Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Sam Gagner had 50 points last season and few would even call him a 3rd liner.
"Lines" are based on even strength usage and production and historically Brouwer's ES production rate is close to high end fourth liner and low end 3rd liners. That was before this last year.
What Brouwer is though, like Gagner albeit not stylistically, is a power play specialist.
Call a spade a spade, he's a borderline 3rd liner who is a power play specialist. When he isn't playing like he did last year, which at ES was below 4th line level.
Brouwer might bounce back to a 35 point forward, but that doesn't mean he will be a difference make outside of the PP. Borderline 3rd liner is apt. You're still better off with a real solid 3rd liner on your 3rd line. Regardless of what Brouwer does on the PP. A real solid 3rd liner should hit 30+ points without copious power play time to pad stats on.
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Interesting, but completely off the mark.
Let's take a look at the actual league and see how many 'real solid 3rd liners' there are:
Last year, there were 192 forwards that got 30 points. That is 6.4 per team. That means that, on average, each team had 0.4 solid 3rd liners.
And that's when we include PPPs.
If we
exclude PPPs, in order to weed out those really solid 3rd liners that don't rely on those nasty PPs, we find that there are a grand total of 8 -
yes eight - 3rd liners that managed 30 points excluding the PP.
And of the 8,
six of them got exactly 30 points and one got 32. The only 3rd liner in the NHL that got more than 32 points excluding the PP was Pomminville. He managed 40. So good for Minnesota.
It total, there were 147 forwards that got 30 points excluding the PP. That works out to 4.9 per team.
Here are Brouwer's point totals, excluding PPPs, in prior years:
09/10 CHI: 27
10/11 CHI: 23
11/12 WAS: 28
12/13 WAS: 17 (lockout season, on pace for 30)
13/14 WAS: 22
14/15 WAS: 29
15/16 STL: 29
16/17 CAL: 14
Now, which of those seasons is not like the others?
Again, keeping in mind that there were a total of eight 3rd liners that got 30 non-PP points last year (and 7 of the 8 had 32 points or less), I would say that, in the 7 seasons before joining the Flames,
his having 27-29 non-PP points 4 times, and being on pace for 30 in the lockout season, look like pretty fricking solid 3rd line numbers to me.
So enough with the 4th liner comments. He isn't one. He has never been one.