Having looked at an inordinate amount of advanced ‘sabermetric’ statistics, I think it’s unquestionable that they have their utility when analyzing the game of hockey. With that being said, their applicability in evaluating the worst draft busts since 1990 is heinous.

In an ESPN Insider article penned by Alvin Chang, he used Tom Awad’s Goals Versus Threshold (GVT) metric to evaluate the worst draft picks from 1990 to 2008.

If you’re unfamiliar with GVT, Awad describes it at Hockey Prospectus:

GVT is very similar to VORP in baseball: it is the value of a player, in goals, above what a replacement player would have contributed. The fact that GVT is measured in goals is crucial: statistics that divide up Win Shares, so that the ratings of a team’s players sum to that team’s number of wins, are very erratic and non-linear, since wins don’t increase or decrease linearly with team caliber. While hockey is ultimately about winning or losing, player’s contributions always come down to scoring goals and preventing them. A player cannot ‘win’ a game, even though he may be put in a situation where scoring a goal or making a key save would create or conserve a win. Each player's role, no matter his position, is to try and increase the goal differential in favor of his team. An offensive player who scores a hat trick only to see his teammates allow 4 goals against has nevertheless done his job; a goaltender who stops 39 of 40 shots only to lose 1-0 has likewise performed well. Using this standard, all players can be compared by the same yardstick: how much did they help (or harm) their team's goal differential?

Before delving into his actual top ten bust list, Chang prefaced it by saying that (he’s) only looking at players drafted from 1990 to 2008 to give time for development. Also, (he’s) using Tom Awad's Goals versus threshold as our performance metric. I've calculated the expected GVT per season for each draft slot and compared it with a player's actual performance.

Fair enough. Unfortunately however, Chang’s expected GVT per season calculations don’t account for fluctuations in the talent of each year’s respective draft class. Instead of comparing the GVTs of the players relative to each draft year, Chang measures each draft pick relative to the other players who were picked within the same draft year. The result is a list that prominently features Senators defenceman Chris Phillips as Chang’s fifth-biggest draft bust since 1990.
no comments

Towards the latter portion a World Junior Hockey related post on Puck Daddy, Greg Wyshynski references a CSNWashington.com article that examines Washington Capitals prospect Evgeny Kuznetsov's future. According to its author, Chuck Gormley, Kuznetsov's agent will be meeting with GM George McPhee to discuss the possibility of his client joining the Capitals at the conclusion of the World Junior Championships.

So why the hell is any of this important from an Ottawa Senators perspective?

Well, to get some unbiased perspective of how good Kuznetsov is, Gormley talked about the prospect with Senators GM Bryan Murray.

In turn, Murray shed some light on Kuznetsov.

Regin’s Season in Jeopardy?

With a looming decision on whether or not to proceed with more rehab or corrective shoulder surgery (it would be his second procedure since March), should Peter Regin choose the latter, he could potentially miss the remainder of the 2011-12 season.

One can definitely understand why Regin would be apprehensive about missing any prolonged period of time. As an impending restricted free agent, he will have little, if any, leverage in any contract negotiations this summer. After an underwhelming sophomore season, Regin needed a bounce back campaign to remind fans of the player that they saw during the 2010 playoff series against Pittsburgh.

In fact, the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch raised the possibility that with because of his recurring shoulder problem, Bryan Murray could potentially elect not to extend Regin a qualifying offer to keep him under team control. With players like Stephane Da Costa and Jakub Silfverberg vying for spots next season, there should be a number of forwards looking to solidify a spot on the team’s parent roster.

While Regin’s health will be an interesting situation to monitor moving forward, I can’t really fathom why management would elect to let a potential top nine forward reach the open market at the age of 26 when he can be retained for as little as his $1,050,000 qualifying offer. no comments

In the days that have followed the Turris/Rundblad trade, much of the subsequent discussion has focused on player potential and whether the Senators paid too steep a price to bring Turris into the fold. Thanks to the polarizing nature of the trade, I feel as though much of the conversation has been dominated by the implications of what this means for the organization now rather than focus on what this organization does moving forward.

