The Puck Stops Here
Why Is Jason Strudwick In The NHL?
by PuckStopsHere on 08/11/10 at 03:36 PM ET
Comments (14)
One thing that adjusted Corsi ratings are good for is to identify players who are failing to provide value to their team at even strength. These are the players with limited ice time who have the worst adjusted Corsi ratings in the NHL nonetheless. At the top of this list is Jason Strudwick of the Edmonton Oilers. This past season, Strudwick played 72 games on the Edmonton Oiler defence. He had no goals and six assists and put up the worst team and zone adjusted Corsi rating in the NHL, which shows he was a horrid player at puck possession. He isn’t a strong player without the puck either. Strudwick won’t top any defensive lists. For those efforts, the Edmonton Oilers re-signed Strudwick with a small raise.
Jason Strudwick is the kind of player who is given a lot of chances to play in the NHL despite his failures. He is a very hard working player and a very good teammate off the ice. This puts him in coaches’ good books. He is cheap. With his raise, he is still making $725,000 this year and in a salary capped environment that can be important. The problem is he is not an NHL calibre hockey player.
Jason Strudwick achieved a historical oddity last year. He took the fewest shots per minute in NHL history (at least since the NHL started publishing ice time on the web in 1998). It is really hard to look at Strudwick’s game and see why he is in the NHL. Without a salary cap, i am sure he wouldn’t be. Countless players who have been forced out of the NHL for salary reasons are better than he is.
If we look at his career, Strudwick has never been a top NHL player. He has been in the league since 1997/98 (with one year spent in Switzerland and a bit of early AHL time). In that time Strudwick has played 631 games and scored 53 points. His career bests are nine points in the same season and three goals. He has been a utility player who has seen shifts at forward and defence. Each season in his career has been filled with healthy scratches. In fact, last year at age 34 he set a career high with 72 NHL games played.
If you want a quick reason for why the Edmonton Oilers finished last in the NHL this is as good as any. Their defensive depth was so poor that an aging utility player who has proven himself to be of questionable quality in the past and was arguably the worst defenceman in the league last year managed to set a career high in games played with them. One number to watch if the Oilers are to improve is Strudwick’s games played and total ice time. Both will need to drop. Somebody with more talent will need to take his spot.
Jason Strudwick is becoming a more common style of player who survives in the NHL. He is a good guy to have around who will work cheaply. He isn’t very good, but in a salary capped world you need some cheap players for the bottom of your roster. It is a shame that in the NHL next year we will get to see more Jason Strudwick, given his failures and somebody like former Oiler defenceman Denis Grebeshkov, who is a significantly better player, having put up 21 points in 51 games last year, will be toiling in the KHL because nobody would pay his bill. This is not good for the NHL overall. The creation of a role for an otherwise AHL or other minor pro league player to hang around the NHL working cheap to stay under the salary cap, while more talented players cannot stay in the league is a disturbing trend of the current CBA.
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Comments
It is really hard to look at Strudwick’s game and see why he is in the NHL. Without a salary cap, i am sure he wouldn’t be.
He has been in the league since 1997/98 (with one year spent in Switzerland and a bit of early AHL time). In that time Strudwick has played 631 games and scored 53 points.
Presumably, Jason Strudwick used to be really good, but his production and performance has tailed off lately. Probably something to do with the big bad salary cap.
Get real - would the Oilers really be spending more than $725k on an equivalent replacement player for Strudwick? Budgetary restrictions, and organisational ineptitude, meant there were plenty of crap players in the NHL before the lockout, just as there are now.
Posted by fcjbencard on 08/11/10 at 04:17 PM ET
“He is a very hard working player and a very good teammate off the ice”
Is your answer, well done.
Posted by NathanBC on 08/11/10 at 04:21 PM ET
agreed with ur analysis. the reason he got to play 72 games is injuries to Staios, Smid, Souray, Grebeshkov. He was the #7/8 d-men at the start of last year. i remember games last year against wild and hawks where tom gilbert was the only regular nhl d-men in our lin
Posted by Oilers Rock from Edmonton, Alberta on 08/11/10 at 04:25 PM ET
Jason Strudwick might ask, “Why does this blog exist?”
