Cogliano gets 3-year deal

Ok…

Cap is 56 million. after cogs there is 6.4 left. I would guess selanne would be around 5, leaving 1.4 million to the kids that will fill out the remainder.

Don’t forget about possible trades or cash dumps though…..

I can’t argue with that…. Other than to say, if hiller is healthy we win that series.

we won’t have a shutdownline of forwards until we have a defensepairing to throw out on the ice with them.

we have maybe 1 piece of a “shutdown” line in McMillan but he’s a rookie an hasn’t proven anything so far.

BUT we have a butload of scoring forwards in our system.

where does that myth come from that a 3rd line has to be a “defensive” line. we had one of the greatest of that in 2006/2007, but thats so rare you can’t built something (and have a niedermayer/beauchemin d-pairing with them on the ice)

doesn’t it have the same effect whether your third line is an offensive line or a defensive line? is it not just important that they score more goals than they allow? i mean if the are great offensively and carrie the puck in the opponents zone, that helps the team defense a lot because your opponent can’t score if he’s defending…
so doesn’t that need for a defensive 3rd line come from the salary cap, that very few teams can built 3 skilled forward lines because those players are way to expensive? (Detroit can and they are pretty good with that). Why not use our assets in the farm system and built a Scoringline, where Cog can easily be a big part in. Doesn’t that make more sense than built a “defense” forwardline out of nothing.
Sure we overpayed for him, but as you have seen, we can’t get anyone on the FA market this year and we needed help so i can look over that fact.

And by the way, the centerman of arguably the best 1 line in hockey, Ryan Getzlaf, has 45.8 % Faceoff wins, which isn’t that much better then cog, and still he managed somehow to be part of the Rocket/Hart Trophy line and the 2nd best PP of the league.

Tangradi got knocked out of the season last year with a hit to the head, but he was playing for the Penguins in the NHL. To me, that’s a guy who can fill a need. Eric O’Dell is 2 inches taller than Cogliano and about to start his AHL career. Again, a guy we could use. At the time of their movement they were top prospects in the system. They’re both younger than Cogliano. It’s odd that he deserves a chance to develop, but they don’t. It’s a bit of a self serving contradiction if you ask me.

I suppose you could say Beuchemin was Murray’s guy until he hung him out to dry and then had to pay through the nose to get him back. Getzlaf, Bobby Ryan, Corey Perry, and Teemu Selanne are all players that were here pre-Murray. I’m not going to give Murray Visnovsky, because all he had to do was say yes to an Edmonton proposal. He didn’t actually manufacture that deal. He pissed away Pahlsson and the last year of Niedermayer’s career with James Wisniewski. He threw away Kunitz and Tangradi for a player he should have known wouldn’t fit our needs. Pittsburgh fans were jumping up and down when he made that trade. His best free agent signings have been Teemu Selanne’s friends.

He hasn’t rebuilt this team, he’s taped it up. The only reason we have a number 1 defenseman for the future is because it fell into Murray’s lap. If he hadn’t where would be on the future of the blueline? There isn’t a top pairing guy in the system, and Murray has shown he can’t generate a deal to go get one. All he can do is variations of Burke’s trade for Pronger.

Maybe you should talk to some hockey people Fish, and while you’re at it talk to a business person who can teach you about asset management. You can try to spin Murray’s falings all you want. I know enough about cognitive dissonance to recognize the behavior. However, the only thing this team can do is score. That’s great for a night at a hockey game, but it’s not going to get them much further than the first or second round.

Of course, I do hope I’m wrong.

We can afford him. His cap hit is barely larger than Blake’s. You can make space for a guy like that. I don’t know if we have the assets to get him out of Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t be opposed to a Bobby Ryan for Jordan Staal straight up trade.

I try to consider special teams play as completely independent from 5-on-5 play. A player can be incredibly defensively reliable in 5 on 5, but not a great shorthanded player. I think Perry is much better shorthanded than he is 5 on 5, in terms of defensive play. Moreover, I don’t think it’s problematic to use a third line winger on a PP unit.

As for Cogliano, when Murray finally acquires the faceoff man he seems to realize he needs, then I’ll have a more complete view on Cogliano. Until then, I think he’s a surplus piece. A good player who might not have a role.

When trying to figure out how good a player is on the powerplay, you have to consider multiple things. I have my own formula, which is PP production over PP minutes played, and you can add however many more specifics you want to that, depending on how accurate you need your results to be, such as quality of teammates while he’s getting his PP time, quality of the PKers, if he just got to come on at the end of the 2nd unit, and all of that. I’m not sure all that info is kept, however.

