Anyone supporting this signing should understand the following:
PDO is a statistic that sums team on-ice shooting and save percentage at even strength when an individual player is on the ice. It is mostly luck driven and always converges towards 100.0 (8.0% shooting, 92.0% save), except in the case of when you're an extreme talent like Crosby, who directly influences the shooting percentage of everyone else on the ice, or if you're on a line with an extreme talent like Crosby. Players with PDOs above 100.0 are generally getting lucky, while players with PDOs below 100.0 are getting unlucky.
Salvador's PDO last year was 101.8, meaning that if it regresses to 100.0 next season, which it probably will, his 5v5 goal differential will take a big hit. For comparisons sake, Salvador's PDO was 100.8 in 2010 and .999 in 2009.
Only one other Devils defenseman, Andy Greene, had a PDO above 100.0 last year. So it's not as if the Devils goalies or system is allowing their defensemen to achieve above average PDOs.
Buying him out would be pointless. It's a 35+ contract, it stays on the cap no matter what. Buying him out would just reduce the salary, and I don't think we're nearly that desperate.
Buying him out would be pointless. It's a 35+ contract, it stays on the cap no matter what. Buying him out would just reduce the salary, and I don't think we're nearly that desperate.
Well I hope not, but who knows anymore. The point is I don't think he's going to perform well enough to stick around for the final two years.
I think Tallinder is better than Salvador. And he brings a more needed element (puck moving ability) to our blueline.
The what have you done for me lately element of this board is all over Salvador, who is a good defenseman, but all the advanced metrics, as well as my own eyes (to appease the stats haters), say that Tallinder is better.
Salvador got insanely good puck luck all season, which won't be the case going forward.
Based on PDO, I'm assuming? The thing about PDO is that it doesn't consider that while a player can have higher on-ice SV% due to luck or strangely better goaltending, it's also a result of a player reducing high quality chances. Considering he has a negative Corsi (similar to Zajac's) it's not as if he's working via a small sample size. Puck luck doesn't only break one way over an 82 game season. A lot of it has to do with the team's ability to reduce high quality scoring chances at the cost of giving up perimeter shots. Something that Salvador helps greatly with his sound positioning.
I can think of probably ten different instances throughout the season when Sal actually had terrible puck luck - a rebound kicked right onto the stick of a man who he wasn't supposed to be on, in many cases - and he managed to save a goal anyways with a great last second play. Those things aren't reflected in the stats.
Don't get me wrong, I love Salvador, but this is terrible.
Yeah, I was quietly hoping we'd get outbid for his services, so I could remember him fondly.
This last season was his strongest as a Devil, by a country mile. And his post season was bozonkers.
But prior to being concussed, he had been playing like poo. I am fairly certain that is the player we are going to get sometime in year two of this contract and sliding from there.
He IS one of the better prepared players, so hopefully he is an animal in the offseasons and proves me (and many of us) wrong here.
And his leadership is a plus with all the young D men in the pipeline, certainly was a help to Larsson.
But there is nowhere for any of the other young'uns to play unless there are some trades.
This has me somewhat perplexed, although Lou has always liked and respected Sal, and he clearly took less money to come back here -- looking at the other D contracts this offseason.
I like the guy and he's a good warrior, however, I believe we've seen the best from Sally these past playoffs and I would have liked the team to get younger and faster. Like most I think 3 years is to much and maybe the worse aspect is that no rookie is ready to make a jump.
You generally get lucky when you are playing well and in the right spots when you are supposed to be. Anyone who has played the game will understand this. Sal was great all season, came through when we needed him, and got a slight raise for it from our notriously loyal general manager. Pretty simple.
Zidlicky, Salvador, Fayne, Greene, Volchenkov, Larsson, Tallinder, Harrold. That's 8 defensemen and you have to figure there may be a rookie who might step up this coming season.
Sure, Salvador was a warrior last season (and one of my favorite Devils), but we are playing with fire handing out 3-year 35+ contracts. Players do not get better at this age. They slow down. Sometimes they fall off a cliff. We will probably be holding the bag when it happens.
This is an unnecessarily risky signing. Lou is writing checks with his heart and not his head (I include our two goalies' contracts in this assessment).
And then depth/roster wise this causes problems:
Volchenkov - 4 more years
Salvador - 3 '' ''
Greene - 3
Tallinder - 2
Zidlicky
Fayne
Larsson
(Harrold)
That's 7 NHL defencemen and a backup. Who sits? It's pointless to be paying any of those seven to be sitting in the pressbox eating pizza.
Perhaps Lou moves Greene or Fayne? It would have been smarter to keep them and let Sal walk.
And what of our D prospects? Perhaps some of them get moved for F prospects? There will be no room for them in the next few years.
Based on PDO, I'm assuming? The thing about PDO is that it doesn't consider that while a player can have higher on-ice SV% due to luck or strangely better goaltending, it's also a result of a player reducing high quality chances. Considering he has a negative Corsi (similar to Zajac's) it's not as if he's working via a small sample size. Puck luck doesn't only break one way over an 82 game season. A lot of it has to do with the team's ability to reduce high quality scoring chances at the cost of giving up perimeter shots. Something that Salvador helps greatly with his sound positioning.
I can think of probably ten different instances throughout the season when Sal actually had terrible puck luck - a rebound kicked right onto the stick of a man who he wasn't supposed to be on, in many cases - and he managed to save a goal anyways with a great last second play. Those things aren't reflected in the stats.
If the Devils, as a team, reduced high quality scoring chances, you would expect all our defensemen to have good PDOs. Except every regular defenseman, except Greene and Salvador, had sub-100.0 PDOs. And Salvador has never posted a PDO as high as 101.8 in his career. So, unless Salvador found some radical new dimension to his game at the age of 36, I think it's safe to say his PDO is coming down in 12-13.
Look, you can argue it with all the subjective examples you want, but everything points to Salvador's 101.8 PDO being a fluke (his historical PDO, the Devils team PDO, the fact that he's a 36-year old defenseman that just had the best season of his career, mounds and mounds of evidence that PDO almost always regresses to 100.0 except in the case of a very select few).
I would base that on the rest of his career. If he can play anything like his playoffs this past year, I'll be stunned. Happily stunned, but still stunned like a robber facing a taser.
