With Thanksgiving just yesterday, it made sense to expand on those who have feasted or been feasted upon.
The annual summer of paying and overpaying players often has its share of winners and losers. A month and a half in, we take a look at those who have been studs and those who have been duds.
Let’s examine some left wingers of note for today.
Stud From The Left Wing Position
Anthony Duclair — Columbus Blue Jackets
Sometimes free agent signings pay off in mysterious ways. Any team could have signed Duclair but the Columbus Blue Jackets took a chance. Inking the forward to a one year, $650,000 contract reminded many of the Sam Gagner signing. So far, this has worked out just as well. Duclair provides a dynamic that Columbus was missing — speed with attitude. He can blow the doors off a slower defenseman and has a deceptive shot to boot.
Overall, the left winger has tallied eight goals and 12 points in 21 games this year. Now, he is deployed a hair over 70% in the offensive zone. Again, so was Gagner. This is a bottom six deployment exploiting slower defensive pairs and lines. It works quite well and Duclair is allowed to create. Yes, mistakes have been made but the pluses have outweighed the minuses. Duclair stands to get a raise next season if this keeps up. His pace is a 20+ goal player once again.
Duds From The Left Wing Position
Ilya Kovalchuk — Los Angeles Kings
Alas, Kovalchuk plays like he plays. When the offense is rolling, he is a great asset at this stage. When it is not, Kovalchuk looks like a complete failure. It is all or nothing with the 35-year-old Russian. There features a lot of concerns that often appear as underlying numbers.
His metrics are about two percent below team relative but his production (5 goals, 9 assists) is okay. He is on pace for over 20+ goals and 40 assists. Los Angeles offered that third year for a reason. They wanted him in Los Angeles all the way back in 2010. However, we will not mention the plus/minus here as it is bad. What is more troublesome is the 2.3 shots per game which is down a third from his previous shot rate. Chances are also down by almost a third from when he played in New Jersey. His giveaway/takeaway ratio is at a career worst 6.5.
Too many games occur where Kovalchuk has been invisible. That has become worse over the past couple weeks. This leads to speculation that Kovalchuk may bolt once again to Russia if not this year then next.
James Neal — Calgary Flames
Neal has performed like an unmitigated disaster for the Calgary Flames. Everything that could have gone wrong has in the early going. In 21 games, the forward has fired 53 shots on net and has halfway decent metrics. Neal tallying just three goals and an assist is just hurtful at this point. Consider, he makes nearly $6 million a season.
Can Neal turn it around? Sure, he could. Is it likely? The problem exists that Neal has even been benched a couple times already. His even strength shooting percentage is among his career lows (near 6.5%). The actual shooting percentage by him is 5.7%. At 31, one has to wonder if Neal has lost a step and a few miles per hour on his shot.
Thomas Vanek — Detroit Red Wings
Vanek enjoyed a nice run with Columbus to end the regular season (15 points in 19 games). He cashed in modestly with Detroit at $3 million AAV. Vanek has performed well in Detroit before. Unfortunately, so far this has not quite gone to play as the winger has failed at an offensive role even. Vanek played around 2/3 of the time in the offensive zone (at press time).
The result comes down to a player who plays 12-13 minutes a night with just five points in 12 games. Average shots were near 2 shots dipped to 1.1, A bottom six winger is what Vanek has become at age 35. He has three assists in his last five contests but the minutes do not appear to be going up. Expect Vanek to cool off as his streaks will be few and far between.
