Jim Rutherford is on a transaction hot streak, from the shrewd moves he made during the offseason (trading a sixth rounder for John Marino) to the swaps that he didn't make (keeping goalie Tristan Jarry amid a salary cap and roster crunch). But even a Hall of Fame GM with three Stanley Cups on his resume occasionally makes a dud of a trade.
Instead of returning to the offensive heights reached during his early NHL tenure, Alex Galchenyuk -- picked up from the Coyotes along with defense prospect Pierre-Olivier Joseph in exchange for Phil Kessel -- dragged down the Penguins' scoring attack while playing ineffective, disinterested defense. On a team that's largely dominating puck possession, the former third overall pick in the NHL draft was arguably Pittsburgh's least valuable player.
But Rutherford is not one to stubbornly stand by his previous moves. When something isn't working, he acts. He did just that on Monday by shipping Galchenyuk, defensive prospect Calen Addison and a protected first-round pick to the Minnesota Wild for winger Jason Zucker (reportedly part of Rutherford's preferred trade package for Kessel last offseason, before Phil nixed the deal).
What made Galchenyuk such a poor fit in Pittsburgh?
Let's break down his LVP performance.
Galchenyuk flashed offensive upside in his teens and early twenties with the Montreal Canadiens, but he was barely visible with the Penguins. He has career lows in goals per game (0.11, 0.25 career average), assists (0.27, 0.34 career average) and points (0.38, 0.59 career average). With Galchenyuk on the ice, the Penguins generated -2.2 percent fewer shots on offense per 60 minutes of five-on-five play, -3.1 percent fewer scoring chances and -0.8 percent fewer goals compared to when he was on the bench, according to Natural Stat Trick. He's posting career worst rates in all three of those advanced categories.
The 26-year-old is rarely firing the puck on the net (a career-low 1.44 shots per game, compared to a 2.04 average during his NHL tenure). And when he does, Galchenyuk is taking lower-danger shots. During his career, Galchenyuk has taken 14 percent of his total shots from the areas on the ice that are directly in front of the neutral zone, according to the Icy Data website. This year, that rate of far-away shots has doubled to 28 percent. Why does that matter? Shots taken from that distance rarely turn into goals (just 20 percent of total NHL goals scored this year have come from just in front of the neutral zone). For a guy once considered a quality goal scorer, he has been a low-volume, low-value shooter in 2019-20.
Some players can get away with modest offensive production thanks to strong defensive play. Galchenyuk is not one of those players. He's an offense-first, offense-only player. And true to form, he has boosted the other team's offensive game this year. With Galchenyuk skating at even strength, the Penguins gave up 7.4 percent more shots per 60 minutes, four percent more scoring chances and two percent more goals compared to when he was on the bench.
With mediocre play on both sides of the puck, Galchenyuk has arguably been one of the league's worst players to regularly suit up this season. Of the 374 NHL forwards who have skated at least 300 minutes during five-on-five play, Galchenyuk ranks 335th in relative shot share. With Galchenyuk skating, Pittsburgh produced -5.2 percent fewer of the total shots taken in the game (combining shots for and shots against). That's the second-worst rate among Penguins forwards with 300+ minutes at even strength:
In case you're wondering, Zucker has a relative shot share of -2.5 percent this year. That looks like an outlier, though, considering he boosted his team's shot share by about +3.5 percent over the previous two seasons and has been in positive territory every year since 2014-15.
The Kessel trade was at least partially motivated by the desire to clear salary cap space beyond 2020, and replenish the organization's defensive prospect depth (which took a hit again with the loss of Addison). But the Penguins surely expected more out of Galchenyuk, who averaged a career-low 11:29 of ice time per game. Much like he did with Derick Brassard last season, Rutherford repackaged a disappointing trade acquisition on an expiring contract to pick up a longer-term asset (Zucker is under contract through 2022-23), albeit at the cost of one of the game's better defensive prospects and a lower-value first-rounder.
