Some information about Brandon Sutter, TJ Oshie, Rob Scuderi, Ben Lovejoy, and somebody familiar gives their opinion on how to increase scoring.
Let's start with TJ Oshie. He is one of the players that St. Louis is rumored to be shopping around. At first I didn't pay much attention to it because I didn't think it was a realistic target. Then I remembered that Doug Armstrong is the same guy who gave David Perron away.
Here are all of Doug Armstrong's trades the past two years. How many of them actually made his team better?
St. Louis has had some terrible first round draws the past number of years (LA twice, CHI once, MIN once) and they have not been able to get out of the first round. As a result they may want to "change things up". To me this is a potential situation where you can get a good player like Oshie perhaps for less than you would think. The Ryan Miller trade, David Perron dump off, and Ian Cole swap are all examples of pretty bad trades for St. Louis. There seems to be a correlation from when Jarmo Kekäläinen left (Doug Armstrong hire) and when St. Louis' decisions got worse. Never say never.
Let's move on to Brandon Sutter. The team is shopping him. This is good news.
Jason Mackey wrote an article yesterday about Sutter that you can find
here
I do think a trade involving Sutter is likely. Teams will pay for a young center, coming off a statistically strong season, with that last name.
But I don’t think the Penguins will be all that bent out of shape, especially not when you consider that they wouldn’t be paying even more of a premium to resign Sutter for 2016-17 and beyond.
Josh Yohe of DKonPittsburghSports added this about Sutter
The Penguins are willing to trade Brandon Sutter, as was reported on the Friday Insider here three weeks ago. They aren’t convinced that they will do so, but they believe he can be a legitimate centerpiece in a trade. They’re far more interested in improving their top-six as opposed to their third line.
The idea that Brandon Sutter's perceived value is higher than his actual value is a real thing. This from Hockey Night in Canada on March 12, 2015
"Brandon Sutter may be a better player than Jordan Staal in his own right"
Then today from
Darren Dreger on TSN 1050
"Brandon Sutter is a young man, relatively young, & has tremendous upside there is no question about that"
These people exist and some of them are actually NHL general managers.
From the same Josh Yohe article here are some Jim Rutherford quotes about Rob Scuderi
You know, he’s actually coming off a pretty decent year,” Rutherford said. “I give him a lot of credit. His status hasn’t changed with us. Right now, he’s one of our defensemen. I know he works hard in the offseason. He’s a good team guy. And like I said, he was pretty decent last season.”
I know that is tough to read but when you think about it in the context that he can't bash a player he is looking to deal it makes it more palatable. Talking about Rob Scuderi is literally the only thing he can say.
In the same article Rutherford talks about everyone's favorite trade again:
“That wasn’t a shot at Ben. He’s a good player, and extremely good when you look at where he’s priced,” Rutherford said of Lovejoy’s $1.1 million cap hit. “The point I was making was that, if that decision had been made in the offseason, I wouldn’t have made that trade. But at the time, it what’s we wanted to do. This isn’t a shot at Lovejoy. It didn’t work for him because of the injuries. He was put in situations he shouldn’t have been put in. Many, many teams around the league gave me good recommendations on Lovejoy and how he had been playing.”
You have 7,000 assistant GM's and the internet available. Why outsource to gain intel about a player?
The Toronto Sun caught up with some of the biggest names in hockey and polled them on how the league can create more offense. Players taking part in this unscientific poll were Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Toews, and John Tavares. Here is what Sid had to say:
“When you look at goalies, the numbers for goalies are through the roof this year,” Crosby said. “They’re bigger, they’re athletic. That’s tough.”
So is the fact that the officials seemed to be tooting their whistles less and less as the season grinded on, especially when it came to calling power plays.
“There were probably less power plays,” he said. “That’s a time when you are usually able to rack up a lot of points — at power play time. When the other team is a man down, you get more time and space. I think with less power plays that’s probably the case too.
“It’s hard to pinpoint one thing. You have to fight for time and space out there to make plays.”
Asked what might be done to boost offence in the game, Crosby certainly doesn’t view bigger nets as a solution, an opinion that pretty much was shared by all the panelists.
“I don’t want to see the nets change,” he said. “That’s pretty drastic.
“When you think about it, I think the only thing is maybe goalie gear. I mean, that’s the only thing. As far as the players and the style and the way teams play systems now, you can’t really change all that. I think that the only thing you can really change is the goalie equipment. I’m sure many of those guys wouldn’t be a fan of that. And for good reason. But that’s really the only thing you can do to alter things and make a difference I think.”
I agree with Sid. No reason to start using extreme ideas right away to boost scoring. Do simple things like calling penalties. It worked in 2005-06. Go back to it.
****
Happy Flyers make a big move day.
June 23, 2011 Mike Richards and Jeff Carter are traded
Jun 23, 2012 James van Riemsdyk is traded
June 23, 2014 Scott Hartnell traded.
Thanks for reading!
Follow me on twitter
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»