A Fit for Yandle, Sheahan Signs, the Carlyle Effect, Teravainen Traded, Johansen

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The Detroit Red Wings signed RFA Riley Sheahan to a two-year contract. This locks up what looks to be the team’s third line centre for the next couple of seasons.

Not long ago, I though there was a good chance that Sheahan would break out offensively. However, as the image below from Own The Puck shows, the production simply has not been there:

You’ll notice that in the bottom two charts, the right side has his possession as a second liner (the graph on the bottom-right), but the production has been more of a third liner (graph on the bottom-left). This seems to be a case where Sheahan will be a better real-life hockey player than he will be a fantasy option. It happens sometimes – Stralman and Winnik come to mind – and that is where numbers can sometimes fool fantasy owners. His shot generation and possession numbers have been usually been good, but he hasn’t been able to convert that to points, and that’s all that matters for fantasy.

Obviously he’s still a deep league option, especially one that counts faceoffs. He could realistically be anywhere from a 30-40 point player, but the hopes of him getting anywhere close to 50 points seem to be a pipe dream now. We’ll see how everything works out assuming that Pavel Datsyuk is not a Red Wing next year, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll happen for Sheahan. It’s a good signing in the real world for Detroit, though.

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Now that Florida has cleared up some cap space, it seems a reasonable bet that Brian Campbell returns to the fold. One defenceman I would love to see in the new jerseys (which, by the way, I actually don’t mind), is Keith Yandle.

I wrote last week about the stellar defensive play of Aaron Ekblad, even though his offensive game maybe hasn’t taken the leap some had been hoping for yet. There’s nothing wrong with that at all; he’s still a very young defenceman learning to navigate the top league in the world. Some additional punch from the blue line would be welcome.

The Panthers are facing a crunch over the next year or so, given that Jonathan Huberdeau, Ekblad, and Reilly Smith are all RFAs next year, with Vincent Trocheck this year. They have the David Bolland albatross, and five more years of Roberto Luongo, so maybe they don’t want to commit the resources necessary to acquire Yandle’s services.

I just can’t help but think what a perfect fit it would be, though. They could bring in Yandle, and bring back Campbell for two or three years. Yandle could be the elite offensive defenceman for the next couple of years while Ekblad/Campbell remain a top pair. Then, with an expiring Campbell contract, Ekblad assumes the number-1 mantle, with Yandle sliding in as the second defenceman.

This is all wishful thinking. But I just can’t help but see a good fit in Florida for Yandle and his skills.

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For what it’s worth, I thought Kris Letang deserved some serious Conn Smythe consideration. This is especially true given the injury to Trevor Daley. I hate to bring this up to Sharks fans, but this was a pretty goal he scored in the Cup clincher, even if the gif misses the initial spin-o-rama.

Letang quickly regains the lead for Pittsburgh pic.twitter.com/at9HLAaDAI

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) June 13, 2016

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Not too long after the Penguins won their fourth Stanley Cup in franchise history, a team on the other side of the country had a familiar face return with hopes of winning their second; the Anaheim Ducks brought back Randy Carlyle to coach the team.

For one aspect of the trade, Neil Parker wrote about the return of Carlyle when it happened, right here on Dobber Hockey. I encourage readers to check it out.

One point I want to reiterate of Neil’s, and he is surely correct on this, is that the goaltending is going to have their problems next year. It’s just a function of basic math that very good defensive teams will lead to goalies having low goals against averages, barring the goalies performing very poorly (e.g. Carolina and Ward/Lack last year). Consider: from Corsica Hockey, Anaheim was a top-3 team at five-on-five last year with regards to allowing the fewest shot attempts. That is why Frederik Andersen had a goals against average that was a 2.30, while Joonas Korpisalo was a 2.60 even though his save percentage was higher than Andersen’s.

Readers can go to Corsica and go through the seasons of when Carlyle coached both the Ducks and the Leafs. To save time, I’ll just tell you they were poor possession-wise. Even the year after the Ducks won the Cup, when they still had names like Pronger and Niedermayer on the blue line, the Ducks were just above a break-even possession team. The defensive numbers were stellar, but the offensive numbers were not. So even if Carlyle keeps up the elite team defence the Ducks showed last year, a rebound from Getzlaf/Perry does not seem likely. Given that this Ducks blue line doesn’t have multiple future Hall of Famers roaming around, I’m skeptical the defensive numbers maintain.

