.

— Draglikepull (@draglikepull) January 19, 2016

This wasn't the first time he had brought this comparable up for Rielly, and he hasn't been the only one to bring it up. Former Leafs interim head coach Peter Horachek brought the comparable himself:

Horachek wants Rielly to model himself to a degree after Yandle, OEL: "They’re very mobile coming across the blue line & getting shots thru"

— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) January 29, 2015

The first question is, obviously, are you okay with that being Rielly's ceiling? 


We're not asking the opinion on Keith Yandle, let's assume that draglikepull's assessment of Yandle is exactly what the ceiling is. A "great offensive d-man who doesn't do heavy lifting". Heavy lifting, meaning: tough minutes, battles in front of the net, and other elements of defense that involve excelling at play in your own zone, where Rielly has notably struggled. Not meaning: his deadlift max.

(I do completely agree this is what Keith Yandle is, just for clarity.)

I would be satisfied with that, assuming the Leafs defense can build around it. Adding players who can do that heavy lifting is key. Finding the Jake Muzzin to his Drew Doughty, the Mark Giordano to his TJ Brodie, or the Derek Morris to his Keith Yandle.

Comparisons

The good news is this comparable is really easy to analyze. We have data for Keith Yandle's play during the time he was the same age as Rielly is now. So, let's compare them!

Let's start off with some simple* charts.

*not that simple

Each asterisk is a multiple of how much they were normalized, for my own reference

There's no y-axis numbers because I normalized some of these stats so you could see them all on the same chart. The difference between 0.7 PK TOI/G and 0.1 PK TOI/G is somewhat significant, but impossible to see on a graph that's also comparing 62.5 CA60 vs. 56.6 CA60. So these bars are relative to their grouping only.

The actual data can be found here if you're curious. 

The big and most stark contrasts are counter-acting. Rielly's usage was tougher — harder zone starts (ZSO%Rel), better quality of competition (QoC) and worse quality of teammates (QoT) — than Yandle's, and his results were worse — lower possession rates (CF60, CA60, CF%Rel) and production rates (P60, GF60, GA60, GF%Rel).  

One could easily make the connection that his usage caused his results to suffer, however I'd estimate that they wouldn't have as large an effect as what were seeing. This is especially the case in the CF%Rel statistic, arguably the most important metric shown.

What does this mean? 

Well, it suggests that Rielly isn't quite as good as Yandle was when they were the same age. The difference is considerable, but partially explainable. 

Extensions

How can we take this further?

I decided to look at WOWY statistics to see if we could get a better look at whether Rielly is that much worse than Yandle was at the same age. 


Below is a list of players that each player spent a significant amount of time with. The numbers in the middle are a differential measure of CF% — the difference between (subtraction of) their CF% with Yandle/Rielly and their CF% without Yandle/Rielly. I added the colours to illustrate what's good/bad and how good/bad it is.

Red is bad, green is good. More red is more bad, more green is more good

A couple notes before we draw any conclusions from this. Firstly, this is for the 14-16 seasons for Rielly and the 07-09 seasons for Yandle, so Rielly's sample size is about 40 games smaller. Secondly, the outlier on each side is Hunwick and Morris, which is explained by each of these players spending only one season on the same team as Rielly and Yandle, respectively, and the other season with very good Rangers and Bruins teams. Thirdly, it's kind of funny how we see Daniel Winnik show up on both lists.

Now, what do we see? That Yandle was having a significantly more positive effect on his teammates than Rielly is. Seeing numbers like 8.1 and 6.8 for Yandle are huge positives in his direction.

Conclusions

From what we've seen here, would you say Yandle is even a fair comparable for Rielly? We started off not quite sure if Yandle was a good enough comparable for Rielly. I think we're finishing off not quite sure if Rielly is good enough to compare to Yandle.

Only time will tell of course, but Rielly's ability to control the play needs to grow substantially if he wants to one day have as positive an impact on his team as Keith Yandle does.

Martin Marincin, Jake Gardiner, and the sources of Corsi

Jake Gardiner has been somewhat of an enigma during his time with the Maple Leafs. Many stress that his decision making skills are lacking and that his defensive abilities are abysmal.

However, the advanced stats community has taken a loving to Jake Gardiner's defensive ability. This is always a hot button issue within the arguments aginst Corsi. How can a puck moving defenseman like Gardiner be good defensively? He keeps turning the puck over. He's soft. He's not a defensive defenseman at all!

That's kind of the point.

What advanced stats gurus define as "good defensively" is far more broad, and yet, far more simple than what the average fan might. To be good defensively by Corsi, all you have to do is have a low Corsi (shot attempts) Against. That's simple enough, right?

To be good defensively by eye-test definitions, you have to be physical and be in good position. Also pretty simple.

Where advanced stats eclipse the eye-test is that it itself is quantifiable, and that its value to winning is also quantifiable. You can read this article by Steve Burtch to find out why. But other than counting shot attempts, what makes Corsi?

That's where advanced stats gets far more broad than the eye-test. There are a hundred different skills a player can excel or fail at that can contribute to their Corsi. That's what I'd like to discuss today.

Jake Gardiner

So, we know Jake Gardiner is a good puck moving defenseman. How does he have good defensive numbers?

Having a low Corsi against can come from several skills that Gardiner excels at. Making slick breakout passes. Carrying the puck safely out of the corners. But what else? He doesn't really excel at anything else in the defensive zone. So why are his defensive numbers so good? This horizontal evaluative ranking optic (HERO, for short) chart shows just how good he has been over the last 3 years: 

The best defence is a good offence. 

Controlling the puck in the offensive zone is a huge contributor to Corsi Against. If you're in their zone they can't be in yours trying to score on you. That's as simple as it gets. Corsi Against can show this.

We can find other players among the Leafs who, while aren't necessarily defensive stalwarts, have impressively low Corsi Against numbers, and are helping the Leafs be better defensively as a result. Richard Panik is one. Mark Arcobello another. Matt Hunwick (before his movement to the Leafs he was regarded as an awful defensive defeseman, while posting remarkable Corsi Against numbers), yet another.

Martin Marincin

Where does Marincin come into this discussion? We talked about Jake Gardiner's puck skills being his source of success in Corsi Against. Martin Marincin is quite the opposite. He leads the defense in CA60 (Corsi Against per 60 minutes of ice time) and is second behind the aforementioned Jake Gardiner in dCAImpact (the running total of shot attempts a player has theoretically prevented). Compare his HERO chart to Gardiner's above:

You can see Marincin is a bit behind Gardiner in the Possession Impact section, but still performing at almost a top pairing rate. That's really good.

But if Marincin is really good at Corsi, too, then you might think he excels at the skills I described above for Gardiner. That would make sense if you had never watched Martin Marincin play hockey.

I said even further above there are a hundred different skills that can contribute to good possession metrics. So, what are Marincin's skills?

It's kind of a hard question to answer, isn't it? There's nothing really obvious about Marincin's game that we can say definitely contributes to his possession success.

My theory is this: he's really big, and moves really well. Combining his frame to prevent being out muscled with the ability to be directly in the way of what the offense is trying to accomplish has to be a part of what his successes are coming from.

But this is where advanced stats jumps out of the hands of amateurs like me, and into the hands of video coaches, analytics departments, and pro scouts.

What are your theories on why Marincin is good? Or maybe he's terrible and Corsi is hiding something awful about his game? Share your thoughts in the comments!