This article will be the last in my series of player profiles, where I look at each player on the San Jose Sharks and assess how their season went. This piece will focus on Marc-Edouard Vlasic.
Vlasic had less points this year than in any season since the 2012-13 shortened season, with just 15 points in 70 games to show for. His plus-minus was also worse than any season since 2007-08.
His underlying numbers also weren’t great, with an expected goals for percentage of just 47.4 per cent (according to NaturalStatTrick.com). His corsi for percentage was just 49.7 per cent as well, though he also had one of the lowest offensive zone start percentages of any player on the team.
The biggest knock on Vlasic is obviously his contract. I think just about everyone could have predicted that giving an eight-year deal to a player who would be 31 years old in the first season of it wasn’t going to go well. Surprise surprise, here we are after the third year of the deal and things are not looking good already.
That said, he is still playing key minutes for the Sharks and takes on a large role. His ice time may have been down for the second year in a row but he still averaged nearly 20 minutes a game, as well as the most penalty kill minutes of any skater on the team.
Based on his contract, Vlasic isn’t going anywhere and we can expect him to be around for many more seasons. He’s still San Jose’s best left-handed defenseman but the fact is, at 33 years old, we shouldn’t expect his game to recover to where it was a couple of years ago.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
How did you feel about Marc-Edouard Vlasic's performance this season?
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