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Monday, December 6, 2010

Plugging Three Holes

No, it’s not the name of a Porn movie. I’m talking about the differences between recent cup winners Pittsburgh and Chicago and an extrapolation of the Oilers current talent and roster. The general consensus is that we are missing the three following ingredients:
  1. A (big body) first line centerman
  2. A (big body) first pairing defenceman
  3. A number one goaltender
    In general I agree those are probably the three most obvious holes in the Oilers line-up, regardless of whether you’re talking about Hall arriving for the morning skate in a flying car or one with wheels. With that knowledge in hand, let’s talk about how a team might go about plugging said holes. The three obvious routes are UFA/RFA signings, trades, and finally drafting. Aside from secret Chinese cloning labs (I’d say a mix between LeBron and Crosby), I’m not sure how else a team can acquire good hockey players, so these are the three methodologies I will focus on, one hole at a time.

    Analysis after the jump.

    The Mythical Centersaurus

    Figuring out the list of thirty first line centers in the NHL was a slightly more challenging than writing a pornographic screenplay, but I think I’ve used a fairly sound methodology. I simply took all centers in the league last year that played at least 40 games and sorted them by ice time, and then discarded anything that didn’t look right. Then I determined how they were acquired by their current team. I have bolded the ten centers I think would fit the Oilers need (the jury still out on Tavares, and  you could make an argument for Stastny, Koivu, or Richards). I also had to bump some off the list simply since I was only choosing one per team (Savard, Stamkos, Malkin, Marleau, Zetterberg, etc), but that shouldn’t blunt the point of the argument (all but Savard drafted by their current team).


    NAME

    TEAM

    GP

    TOI/60

    OBTAINED

    RYANGETZLAF

    ANA

    66

    16.39

    DRAFT

    MICHAELCAMMALLERI

    MTL

    65

    15.72

    TRADE

    PAVELDATSYUK

    DET

    80

    15.49

    DRAFT

    ANZEKOPITAR

    L.A

    82

    15.46

    DRAFT

    PAULSTASTNY

    COL

    81

    15.31

    DRAFT

    SIDNEYCROSBY

    PIT

    81

    14.99

    DRAFT

    NICKLASBACKSTROM

    WSH

    82

    14.97

    DRAFT

    ERICSTAAL

    CAR

    70

    14.89

    DRAFT

    TRAVISZAJAC

    N.J

    82

    14.88

    DRAFT

    HENRIKSEDIN

    VAN

    82

    14.79

    DRAFT

    JONATHANTOEWS

    CHI

    76

    14.71

    DRAFT

    JOETHORNTON

    S.J

    79

    14.61

    TRADE

    BRADRICHARDS

    DAL

    80

    14.58

    TRADE

    BRANDONDUBINSKY

    NYR

    69

    14.53

    DRAFT

    DAVIDLEGWAND

    NSH

    82

    14.53

    DRAFT

    STEPHENWEISS

    FLA

    80

    14.52

    DRAFT

    MATTSTAJAN

    CGY

    82

    14.44

    TRADE

    MIKKOKOIVU

    MIN

    80

    14.37

    DRAFT

    ANTOINEVERMETTE

    CBJ

    82

    14.27

    TRADE

    JASONSPEZZA

    OTT

    60

    14.18

    DRAFT

    VINCENTLECAVALIER

    T.B

    82

    14.16

    DRAFT

    MIKERICHARDS

    PHI

    82

    14.09

    DRAFT

    MIKERIBEIRO

    DAL

    66

    13.82

    TRADE

    DEREKROY

    BUF

    80

    13.75

    DRAFT

    DAVIDKREJCI

    BOS

    79

    13.74

    DRAFT

    SHAWNHORCOFF

    EDM

    77

    13.68

    DRAFT

    MIKHAILGRABOVSKI

    TOR

    59

    13.50

    TRADE

    JOHNTAVARES

    NYI

    82

    13.39

    DRAFT

    NICKLASBERGFORS

    ATL

    81

    12.74

    TRADE

    Unless I’m missing something (and I certainly might have), none of the top line centers in the list were obtained through the FA market. By my count it is (the count for top centers in parentheses):

