Some bad news for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Olli Maatta will miss an extended period of time with another shoulder injury. Maatta fell awkwardly into the boards early in the game against the Philadelphia Flyers. It looked like a rough landing, but at the time I wasn’t expecting a week to week diagnosis . This is problematic for the Penguins.
According to some Olli Maatta is the tenth best defenseman in the NHL and has the third highest positive impact on the team to Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. Anybody grounded in common sense knows that is ludicrous. That’s the problem with the current state of GAR/WAR models circulating. You are left with some asinine outputs. A different formula always had Patric Hornqvist as the most valuable Pittsburgh Penguin which completely outrageous considering he doesn’t know what a controlled zone exit or entry is. Also, the fact Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel play on the same team.
Dominik Simon more valuable than Evgeni Malkin? Jamie Oleksiak and Matt Cullen more valuable than Phil Kessel? Yep, OK…
No offense to Sidney Crosby, but the model has him as the best player in the NHL right now and he’s not. That time has come and gone. John Carlson isn’t the second best player in the league and Chris Kreider certainly isn’t the fourth best player in the league. Whatever the inputs are in the formula they need tweaking. Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov aren’t even in the top 30.
GAR/WAR models will never be perfect. It isn’t reasonable to expect that. I just don’t happen to believe they are close enough to that end of the spectrum at this point in time. It is why I don’t write about them. I don’t know if a sport of controlled chaos will ever lend itself to a great model. I think the player tracking is more promising than GAR/WAR models to be honest.
So while Olli Maatta isn’t the tenth best defender in the league there are definitely issues with his injury.
Pittsburgh thought they were going to finally have their full defense roster to deploy they lose another player. It’s not so much the loss of Maatta the team can’t overcome. It’s what the coaching staff is going to do with that vacant roster spot. Yep, you guessed it, play Jack Johnson more. With Justin Schultz coming back there was the potential for Johnson to be deployed in a bottom pairing role. In this scenario it is likely he will continue to unsuccessfully gobble up minutes. He’s not going away. The team will suffer.
We’ll have to see what the pairings look like, but it’s likely they won’t maximize potential.
Thanks for reading!
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