Player Discussion Artem Zub (D) Part 2 [Extended 4 years @ $4.6M]

[topshelf15]

I can see DeBrincat wanting term. This is his time to get paid and set himself up for life.

I hope you are right,he feels like when Hossa signed with Chicago to complete their young and eventual dominate top 6

 

[Micklebot]

Think thats how we end up keeping Debrincat as well

Short term for DeBrincat would probably cost more than long term, we'd be buying exclusively prime years.

 

[The Devilish Buffoon]

Looking at "comparable" DMen who have signed, we can look at the following guys

- Hampus Lindholm - 8yrs x 6.5m
- Colton Parayko - 8yrs x 6.5m
- Mattias Ekholm - 4yrs x 6.25m
- Ryan Pulock - 8yrs x 6.15m
- Erik Cernak - 8yrs x 5.2m
- Rasmus Ristolainen - 5yrs x 5.1m
- Ben Chiarot - 4yrs x 4.75m
- Connor Murphy - 4yrs x 4.4m
- TBD: Mackenzie Weegar (supposed 8yrs x 6.5m)

IMO the top 4 guys clearly separate themselves from Zub. I would expect something in the range of the bottom 4 guys, but mostly likely the bottom 3.

I could see a deal happening somewhere within this range:
- 4 x 4.75m
- 5 x 5.25m
- 6 x 5.5m
- 7 x 5.0m
- 8 x 4.75m

I would be happy with any of the above.

 

[Micklebot]

Looking at "comparable" DMen who have signed, we can look at the following guys

- Hampus Lindholm - 8yrs x 6.5m
- Colton Parayko - 8yrs x 6.5m
- Mattias Ekholm - 4yrs x 6.25m
- Ryan Pulock - 8yrs x 6.15m
- Erik Cernak - 8yrs x 5.2m
- Rasmus Ristolainen - 5yrs x 5.1m
- Ben Chiarot - 4yrs x 4.75m
- Connor Murphy - 4yrs x 4.4m
- TBD: Mackenzie Weegar (supposed 8yrs x 6.5m)

IMO the top 4 guys clearly separate themselves from Zub. I would expect something in the range of the bottom 4 guys, but mostly likely the bottom 3.

I could see a deal happening somewhere within this range:
- 4 x 4.75m
- 5 x 5.25m
- 6 x 5.5m
- 7 x 5.0m
- 8 x 4.75m

I would be happy with any of the above.

How exactly did you determine those were Zub's comparables?

Why not guys like:

Tanev 4.5 x 4
Toews 4.1 x 4
Larsson 4 x 4
Manson 4.5 x 4
Oleksiak 4.6 x 5

 

[The Devilish Buffoon]

How exactly did you determine those were Zub's comparables?

1) All 20-40pt D
2) All within 2-3 yrs of his age
3) All between 21-23.5m per game (aside from Cernak). All other guys besides Parayko & Ekholm were in the 21-22m range.

The names at the top (Lindholm/Parayko/Pulock/Ekholm) were mostly included as a means of showing what range Zub isn't in, though.

And I didn't include those other names because I set a cut-off date of Sept 1 2021. Just realizing I accidentally forgot Manson but I would include him, too. I feel like Toews was signed too long ago to be relevant, but those other names could all be included, too, without weakening the relevance (and probably would strengthen it).

 

[Micklebot]

1) All 20-40pt D
2) All within 2-3 yrs of his age
3) All between 21-23.5m per game (aside from Cernak). All other guys besides Parayko & Ekholm were in the 21-22m range.

Ok, I added some alternative comparables in an edit before seeing your rationale,

1. Doesn't make sense to me as a range, Zub is on the lower end of you range, something like 15-35 would make more sense as it's +/- 10 from Zub's typical production.
2. Makes sense to me,
3. Again, Zub's career high is on the low end of your mins range, and he was much lower his first year. 19-23.5 would make more sense as it's +/- 2 mins from Zub's career high as opposed to only guys who met or exceeded his career high.

 

[Sun God Nika]

Going to FA makes a ton of sense for Zub he is a desirable asset that plays a really important position.

Zub will get to see a bunch of destinations and a bunch of different term and AAV options. He is also going to play in front of a strong forward group this year which let him look better than he has in the past.

Obviously if Ottawa is willing to pay what the agent is asking and Zub really likes it here (which I believe he does) a deal before then is possible. But this isn’t as easy as “just sign the guy”

 

[bicboi64]

Tanev 4.5 x 4
Toews 4.1 x 4
Larsson 4 x 4
Manson 4.5 x 4
Oleksiak 4.6 x 5

Those names are the guys I'm comparing Zub to in terms of impact and ability. I'm really hoping we can manage to acquire one of those guys. I doubt someone like Toews or Manson is available, but would love to see someone like Tanev, Larsson or Oleksiak on our second pairing. If the Flames want to sign Weegar long term, we might be able to poach Tanev off them! Zub and Tanev in our top 4 would be sexy

 

[topshelf15]

Short term for DeBrincat would probably cost more than long term, we'd be buying exclusively prime years.