    DRAFT: 22 (9)
    TRADE: 8 (1)

    This is a strong argument for finding the stud centerman through drafting. Of the elite group, 9 of 10 were acquired in the first round, and of those, 7 of the 9 were acquired with a lottery (1-5th)  pick. Even if you include the players I tossed out like Stamkos and Marleau, the ratios remain more or less the same. In other words finding that first line center is either a product of throwing darts at the draft board (cough Ken Holland), or even more likely by getting that high draft pick via overall suckitude (alternatively, dealing with Brian Burke *tongue in cheek emoticon*).

    But do you even need an Elite Center to win the Silver Bowl Thingy?

    Since I think it is easy to establish how difficult it is to acquire a top center except via the draft, this begs a further question, is it actually necessary in achieving The Ultimate Goaltm? I figure a statistical analysis to answer this question would be more difficult than finding original Rob Brown color commentary so we will have to approach it with a bit less slide ruler.

    Basically I went over the finalists since the lockout and tried to figure out which teams had an Oilers style situation (center by committee). The list is fairly slim pickings:

    ’06 Oilers (Horcoff, Stoll, Peca)

    Going back another five years, there is a bit more hope:

    ’04 Flames (Conroy, Yelle)
    ’03 Devils (Gomez, Madden)
    ’02 Hurricanes (Ron ’38 yr old’ Francis, O’Neill)
    ’00 Devils (Arnott, Madden)

    I’m not sure if this indicates that elite centers are more important post lockout or if we are simply dealing with a string of champs that coincidentally have elite centers. Without sticking my neck out too far I will say it certainly seems like having an elite center is important. On the other hand the NHL wasn’t so significant different in the first half of the past decade that we can really discount all of the success that the Devils had (they were also constantly deep into the playoffs). And before your anti-blogger rage causes you to spray spittle across your flat screen, yes, I acknowledge that the Devils weird, flexible, French goalie might have helped obtain those results, but they definitely didn’t have elite centers while winning those 21st century cups.

    [For those begrudging my lack of slide rule I’m willing to bet that for all of the teams not listed in this section that they had a #1C with at least 0.8ppg in the x-offs; none of the players listed in this section hit that except Arnott (0.87).]

    What do we have?

    In terms of what the Oilers currently have I think there are probably two prospects that have a miniscule shot in transforming into a top line pivot:

    Anton Lander (SEL 27gp 7-6-13)
    Tyler Pitlick (WHL 25gp 12-13-25)

    When I say miniscule, I mean I’d put their odds of becoming top 15 pivots akin to the chances of Eddie Murphy making another solid comedy (hey, it’s still possible right?). On the plus side both were taken with fairly high second rounders and definitely have some of the intangibles of a first line C – for instance Lander’s leadership and Pitlick’s ‘farm-boy-strength’. In other words they have a good shot at being solid prospects, but looking at either to be elite first liners is probably a stretch.

    Following that group is the Scott-Glennie-For-Hart-Trophy longshot:

    Chris Vande Velde (AHL 24gp 4-3-7)
    Ryan Martindale (OHL 27gp 17-23-40)

    While Martindale’s numbers look nice, and Vande Velde looked like a player in TC, their career is more likely to follow Yan Stastny’s than Peter Stastny’s. For a bonus selection one might even throw in Robby Dee (NCAA 14gp 5-9-14), but he’s already 23 and this is his first ppg campaign.

    While there is some OK depth there (especially from the 2-way standpoint), no one is going to make manjam over the Oilers center depth in the minors.

    In Conclusion

    So if we don’t have one, is it imperative the Oilers secure a top centerman? I’ll say no, with a caveat. First, one of the draft-day darts could hit the mark and second, I still believe that if the other pieces are strong enough, you can win a cup with a balanced center-by-committee approach. If the committee approach is to work, however, we will certainly need strength from one of the other identified problem areas.

    Next up:  Filling the hole in the backend (coff)

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