Posted by Incognetis from Delaware... Hi... I'm in... Delaware on 08/11/10 at 05:09 PM ET
I have to be honest, I am getting really tired of seeing countless “Corsi” ratings articles. Seriously, stop shoving this crap down our throats. Jason Strudwick belongs in the NHL for reasons “Corsi” ratings can never help explain.
Posted by gretzky_to_lemieux on 08/11/10 at 06:34 PM ET
Jason Strudwick belongs in the NHL for reasons “Corsi” ratings can never help explain.
You are right incompetence of Oiler management and a salary cap system that puts a value on cheap should be AHLers who are willing to work cheap in the NHL to fill out a roster have nothing to do with Corsi ratings.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 08/11/10 at 06:37 PM ET
I feel that you’re incorrectly blaming the salary cap for the reason Grebeshkov and others have fled to the KHL for dollar amounts they could not get in the NHL.
First off, Grebeshkov has bolted to Russia before and back then, it wasn’t a case of room under the salary cap either. This guy just has a history of going back to Russia.
While at a very basic level, the CBA has created a set payroll limit for talents, it’s not like there wasn’t salary cap room out there to sign him. Grebeshkov was not worth more than the $3.15M he got the previous season, but was offered more by a Russian league that’s desperate to overpay to poach any talented names they think they can. If Grebeshkov wanted to play in the NHL, he needed to accept that he would make less money for it.
If you want to look at the problems of the CBA as a reason for losing middling talents like Grebeshkov, quit looking at the cap and start looking at the other pieces of the CBA. It’s not like every team out there is spending up and can’t afford Grebeshkov’s roughly $3M salary. There are more teams that can’t afford the dollars to pay that than there are teams that can’t afford the cap hit.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/11/10 at 07:09 PM ET
agree with j.j, grebeshkov did priced himself out of NHL
Posted by Oilers Rock from Edmonton, Alberta on 08/11/10 at 08:45 PM ET
i like how boogaard havent scored a goal in past 4 seasons. his last goal jan 27. 2OO6
Posted by Oilers Rock from Edmonton, Alberta on 08/12/10 at 12:09 AM ET
grebeshkov did priced himself out of NHL
Nobody was pricing themselves out of the NHL until the salary cap came in. The salary cap is a direct cause of the loss of generally mid-level NHL talent to be replaced by cheap should be AHLers. That is not good for the quality of the hockey we see in the NHL.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 08/12/10 at 01:42 AM ET
agree that the quality of hockey may have reduced but on the bright side there is more competition in the league than ever before.
Posted by Oilers Rock from Edmonton, Alberta on 08/12/10 at 06:31 AM ET
The salary cap is a direct cause of the loss of generally mid-level NHL talent to be replaced by cheap should be AHLers.
No, it is not the cap, it is the CBA. Fans and bloggers alike have a very large problem separating the cap, which is a part of the CBA from the entire agreement that went into place and it causes a big problem. Cutting out a few teams that can’t afford the cap space for these middling players isn’t what’s making players go to Russia. Grebeshkov specifically offered a slight reduction in his salary to the Nashville Predators, which they declined for monetary reasons (they spent $12M under the cap last year) which had nothing to do with the cap, but everything to do with the CBA. They are not interchangeable terms and it causes a lot of confusion and misdirected anger when they’re used as such.
It’s interesting that it seems the teams that primarily employ your would-be-AHLers are the poorest teams.
The concept that mid-level talent like Grebeshkov didn’t price itself out of the NHL before the current collective bargaining agreement is as sound a reason for having the collective bargaining agreement in place as it is against the document. Teams overpaying for mid-level guys like Grebeshkov and Nabokov or anybody who’s put on a Rangers’ sweater in the last ten years was doing to the NHL what the KHL is currently doing to itself. That is not a viable long-term strategy. If Grebeshkov for Strudwick is a downward move that lowers the quality of all NHL players combined by 0.00001 then I’ll still rest easy with the confidence that we’ll still have a league in ten years.
Besides, in many of these cases, all that the player leaving does is open the door for an untested talent to come in. Some of them make it, others don’t. The exodus to Russia would have to happen at a much higher rate or involving much better talent to really concern me. The KHL is a joke.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/12/10 at 10:35 AM ET
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The Puck Stops Here was founded during the 2004/05 lockout as a place to rant about hockey. The original site contains over 1000 posts, some of which were also published on FoxSports.com.
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