McKenzie: Is there any doubt Russell would at least get 5 yrs x $5.5 million as UFA?

[JayP]

Originally Posted by DJones

Russel has 9 PP TGA in 94:06 minutes on short handed.

Brodie and Giordano probably have that many against them in the last 5 games. Hamilton has 3 against him in 19:05 minutes.

He is a great penalty killer, and if that isn't a good judge of a defensemens value then I don't know what to say. Apparently my eyes are deceiving me.

I don't know if Russell's stats actually back up that he's good at the PK relative to the rest of the league, but his best skills (skating and shot blocking) are well suited to the penalty kill. There aren't very many board battles to win - it's more about winning races to loose pucks and getting in the shooting lanes which is what Russell excels in.

Russell being a good penalty killer however doesn't imply he's a good defender at even strength though. The skills required to excel at each are very different. It gives him some additional value over his mediocre even strength play that's for certain, but not nearly enough to justify a 5 x 5.5m type of contract.

[DJones]

uSAT was for 5 on 5 haha. It was hidden by the drop down menu.

Well then.... How the hell does Ellis have such good numbers. That's unbelievable.

[Sandman]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Fenwick is a measure of unblocked shot attempts (uSAT). Basically if you or a teammate blocked a shot attempt, you won't get punished by Fenwick. If you failed to block a shot attempt, you recorded a Fenwick event against.

Kris Russell's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 44.67
TJ Brodie's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 38.46
Duncan Keith's Fenwick Against Per 60 = 38.54

So, on average, our goalies see 16% more puck (whether it misses, hits them, goes into the net, or hits iron) when Russell is on the ice than with Brodie on the ice.

But there's some context missing to that, and that's the fact that Keith/Brodie are regularily matched up against top lines that are going to "get theirs" no matter what. Smaller guys like Russell generally see middle pair competition. And yeah, they're smaller so they're at a disadvantage. But are they all at a disadvantage?

Russell = 44.67
Krug = 40.92
Spurgeon = 40.29
Vatanen = 39.12
Stralman = 35.13
Ellis = 32.76

I selected these guys because they're all smaller middle-pair defensemen (Former Flame Anton Stralman plays top pair with Hedman and Spurgeon does too with Suter). You can see that some of them post better stats than even Brodie/Keith but we'll chalk that down to things like deployment/competition. However. Russell. Gets. Killed.

In a stat that's supposed to favor shot blockers. If Russell were a better puck mover with tighter gap control, he would block less shots even at his current size, because he would have the puck more often.

This is an awesome post-this is what i was trying to illustrate with my earlier comment about killing cockroaches. Thanks man!