Year one of Scott Hartnell: Columbus Edition can be described as nothing but a success. Well maybe not for the team as a whole, but everything Scott Hartnell touched went golden. Hartnell played 77 games, picking up 28 goals, and 32 assists for 60 points. He did a fair amount of damage on the powerplay, burying 8 goals, and racking up 8 assists with the man advantage, helping Columbus to a top five powerplay unit ranking. It’s a hard and fast rule that you can’t write or talk about Hartnell without mentioning the trade that brought him here, but I am going to try and leave it to just saying that Hartnell quadrupled the point production of the player dealt to acquire him.
Digging a little deeper, we find a guy whose advanced stats are very good, and raises the production of those around him. Hartnell split the season between two different lines. The first portion of the year was spent with Nick Foligno and Ryan Johansen. Both players had career years. Hartnell then closed the year riding shotgun with youths Alexander Wennberg and Marko Dano. Dano, since shipped to Chicago in the Brandon Saad trade, had an exceptional rookie season, and Wennberg had a rough start to his frosh year but finished strong once paired with Hartnell. It appears that combination will continue, as Hartnell and Wennberg are set to start the preseason playing on a line together with Cam Atkinson.
A Hartnell-Wennberg-Atkinson line, should they actually start the season together, would be either the second or third line, likely flipping between the two in usage depending on matchups. The only two negative things you can say about Hartnell are his age (33) and contract ($4.75m for four more years). Those aren’t great, but even if Hartnell is only 80% of the player he’s been the last three years, that is still a very, very good player.
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Looking at his HERO Chart, Hartnell is a first line player nearly across the board, while a second liner at the other spots. If he drops off some, he’s just a very good second line player. In other words, he’s still going to be very good at the role he’s being asked to play. This is going off of his advanced stats, which nearly unanimously only use even strength statistics. This vastly underrates the contributions of Hartnell, as he is a wonderful powerplay player. His ability in the high slot on the powerplay as a conduit for one-touch passes, quick shots, and crashing the net for rebounds is nearly unparalleled league-wide. Hartnell has been a top unit powerplay guy for nearly his entire career (since the 2003-04 season), and his team’s powerplay has finished out of the top ten just twice, with an average finish of 8th over that 11 year stretch. Now obviously that isn’t all on him, but he does allow you options that most teams don’t have. As Matt touched on recently, Scott Hartnell is a really good hockey player. He’s someone who any team should feel fortunate to have on their roster. He’s shown he’s quite good at raising the play of those around him even those with little to no prior NHL experience. A rookie coming in has to love playing with a talented veteran who does all the little things to help them succeed. Furthermore, Hartnell is by all accounts a fantastic guy, who once upon a time did this. Plus, he’s not this guy:http://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js
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