So you’re just looking at one thing, how many points he had on the powerplay. Of course his total there was low, he averaged only 24 seconds of PP time per game, and only played 35 games in the regular season. That means he did in fact come on at the very end of each PP. So looking at PP production by itself is pointless here, and not a good indication of his vision. Wellwood has good vision. You can ask Sharks fans if you want, they’ll all tell you, he’s very creative, sees the ice well, holds onto the puck well. Like I said he was at the top in a lot of advanced stats for them. He’s a good player.

As for shorthanded, there have been a few articles published recently with roundabout logic and confusing data where the author comes to the conclusion that faceoffs are baseless. NHL GMs certainly don’t think so, but that’s not enough to convince me, as most NHL GMs seem to have no idea what they’re doing. But in addition to the NHL GMs, I don’t believe that’s true at all. People are throwing it around as fact, oh it doesn’t matter that Cogliano can’t win a faceoff, but I think that’s 100% untrue. Wellwood winning 10-12% more of his shorthanded faceoffs gives him a huge edge to start out with over Cogliano. Unless Wellwood is absolutely awful defensively after the faceoff (and I have no reason to suspect that, in fact he’s always looked good to me, and the stats bear that out), then I don’t think you’d be losing any shorthanded ability with Wellwood instead of Cogliano. In fact Wellwood might even be better.

Kevin, as for locations and all that regarding UFAs, sure. If there was just one guy out there, and the Ducks didn’t get him, I would say maybe that’s the case, he just didn’t want to come here. But I mentioned three guys. Say Handzus prefers living in SJ over Anaheim, fine. That still leaves Belanger and Fiddler, and your biggest competition to get them are Edmonton, a rebuilding team in a place very few players want to live, and Dallas, a team with ownership issues that is “bleeding money” according to a story I read yesterday, and it’s Dallas. Dallas. I would say Bob Murray had the location and every other advantage over those two teams. Location can’t be used as an excuse here. Neither can money. Belanger got three years, 1.7 per year. That’s pitch perfect. Perfect term. If he has a great year, you don’t lose him the next year to a higher bidder, like if you signed him to a 1 year deal. And if he flops this year or next year, it’s a low cap-hit, and he comes off the books a season or two at worst down the road. There’s no excuse for not matching that offer to Belanger, or even upping it to 1.85 or 2, or leaving it at 1.7, but giving 2.5 mil the first year, and less the next two, short of front loading it just a little bit to add incentive to sign.

There are so many things you can do, especially for low cost players like that, especially when your competition to sign him is Edmonton. So there’s no excuse in my opinion.

My thoughts on your list:

1. Good, but Handzus has played over 80 games all last four seasons, and the other two both played over 70 games last season, and were all healthy for the playoffs, if I recall. It’s a plus now that the Ducks have Cogliano that he’s never been injured before, but that’s not a good enough reason to pick him over other, better players. If you limit yourself to just adding players who have never been injured, you’re being overly selective to your team’s detriment.
2. This is the potential argument. The thing about Cogliano, is he just got traded from a rebuilding team. The last place team in the league, in fact, and Cogliano couldn’t crack their top 6, even their top 9 at times. He’s undersized, which means he has a definite ceiling. Short of having the quickest hands in the NHL, if you’re that small, barring some other amazing skill in addition to speed (like St Louis’ hockey sense and grittiness, or whatever else), you’re going to have a ceiling. And over the years I’ve heard Oilers fans complain about his hands constantly. “If you have to trade one of Gagner and Cogliano, you trade Cogs because of his iron hands.” They’re exaggerating when they say he has bad hands, but you get the idea. And that’s the thing. He’s so miniature. I know why people thought he had potential, because he was good in junior. And that’s because he’s a junior player. He’s still a junior player in many respects. He’s so small, faster, I could see him tearing up junior, skating around players his size, defenseman who aren’t very good. But now he’s in the NHL. Everyone else is bigger and better, but he’s the same miniature guy, and other than his speed, he doesn’t have much to make up for that with. To be a top 6 guy, you have to be able to finish. He’s fast, but his hands are okay, not good enough to make him a top 6 guy, he really sucks at finishing, which is a big problem for any player looking to be productive offensively, he’s not a playmaking passer so he can’t make up for it that way, he’s really, really small… it’s just my opinion, but I don’t think he will ever be a good top 6 forward, or third line center, for that matter, although the latter is much more possible. The Ducks would be better off shifting him to wing right away on the 3rd line.
3. What qualifies as contributing? He played minutes on the PK? So did a lot of people. Playing minutes just means the coach decided to play you and you didn’t tell him to suck it. It’s how well you play those minutes. And the Oilers PK was awful. If it’s scoring however many points he got, how many other Oilers scored that many points? He didn’t score much, I know that. So then everyone else contributed too. “Still managed to contribute” is pretty much a meaningless statement in my mind. Every player on every team is technically contributing. Saying he’s on a bad team, but still managed to contribute, you could just as easily say he contributed to a bad team, to them being a bad team.
4). Offers a nice 2-way game, that relies on speed rather than grit? Is this good? Mcmillan relies on speed and grit. If you’re going to play on the checking line, you better offer both, and size would be nice, too. I don’t see how this is a plus. The Ducks already have Mcmillan, Sexton, even Etem, as guys who could bring speed to the third line. Speed isn’t what’s lacking, size, hockey sense, faceoffs, well rounded, complete players who bring a little of everything, that’s what lacking, and Cogliano certainly doesn’t bring as much of those things as Belanger, for instance.
5). Has great potential that he’s yet to realize… how do we know that? Maybe this is him, with realized potential. Potential is subjected. Great potential when he was drafted, yeah, Edmonton thought that or they wouldn’t have drafted him. And now they’ve changed their minds after watching him a lot more than any of us have, so they traded him.
6). Taking faceoffs against 1st or 2nd line guys doesn’t really matter. In many cases the 3rd line center is the faceoff specialist, not the top 2 guys. You do bring up something interesting saying all the Oilers were bad at faceoffs, which suggests he didn’t get much help from his wingers. However, I wrote that before checking your stats, which are misleading and wrong. Brule had a 53.3% FO%, Vandevelde 52.8, Horcoff 48.3. The Oilers may not be a great faceoff team as a whole, but others were at least able to manage respectable numbers. 41.6% is 41.6%. It’s not NHL level. You don’t get that from bad linemates. You get that from being bad at faceoffs.

