The only thing I like less in any analysis than blanket labeling is the lazy, inaccurate application of advanced analytics.
Meet Brandon Tanev, premature victim of plenty of both.
The labeling has been mostly about his bottom-six status with Winnipeg matched against the six-year, $21 million contract he just signed with the Penguins out of free agency. Some are aghast at the term, some at the dollars, some at both, and almost all of those critics apparently can't be bothered to compare within the free-agency class as a whole. And all of that, it's seemed, has been based on how the Jets deployed him behind a forward group loaded with elite talent.
Hm. What ever might the similarities be here?
Context is everything with this contract. Jim Rutherford didn't feel he needed to add several players, and he didn't feel the need to add more to his top six forwards or even his top nine, at least not against reigniting some consistent fire to a team that terribly lacked that all last winter. So, he freed up a few bucks in the Phil Kessel trade and pulled in the player he wanted.
Just as trades don't occur in a vacuum to be independently graded -- one of the most hollow forms of sports analysis across the board -- the same applies for a signing like this. I write this all the time, but it's not about winning the transaction. It's about winning games.
Of course this is an overpay. My goodness, that couldn't be any more obvious.
Also, who cares?
Tanev's $3.5 million fits under the salary cap and, if Rutherford so chooses, he's free to make another move or two to create more space. But in the interim, he and his lieutenants, operating within a one-day window with at least eight other teams known to be in pursuit, got exactly the guy they coveted for their specific situation.
Their. Specific. Situation.
Context is everything with Tanev's advanced analytics, too. He logged the second-most short-handed ice time of any Winnipeg forward this past winter, and his 42.27 Corsi For percentage was the lowest of any of them. The Penguins' five lowest, in order from the bottom: Matt Cullen, Riley Sheahan, Zach Aston-Reese, Teddy Blueger, Garrett Wilson and Bryan Rust.
Know what they all have in common?
Yep, penalty-killing and tons of defensive-zone starts, both of which are Corsi killers. And yet, no one would identify any of those five Penguins as anything other than among Mike Sullivan's most dependable defensive performers.
That's where the analytics have stopped in a couple studies I've read, though a couple others responsibly stressed that Tanev's relative Corsi -- which takes into account multiple other variables -- was a respectable -0.1.
This is an important acquisition for the franchise, so I'm going to split my own study here into two parts, the second one running Friday. And in tribute to all the lazy ones available all around, let's limit this one to Tanev's more easily recognized skills:
One thing will stand out above all, both in these clips and once Tanev takes the ice in black and gold: He can skate.
The goal above, from Game 3 of the Stanley Cup playoffs in St. Louis, presents no choice but to follow No. 13 gaining the eventual champions' blue line, criss-crossing with Andrew Copp, hurrying through the hashes and redirecting Copp's return behind Jordan Binnington. It's a huge situation -- winding up a Winnipeg road victory to stave off a 3-0 series deficit -- and he comes through with confidence in every phase of the sequence.
In particular, watch his head on the proverbial swivel. Some defensive forwards have that only for defense, as that's generally the origin of the coach's admonition. Some defensive forwards also are content to remain defensive, only sporadically feeling the need to contribute. Tanev's glancing around to read the whole scene, hungry to create and convert.
That's how a fourth-liner, buried beneath Patrik Laine, Blake Wheeler, Mark Scheifele and others, runs up a career-high 14 goals and 15 assists.
So's this:
That's short-handed. The more intricate metrics show Tanev never was the Jets' most efficient penalty-killing forward, but he was almost always Paul Maurice's choice to open the PK. And that up there is why. Maurice loved the threat Tanev's speed presented to an opposing power play and, unlike the way Sullivan would send out Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel for that purpose late in a kill, Maurice sought that disruption right away.
Not much to discuss with the actual sequence. The Senators are poked at the Winnipeg blue line, poor Maxime Lajoie, a decent-skating defenseman for Ottawa, has no chance to catch up, and James Reimer similarly has no chance on the blurred backhand.
Heck, it's amazing those Bell MTS Place endboards had a chance with Tanev slamming into them.
So now we've seen that he can skate and shoot, here's something different:
Another knock on the Tanev acquisition, this one mostly from my Manitoban friends, is that he benefited immensely from being part of a gifted fourth line that also included Copp and Adam Lowry. This is undeniably true. When those three were together, they were puck hogs at a Corsi rate of 58.27 percent. When Tanev skated with neither, that figure plummeted to 38.08.
At the same time, this is one of many Corsi usages that can be cherry-picked for convenience and often is. I'd prefer the glass-half-full approach in this case by suggesting that Tanev raised his own bar for the career year by being forced to create and keep possession with Copp and Lowry.
The vision, patience and concluding saucer to Tyler Myers up there isn't a common fourth-liner's feed. It's well done.
One more, and this one will feel extra special, I'll bet:
Oh, you betcha. No serious study of any fourth-liner could be complete without illustrating how he might exploit the Penguins' super-leaky power play.
This was from November up in the 'Peg -- Matt Sunday and I were there, and the visitors prevailed -- and that's the Jets being short-handed. True to form, Maurice has Tanev out early against the top unit, and Tanev gets it all going by out racing Kris Letang to a semi-50-50 puck in the Pittsburgh zone. He then smartly chips it forward to avert Letang's one-handed stab from behind.
This is where it gets neat. Tanev collects below the goal line, gazes back toward his defense, possibly considering a time-wasting back pass. Instead, perhaps sensing that Kessel's barely breaking a sweat in following him, he darts between the circles, tucks the puck away from a late swipe by Crosby and whips a wrister through a now-dizzy Casey DeSmith, who had to alter his stance a handful of times in as many seconds.
Tanev was like that all night. Super-annoying, super-competitive and skilled enough to make those traits count. And when opponents don't match that, he'll rise above.
Take a snapshot of that scenario. Again, context is everything.
