Quote:
Originally Posted by Tender Rip
Malks4TopWings: I know from past experience that you (also) like advanced stats. Do try and look up Sutter's. He played overwhelmingly the toughest competition of any forward on that team, and was the only regular with a higher QOC (and CORSI Rel. QOC) than Tim Gleason. Jordan has never drawn as consistently tough matchups as Brandon Sutter did last year. That is of course because opponents will reserve a lot of their strenght for Sid/Geno, but just the same.
He ended up a -3 on a -30 team. Sutter will/should draw every bit as tough opposition as Staal did, and while there isn't the same scoring upside, we are still talking about a very significant salary difference both next season and more so going forward - a difference that can be committed to making our REAL stars that much more lethal (and like I have said before Staal is not among them, we are a Sid plus Geno team. Sid+Geno+Letang if you want to stretch it) - and/or bolster the D some more.
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I haven't used raw QOC numbers in ages, but Staal's Corsi Rel QOC - the most accurate stat for this kind of analysis, has him dwarfing the next center on his team to a more significant degree than Sutter. Sutter's higher Corsi QOC is likely a product of playing on a much weaker team considering the disparities from each team. I don't think anybody would suggest Carolina faced more difficult opponents this year than Pittsburgh.
I don't care about plus minus over one season. Staal, with almost exactly the same matchups, finished with a +12 Corsi rating and a +5 Corsi Rel. Sutter finished among the worst on his team with a -9 Corsi and -6.6 Corsi Rel. How much of those are team effects remain to be seen, and Sutter started more in the defensive zone than Staal, but I'm not about to say that Sutter can take over Staal's role on this team without us missing a beat. There's a clear downgrade there, whether you think the team is better off without him or not.