From a personal standpoint, I’m not as concerned about the assets lost as others. As I mentioned in a post over the weekend, from an asset management perspective, replacing the lost second round pick can be as easy as parlaying a veteran player at the trade deadline and a Rundblad could be substituted within the system by a first round selection in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft. Furthermore, looking ahead to next offseason, Capgeek.com indicates that Ottawa has 13 players under contract for next season for a $35 million cap hit. Assuming that this year’s $64.3 million cap ceiling threshold remains close to where it is now, the Senators could even attempt to resolve by looking at the defensive free agent market this offseason for a top four blueliner. no comments

Earlier this afternoon at Senators practice, Paul MacLean unveiled his latest line combinations. The following trios were used: Greening-Speza-Alfredsson; Foligno-Turris-Condra; Smith-Regin-Neil; and Daugavins-Konopka-Winchester. None of the beat reporters that cover the Senators made mention of where Bobby Butler was, so I’ll just assume that he was in one of thahhh cohhhnahhs* sobbing. (Note: * the last sentence fragment should be read with a New England accent.)

Looking at the Foligno, Turris and  Condra trio on paper, it doesn’t appear to be too sexy. In their respective careers, Foligno’s career high in points is 34 and Condra put up 11 points in 26 games last season. This season, both players are poised to set career highs: Foligno has 10 goals and 20 points in 33 games while Condra has four goals and 10 points in one less game.

Although these are modest production levels, the one thing that has me intrigued is the fact that these three players have posted some relatively good Corsi metric numbers. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Corsi, Arctic Ice Hockey describes it as:

The Corsi Number is the shot differential while a player was on the ice. This includes not just goals and shots on goal, but also shots that miss the net, and in some formulations, blocked shots. In other words, it's the differential in the total number of shots directed at the net.

This metric was presumably adopted by the Sabres because it's a better indicator of a team's play than goals for and against, which are highly-driven by factors outside of a team's control. Shot volume is much more a function of a team's ability, and a much better predictor of future performance than goal-scoring metrics - in other words, there is basically no such thing as a team that shoots efficiently, just teams that get a lot of shots on goal...or not. Tyler Dellow has much more on this subject here. And Vic Ferrari discusses the "consistency" that underlies goal scoring, scoring chances and the Corsi Number.

When looking at the Senators team this season, it’s easy to notice that Erik Condra has the fourth highest relative Corsi rating (8.1) amongst forwards on the team and Foligno’s not too far behind him either (3.4). Turris’ sample size of six games this season is too small to draw anything from but he did have the second highest relative Corsi (9.9) amongst Coyotes forwards last season.

While watching Turris’ debut tomorrow night, keep an eye on this line’s ability to generate and maintain puck possession. Hopefully we’ll see a number of examples of Foligno and Condra doing their dirty work along the boards to feed Turris and take advantage of his release.

Now that the dust has settled on the David Rundblad/Kyle Turris trade, it remains to be seen how long the Ottawa Senators will elect to keep 14 forwards and 7 defencemen on the roster. Although Bobby Butler signed a one-way deal this past summer, he is exempt from waivers because he has not played in 70 NHL games or three NHL seasons. Having played in 61 career games, there is a 9-game window left for Butler to be considered exempt.

While the fallout on the player management side of things remains unclear, with Turris in town and practicing with the team today, there’s an inordinate amount of Turris news and opinions to sift through. So let’s get at it... no comments

In the aftermath of Saturday's trade that sent David Rundblad and a second round pick to the Phoenix Coyotes for Kyle Turris, we recorded a new podcast episode. Whatever will we talk about?

Joining us in our featured interview is Rick Komarow. Rick is the Executive VP and Managing Director of Puck Agency and also David Rundblad's agent.

As always, you can subscribe/download/stream the episode or entire catalogue of episodes from Itunes. Or you can download the file by right-clicking and saving this file. Or you can simply stream the episode below.

If you have any questions or comments about the podcast, please leave us some feedback in the comment thread below. Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoy the show.