I understand why the Ducks hired him, but it just doesn’t seem like a good move. Maybe he can bring things like accountability to the players, but that remains to be seen, and I’m pretty sure he won’t improve the product on the ice. Don’t forget that this team will probably lose one of Sami Vatanen or Hampus Lindholm this summer, and Carlyle has shown a penchant for favouring veterans over young talent (Kevin Bieksa might see a lot of ice time). Unless he’s miraculously changed his ways in the last 18 months, the Ducks are getting an across-the-board downgrade for me fantasy-wise in roto leagues.

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There was a casualty of the cap crunch that the Chicago Blackhawks are facing, and that was Teuvo Teravainen. The young Finn was traded along with Bryan Bickell (and his horrific contract) to the Carolina Hurricanes for a 2^nd round pick this year and a 3^rd round pick next year.

The return that Chicago got wasn’t terrible, in all reality. Remember, it wasn’t long ago that the only thing Toronto got for trading David Clarkson was his cap relief. The Blackhawks did have to give up a promising young forward, but at least they got a couple picks back out of it.

Of course, this is going to sting for Chicago. After “going for it” last season, tough decisions have to be made. Carolina is a beneficiary of these tough decisions.

Teravainen’s per-minute rates weren’t that great last year, managing just 1.26 points per 60 minutes at five-on-five. It’s worth noting that a lot of the problem there was his assist rate; his goals per 60 minutes (0.57) was the same as Kyle Turris and Evgeny Kuznetsov. That’s not bad. His assist rate was in the bottom 25-percent of regular NHL forwards, though, and that is bad. At this point, though, it’s important to note his two most common line mates were Andrew Desjardins and Philip Danualt. Not exactly premier goal scorers.

A boost in ice time should be in order for Teravainen next year, and I have to think out of the gate he will be in Carolina’s top-six and on the top power play unit. There will be growing pains here, though. There isn’t much for established veterans in the forward group, and players like Teravainen, Lindholm, Saarela, Aho, and others are all going to need to grow together.

With the ice time jump and better line mates, I don’t think it’s out of the question to see Teravainen in the 45-50 point range next year. There still isn’t much for top-end proven talent up front, though, and it may be a year or two before we really see an offensive breakout from Teravainen and others.

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It is worth visiting Ryan Johansen’s year last year, because he kind of lived expectations. But I don’t think the way it occurred is a blueprint for production next year, and the success of the Predators kind of overshadowed that.

Johansen had 34 points in 42 games with Nashville. That’s good! The Predators also averaged just 54 shot attempts per 60 minutes with him on the ice (according to Puckalytics). That’s bad! Those numbers need context, so here it is: the team averaged 57.2 per 60 minutes as a whole. In short, Johansen produced a lot, but the underlying stats would indicate that he was a bit lucky to tally 34 points, and considering the team shot 9.6-percent with him on the ice (they shot 7.3-percent as a team), that would sound about right.

It’s not unusual for high-skilled players to drive their team’s on-ice shooting percentage upwards. That’s common sense. But the year before, the Blue Jackets shot 8.6-percent with him on the ice. The year before that, 7.9-percent. The two years before that were under 7.5-percent. For the record, out of 125 forwards that had 1000 minutes at five-on-five last year, only 12 were at 9.6-percent on-ice shooting percentage at five-on-five or better. These things tend to regress, so Johansen probably should next year.

Another problem is that Johansen’s personal shot rate per game (2.31) was a hair under what he did earlier in the year with the Blue Jackets (2.32) even though he was seeing about 20 more seconds of ice time a game. That’s not a death-knell by any stretch, but considering his shot rates the previous two years were 2.46 and 2.81, this is not trending in the right direction. In similar ice time compared to 2013-2014, he landed about a half shot less per game in his time with Nashville.

There is still a bit of digging here. Being traded in the middle of the season does not make it easy for a player to mesh with his new teammates, especially one that is essentially slotted into the top-line centre as Johansen was. I just don’t think extrapolating his numbers from the trade to Nashville and automatically slotting him as a 65 or 70-point guy next year is a given. It’s still very early in the offseason yet.

Some stats from Hockey Reference, Hockey Analysis, Puckalytics, Corsica. Cap info from Cap Friendly.