MORE PENGUINS
• Turbo-charged offense: There's a long way to go on Brandon Tanev's six-year, $21 million deal, but it's easy to understand why coach Mike Sullivan said that the former Winnipeg speedster has been everything the team had hoped for and more. True to form, Tanev has been a defensive badger. With Tanev skating, the Penguins have surrendered just 19.6 scoring chances per 60 minutes of five-on-five play. That's the fourth-lowest rate of scoring chances against among all NHL forwards with 500+ minutes of even-strength ice time. But for a guy who was once an offensive zero, Tanev is chipping in a respectable number of points. He's averaging 0.43 per game this season, which is the fourth consecutive year in which he has raised that rate (0.08 in 2016-17, 0.3 in 2017-18 and 0.36 in 2018-19). With 11 goals, Tanev is on pace to easily top his previous career high (14 last year), and he's doing much of that damage right in front of the net. Tanev has scored 38 percent of his goals within the crease, according to the Icy Data website (the league average is 22 percent).
• Elite lamp lighting: Speaking of guys who are exceeding offensive expectations, Bryan Rust is authoring one of the best goal-scoring seasons by a Penguins player during the new millennium. Rust has the ninth-highest single-season goals per game rate (0.55) among Penguins since the start of the 2000 season (minimum 30 games played). He ranks behind only Mario Lemieux (0.81 in 2000-01), Sidney Crosby (0.78 in 2010-11), Evgeni Malkin (0.67 in 2011-12), Jaromir Jagr (0.64 in 2000-01), Crosby (0.63 in 2009-10), Crosby yet again (0.59 in 2016-17), Malkin (0.57 in 2007-08) and Alex Kovalev (0.56 in 2000-01). With Jake Guentzel out for at least the regular season and practically every other star player missing significant time, Rust's breakout couldn't have come at a better time.
PIRATES
• Holland's sinker: The Pirates recently signed journeyman lefty Derek Holland to a minor league contract, adding another contender for the team's fifth starter slot or a long-relief option in the bullpen. Holland was a perfectly serviceable starter as recently as 2018, when he posted an adjusted ERA that was six percent better than the overall MLB average in 171.1 innings pitched for the Giants. 2019 was a trainwreck, though. The 33-year-old was pummeled while splitting the season between the Giants and the Cubs, with an adjusted ERA that was 30 percent worse than average. Holland's low-90s sinker was the main culprit. He threw the pitch in the zone less often (54.7 percent of the time in '18, 50.9 percent in '19, according to Fangraphs) and got fewer chases on sinkers thrown off the plate (33.3 percent outside swing rate in '18, 28.2 percent in '19). In 2018, batters hit a home run 9.7 percent of the time that they hit a fly ball off Holland's sinker. Last year, that rate nearly doubled (17.2 percent). Holland's sinker was +0.9 runs better than the MLB average per 100 pitches thrown in 2018, but -0.55 runs worse last season. He relies heavily on that pitch (30 percent of the time), so Holland has to re-discover his sinker lest it sink his career.
• A hitting Riddle: Continuing an offseason-long theme, the Pirates signed another position player who excels defensively and gets the bat knocked out of his hands. JT Riddle has been superb while playing shortstop, posting +13 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) in what amounts to about a season's worth of MLB playing time at the spot. DRS measures how many runs a player saves or costs his team compared to an average defender at his position, while accounting for range, turning double plays, throwing arm and errors. He also got some playing time in center field last year with the Marlins and graded out as average defensively. The hitting, though, has been brutal. In more than 700 career plate appearances in the majors, Riddle has a park and league-adjusted On-Base-Plus Slugging Percentage that's 43 percent below the MLB average. Among the 320 players with at least 700 PAs over the past three years, Riddle has the 11th-worst adjusted batting line in the game. He and Luke Maile might become the best of friends in Bradenton.
