Obviously the big part of yesterday's trade with the Vancouver Canucks was
moving Brandon Sutter for Nick Bonino, but there are some other elements of the trade that deserve attention as well.
Pittsburgh upgraded the third round pick they received from Buffalo as compensation for Dan Bylsma and received Anaheim's 2016 second round pick in return.
Pittsburgh acquired Vancouver defense prospect Adam Clendening. According to
Hockey's Future Clendening was Vancouver's top defense prospect.
Here is Clendening's basic stat line to this point
*Small sample size alert*
Adam Clendening only has 21 games to his credit as an NHL player. His Score-Adjusted Fenwick for those 21 games is 50.5%.
The following passage about Adam Clendening is from a September 26, 2013
Hockey Prospectus article written by current ESPN Insider prospect expert Corey Pronman:
Year in Review: Clendening was one of the top offensive defensemen in the AHL. He led defensemen in assists, and was a second team All-Star.
The Good: Clendening is a great puck-moving defenseman. "He's got great patience with the puck. He's the kind of player who plays a highly-skilled game," said one NHL source. Clendening can dangle at an above-average level, while also making very creative plays in every zone. His ability to control the play on the blueline and generate on the power play is top of the line. He is a solid skater with good lateral agility.
The Bad: Adam's all-around game still is not the greatest. He is somewhat small, and his defense has improved, but he still needs to work on his reads and positioning. He also can still take some bad risks every now and then.
Projection: He could be a top-four defenseman who lines up on a top power play unit.
Here is Hockey's Future talent analysis on Adam Clendening from May 18, 2015:
Talent Analysis
Clendening is an offensive defenseman blessed with superb puck-moving ability and on-ice vision. His excellent puck skills are one reason why many scouts are so high on Clendening. He can see plays develop and follows them quite well. He can also be found frequently jumping into plays too. Clendening's ability to move the puck and patience with it makes him an ideal quarterback on the power play. He makes very good decisions with the puck and distributes the puck very well.
Clendening can also control the tempo of the game from the blue line. He is an excellent skater with good speed that can keep up with many of the faster opposing forwards. He also transitions quite well too. One area where Clendening will need to improve is keeping his feet moving more consistently. While he is known for his offensive prowess, Clendening is also solid defensively. He doesn't shy away from the physical side of the game and plays with a good deal of intensity.
However, Clendening could stand to utilize his intensity and grit more to the benefit of his team. He possesses a very good shot and can get pucks to the net by taking quality chances.
The way I see it acquiring Clendening does two things for the Penguins:
The first is that it replaces the hole which was created by trading away Scott Harrington. Both Clendening and Harrington seem to be players who have been stuck behind others on their teams' respective depth charts only to be traded away.
The second thing this trade does is show that the Penguins are indeed sticking to their declaration that they want to become a more skilled team. By all accounts Clendening is a skilled player that lacks the size (5'11" 190 pounds) and grit characteristics that some evaluators are looking for.
I think it is way better to give skilled players a chance to succeed rather than dismissing them because of size. If a team continues to collect young players with better skill eventually some of them will stick and become productive in spite of their shortcomings in the size department. Also beneficial is that in most cases they will come extremely cheap from a cap hit standpoint.
Will Adam Clendening ever make an impact on the Pittsburgh Penguins? I don't know, but to get him as a "throw in" is really nice asset management.
At the end of the day Vancouver at best made a lateral move (I'm being polite) moving Nick Bonino for Brandon Sutter. They downgraded from a second to a third round pick, gave up their top defense prospect, and added more salary against their cap.
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Here is a passage from that article:
Yeah, that just isn't true at all. People just wanted basic third line center play and not the replacement level caliber of play that was actually given.
Here is Sutter compared to two of the UFA options that were available this offseason as well as Marcel Goc who played fourth line minutes behind Sutter.
Those two skyscraper bars for Brandon Sutter are GA/60 relative and on-ice save percentage relative. As I have mentioned in the past studies show that on-ice save percentage is not something a player has a lot of control over. So the one thing that shows up as a plus for Sutter is something he really didn't do anything specifically to boost.
People didn't need the second coming of Jordan Staal. They wanted better than a version of Max Lapierre with a good wrist shot from the wing for 3.3M.
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Last and certainly not least I guess the Pittsburgh Penguins didn't actually have to trade Evgeni Malkin in order to make their team depth markedly better. This confuses me because I was constantly told by people advocating for a Malkin trade that there was no other way.
Funny how acquiring depth players isn't nearly as hard as some people made it out to be.
Thanks for reading!
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