What A Maroon!

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

-Wayne Gretzky

Let’s all be very clear here. No two trades are the same, that’s mostly because no two players are the same. Contracts are different, UFA eligibility is different, age is different, position is different, size is different. And yet, comparing players and returns is a regular part of hockey. How do we do it we compare players who have had similar results. That’s what I intend to do. Not with anything fancy. As has been pointed out to me today “GM’s don’t look at those kind of stats”. I’m going to look purely at goals and assists for the last two seasons in a matter of two lists. These numbers are from hockeydB.

List 1:

Nick Holden 14-32-46 135 GP
Ian Cole 8-31-39 128 GP
Frank Vatrano 12-8-20 69 GP
Michal Kempny 3-12-15 83 GP
Brandon Davidson 3-4-8 84 GP

List 2:

Evander Kane 48-35-93 131 GP
Paul Stastny 30-50-80 129 GP
Tomas Tatar 41-33-74 144 GP
Rick Nash 41-25-66 128 GP
Ryan Hartman 27-29-56 GP

Now why are these players sorted into their respective lists? Very simple. List 1 is a list of players that were traded in the month of February for a 3rd round pick and in the case of a few, a prospect who is currently on an AHL roster. List 2 is a list of players who were traded today for at minimum a 1st round pick plus. The plus varies from player to player and in the case of Evander Kane there’s some conditions added on to the first. But all players from list two commanded a 1st round pick in some variety.

Patrick Maroon 41-31-72 138 GP

Again, no players are the same. No trade is the same. But we can look at each group and make a pretty clear decision on which list Patrick Maroon belongs in. If you chose List 1, I’m sorry but I seriously question you powers of deduction.

Many are going to make a very clear and adamant point. Only one player mentioned in this article had the chance to play with Connor McDavid. I said I was going to keep the stats here simple, but if we’re going to make the claim that Maroon only put up the points he did because he got to play with McDavid, then we should at least check that claim and see how many of his points came when he was with McDavid and how many came when he was away from him.

I wanted to do this with only the points Maroon obtained, but I’m not smart enough to navigate most of the analytic sites to figure that out, but I was able to find from Natural Stattrick’s ‘Line Tool’ how the Oilers did when Maroon was on the ice with McDavid and when he was without him. So that will have to do. I was only able to figure out how to get the numbers from individual seasons and I’m combining the last two seasons as I did with the box cars above, so it’s possible I made a mistake in doing so, bare with me. I’m still doing strictly goals in all situations. No Corsi, no Fenwick. “GM’s don’t look at those kind of stats”.

Edmonton Oilers 2016/17 to 2017/18

With Maroon & McDavid both on the ice (1,363:58 TOI):
74 Goals For
60 Goals Against
55.2% Goals For

With Maroon & Without McDavid on the ice (964:19 TOI):
55 Goals For
29 Goals Against
65.5% Goals For

While it was less time on ice, 964 minutes isn’t an insignificant sample. The Oilers actually scored a higher percentage of goals scored while Maroon was on the ice without McDavid, than with McDavid. Am I saying McDavid was dragging Maroon down? Of course not that’s stupid. But it is pretty clear that he was doing just fine without McDavid. He’s does match the players of List 2 more than List 1 solely because he was playing with McDavid all the time.

This was a trade deadline where the market was valuing wingers high, ironic given the Oilers have recently traded two wingers for less than perceived before today. So what went wrong? Chiarelli was clear on what he wanted. He was looking for prospects who could step into the NHL lineup sooner than a draft pick could. He followed through on that acquiring Pontus Aberg for Mark Letestu. We heard leading into today that as many as 7 teams were interested. This morning the number was down, but still sitting at 3 or 4. One of those teams as mentioned by Bob Stauffer was the Nashville Predators who wound up trading a 1st and a 4th for Hartman and a 5th. Now, Hartman is younger and a team controlled RFA. Not a UFA like Maroon. But I have a very hard time believing that they agreed to that trade with Chicago and were not offering anymore than a 3rd round pick to Edmonton for Chicago. You may disagree, many have, you won’t be the first. What imagine happened was Nashville offered a draft pick, 2nd or 1st, who knows but I’m willing to bet it was more than Edmonton got from New Jersey. Since Chiarelli was looking for a prospect, he turned it down and Nashville went after Hartman. The problem here is that when the deadline approached and Chiarelli still had not found his prospect, he found himself in a spot where he had to make a trade, and made the one he did. I’m happy we got something, instead of him walking for nothing. But if my scenario is what happened, then Chiarelli played chicken on the deadline and lost in a big way. While a 1st round pick may not be ready in a year or two, it is better than a 3rd in 2019 and I’m sorry to Joey Dudek, but he’s doesn’t have the best odds of making the NHL.

Am I upset Chiarelli played a game of chicken with his key deadline asset? Yes, very much. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The problem here is Chiarelli getting less than what he should have for an asset isn’t new. It has become a trend. It started with his acquisition of Griffin Reinhart in 2015, then trading Taylor Hall in 2016, next with Jordan Eberle in 2017, and now we’ve arrived in 2018 with the trading of Patrick Maroon. And I’m sorry Pete but I struggle to find a reason that you are competent enough to keep your job. The Patrick Maroon acquisition along with Cam Talbot was your best trade and now it’s a little more than a wash. You turned a draft lottery team into a playoff team and now turned it back to a draft lottery team. Also a wash.

I suspect you had a better offer and didn’t take it.

“You gotta shoot your shot.”

-Taylor Hall

-@WildcatOil