• Catcher’s got a gun: Controlling the running game might not be as important as it once was, given the high-powered nature of today’s game and the league wide decline in stolen base attempts (teams averaged just 0.47 per game last season, the lowest rate since 1971). But Jacob Stallings excels in this space, too. Stallings threw out 40 percent of base runners attempting a steal in 2019, well above the 26 percent MLB average. And when you consider the arm strength that he possesses, it’s not surprising. At his best, Stallings unleashed his throws to second or third base at about 86 mph, according to MLB Statcast. Statcast measures catcher arm strength by looking at "max effort" throws, or the top ten percent (in terms of velocity) that a catcher fired to nab a runner. That ranked seventh-highest among all qualified MLB catchers. From stealing extra strikes with pitch framing, to preventing passed balls, to vanquishing base runners, Stallings is an asset behind the plate.
STEELERS
• All-time great DB play: The Steelers surrendered a first-round pick to acquire Minkah Fitzpatrick, and the 23-year-old safety made that investment look brilliant by picking off five passes during an All-Pro season in 2019. By some measures, Fitzpatrick had one of the best seasons ever for a Pittsburgh defensive back. Pro Football Reference tracks a stat called Approximate Value (AV), which seeks to measure a player’s overall contributions. AV is adjusted by era and by position on the field, to allow for more apples-to-apples comparisons. With 19 total AV, Fitzpatrick’s 2019 season is tied for second-best among Steelers defensive backs during the post-merger era (1970-present). Rod Woodson’s 1990 season (20) comes in first, followed by Fitzpatrick, Woodson in 1992 (19), Troy Polamalu in 2008 (18), Woodson in 1994 (18), Mel Blount in 1975 (17) and Woodson in 1993 (17). Just two years into his career, Fitzpatrick is keeping company with Hall of Famers.
• Samuels' hands: Jaylen Samuels' second-year struggles weren't confined to the running game. Samuels averaged nearly two yards less per rushing attempt in 2019 (2.7) than in 2018 (4.6), but his once-stellar work as a receiver slipped, too. His catch rate declined from 89.7 percent in '18 to 82.5 percent in '19, and his drop rate climbed from zero to 8.8 percent. And, when Samuels did catch the ball, he didn't make defenders miss. As a rookie, the North Carolina State standout broke a tackle every 4.3 receptions. Last year, he broke a tackle every 47 catches--as in, he broke one tackle on a catch all year. On a per-play basis, Samuels was 36.4 percent better than the average running back in the receiving game in '18, according to Football Outsiders. In 2019, he was -8.3 percent worse than average. Samuels struggled with injuries, ran behind a mediocre offensive line and caught passes from second and third-string QBs, and those factors surely played a role in his poor play. But this guy has gone from an intriguing offensive weapon entering last year to someone who could be pushed for a roster spot during training camp.
•Alualu’s impact: With the Steelers potentially set to lose Javon Hargrave in free agency, and with Stephon Tuitt returning from yet another injury, let’s not forget about the important role that Tyson Alualu plays on the defensive line. The former top-ten overall pick in the NFL draft had perhaps his finest season in 2019. Alualu rated as the 11th-best interior defender in the league according to Pro Football Focus’ 0-100 grading system, which accounts for a player’s pass rush and run-stuffing skills. With an 80 overall grade, Alualu blew past his previous career best mark by PFF (66.5 in 2017). Now, the question is whether the 32-year-old can sustain that performance—and do so while taking more snaps (had had 432 in 2019, or 40 percent of the Steelers' total defensive plays).
THE NATIONAL TREND
• MLB super powers: Four teams topped the 100-win mark during the 2019 MLB season, and it looks like those same clubs are poised to dominate again in 2020. According to the Depth Charts projections on Fangraphs, the Astros (103 projected wins), Dodgers (101), Yankees (98), Angels (94) and Twins (94) look like the strongest teams as we enter spring training. The only newcomer in that top five—and the only team that didn’t win triple-digit games last year—is the Angels (just 72 wins in 2019). The Pirates, meanwhile, are projected for a modest improvement to 76 wins.
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