T.J. Oshie‘s asking price shooting upwards …
T.J. Oshie leads all pending unrestricted free agents in goals, points, points per game and skates on the top line of the league’s No. 1 seeded team.
As such, there will be no shortage of suitors for Oshie if and when he hits the open market.
While Oshie is a very good player, I’d be hesitant to throw big money at him and not just because he is on the wrong side of 30, although that certainly doesn’t help.
Oshie has played in 63 games this season and already easily surpassed his previous career high of 26 goals (he is sitting at 32). Some may suggest the highly skilled winger is finally putting it all together but there’s a big reason to believe he will never duplicate this kind of production. Let’s see if you can spot it.
Heading into the season Oshie’s career high in shooting percentage was 14.1, and he’d only ever surpassed 12% three times. This season Oshie is shooting 24.1%, which is more than 10% higher than his career average even accounting for the ridiculous season he is enjoying.
If Oshie were shooting 14.1% this year, which was the previous high over his first eight seasons, he’d have 19 goals on the year. A very solid total — that equates to 24 or 25 over 82 games — but a far cry from the pace he is scoring at now (42 per 82).
Again, Oshie is a good player but this season is the exception and not the norm. If a team pays him banking on this kind of goal production moving forward, they’re going to be awfully disappointed.
Patrick Eaves addition paying off for the Anaheim Ducks …
One issue with the Anaheim Ducks heading into the deadline was a lack of scoring depth.
They had a lot of replacement level players in their lineup, which caused the coaching staff to a) play lesser players with the top guys to try and shelter them or; b) have a bottom-6 made up mostly of players who can’t carry their weight.
In effort to address that issue, the Ducks went out and acquired Patrick Eaves from the Dallas Stars in exchange for a conditional 1st round pick.
From pretty much the word go, Eaves has replaced Corey Perry on the top line alongside Ryan Getzlaf and Rickard Rakell. The early returns have been fantastic.
In ~120 minutes together at 5v5 the Ducks have controlled 60% of the shots on goal and scored 83% of the goals (they’ve outscored the opposition 10-2) with the Rakell – Getzlaf – Eaves line on the ice.
Not only have they been dominant, but the addition of Eaves has pushed Corey Perry down the lineup, thus balancing the lines and giving the Ducks at least one high-end offensive player on each of their top three units.
It’s no coincidence the revamped Ducks have taken off winning five consecutive games and eight of their last 10.
They’re now a really tough team to match up against and I think we’ll see that shine through in the playoffs.
Note: data via corsica.hockey and stats.hockey.analysis.com.
Written by Todd Cordell (@ToddCordell)