As for liking the deal, I actually sort of liked it when I first heard it too, because this team needs so much help on the bottom lines, and they didn’t do anything on July 1st. A little high of an asking price, but I thought fine, a younger, cheaper alternative to some of the guys signed on July 1st, they’ll sign him to a 1.25mil cap hit, move him to wing, and then sign a real 3rd line center. I liked it within that frame. But instead, a budget conscious team just gave away 2.3 mil in their precious cap room on this guy, when better, bigger, more well-rounded guys who actually are good at the center position were signed for less on July 1. That’s when I stopped liking it. And today I started liking it even less when I say what Purcell re-signed for. Cogliano got Purcell money. Say what you want about Purcell just having one good season, and that’s why he didn’t get much more, but any talent scout will tell you, that’s the big, strong, well-rounded, versatile type of player many teams have, or would like to have, as their 3rd top line player, the 30 goal, 60 point, well-rounded, responsible guy with size, who does it all, and compliments your Sedins, or your Datsyuk and Zetterberg. Detroit would probably love to have him in that role on either the 1st or second line. That’s what Tampa got with their 2.3 mil, a top 6 guy with size, skill, hockey sense, a really good shot… and Anaheim got a 3rd line center who wins 41% of his faceoffs, who is as undersized as they come, has never been very productive.

Anyhow, the Ducks 3rd line was so awful last season, anything would be better. A lot of those guys, they were just unmemorable. Beleskey, Bonino, you felt you were watching the hockey player of equivalent of faceless anonymity almost. There was no identity. There was no one skill any of them brought that you felt helped the team, or that they could really do anything with. They were just bland, they didn’t create anything, and they left all the work to the upper lines. At least Cogliano, for all his faults, it’s Cogliano. When you hear his name, you don’t get a blank anonymous image in your mind. He has assets you can identity him by. You think speed and quickness. He at least has an identity, and brings certain skills to the table. That in and of itself will help the team. If Murray could find a 2nd line center already, and the 3rd line was Cogliano – Koivu – Sexton, that would be worlds apart from last year’s. Even if he can just find a good 3rd line center, so Cogliano doesn’t have to play there, Sexton is underrated to me, and having two really fast wingers like that, provided they are complimented by a bigger, well-rounded centerman, could actually be pretty effective. The whole problem with that is Murray seems to think he’s got his 3rd line center. That means not only is he wrong, and the Ducks have a problem at 3rd line center, but it will never be fixed because he doesn’t even know there’s a problem. He thinks he’s fixed it.

So that’s how I feel about it. I do like the deal in a certain frame. I just don’t think my frame lines up with Murray’s. As for Wellwood, like I said at the beginning of this post, his PP numbers don’t mean anything. He’s a good player. You don’t even have to use him on the PP. He’s desperate for a job, I think Murray would be a fool not to take a no-risk pretty-decent-reward flyer on this guy. At worst you have one of the most skilled 4th liners in the game. Since he’s going to be paid like a fourth liner at this point no matter where he ends up, even that by itself would be a good move, paying average 4th liner money (league minimum) and receiving a way-above-average 4th liner, if you get my logic here, that’s a win. You do that move. I’m just not quite sure why Bob Murray hasn’t already.