I was only thinking he may want another really long term deal as FA ,but if he likes it here then a long term would be great

 

[JD1]

The strength of our D hinges on the pace at which Sanderson moves into the top 4. There's plenty of comparables to suggest that can happen quickly. Zub, Hamonic, Zaitsev and the two rookies isn't a disaster with the LD side anchoring pairs.

Everyone is concerned about the D. It's already improved as a result of subtraction and we've improved our situation in net as well. 266 goals against. Edmonton was 16th at 252. That's a very modest improvement at get to the league mid point.

We scored 227. NYR was 16th with 252. That's 27 more to get to the midpoint and a bigger hill to climb.

I've read all kinds of pundit articles that say the offence is good but the D is weak. I think that's just a weak argument. It smacks of saying "if I keep my criticism to the D, it'll sound like I know what I'm talking about"

Basically every 6 game segment, we need to give up one less goal. If we do that, we're league average. Is that hard to achieve? I think we all believe that scoring is going to be our strength, we need an extra goal every 3 games to be average.

the biggest issue might be seeing more starters on the other side of the rink making those goals harder to come by. Not for DeBrincat and Giroux, but our young core hasn't seen a lot of NHL starting goaltending to this point in their careers

 

[topshelf15]

The strength of our D hinges on the pace at which Sanderson moves into the top 4. There's plenty of comparables to suggest that can happen quickly. Zub, Hamonic, Zaitsev and the two rookies isn't a disaster with the LD side anchoring pairs.

Everyone is concerned about the D. It's already improved as a result of subtraction and we've improved our situation in net as well. 266 goals against. Edmonton was 16th at 252. That's a very modest improvement at get to the league mid point.

We scored 227. NYR was 16th with 252. That's 27 more to get to the midpoint and a bigger hill to climb.

I've read all kinds of pundit articles that say the offence is good but the D is weak. I think that's just a weak argument. It smacks of saying "if I keep my criticism to the D, it'll sound like I know what I'm talking about"

Basically every 6 game segment, we need to give up one less goal. If we do that, we're league average. Is that hard to achieve? I think we all believe that scoring is going to be our strength, we need an extra goal every 3 games to be average.

the biggest issue might be seeing more starters on the other side of the rink making those goals harder to come by. Not for DeBrincat and Giroux, but our young core hasn't seen a lot of NHL starting goaltending to this point in their careers

The defense will finally get some help from the forwards,by having possession more our defense metrics should improve...

 

[Micklebot]

The strength of our D hinges on the pace at which Sanderson moves into the top 4. There's plenty of comparables to suggest that can happen quickly. Zub, Hamonic, Zaitsev and the two rookies isn't a disaster with the LD side anchoring pairs.

Everyone is concerned about the D. It's already improved as a result of subtraction and we've improved our situation in net as well. 266 goals against. Edmonton was 16th at 252. That's a very modest improvement at get to the league mid point.

We scored 227. NYR was 16th with 252. That's 27 more to get to the midpoint and a bigger hill to climb.

I've read all kinds of pundit articles that say the offence is good but the D is weak. I think that's just a weak argument. It smacks of saying "if I keep my criticism to the D, it'll sound like I know what I'm talking about"

Basically every 6 game segment, we need to give up one less goal. If we do that, we're league average. Is that hard to achieve? I think we all believe that scoring is going to be our strength, we need an extra goal every 3 games to be average.

the biggest issue might be seeing more starters on the other side of the rink making those goals harder to come by. Not for DeBrincat and Giroux, but our young core hasn't seen a lot of NHL starting goaltending to this point in their careers

I think goaltending is a bit of a wildcard, we upgraded on Murray for sure, but Forsberg had a bit of a career year, no guarantee he keeps that pace

I also find it interesting that when you look at xG metrics, things get more cloudy.

We were 16th in xGF all situations, which is pretty darn good considering, but 7th worst in xGA/60. Kind of the opposite of the raw goal numbers with more work to do on the defensive side, but aligns more with the general consensus.

We've done a lot to improve the offence, I think we'll be fine in that regard, and the best defense is being the team with the puck, so we should see some better defensive outcomes based on that alone, but as you mentioned we did improve the D albeit not as obviously as we did the offense, and I truly believe Sanderson will quickly become an impact player for us.

 

[JD1]

I think goaltending is a bit of a wildcard, we upgraded on Murray for sure, but Forsberg had a bit of a career year, no guarantee he keeps that pace

I also find it interesting that when you look at xG metrics, things get more cloudy.

We were 16th in xGF all situations, which is pretty darn good considering, but 7th worst in xGA/60. Kind of the opposite of the raw goal numbers with more work to do on the defensive side, but aligns more with the general consensus.

We've done a lot to improve the offence, I think we'll be fine in that regard, and the best defense is being the team with the puck, so we should see some better defensive outcomes based on that alone, but as you mentioned we did improve the D albeit not as obviously as we did the offense, and I truly believe Sanderson will quickly become an impact player for us.

I'm not a big fan of the xGF stat. Statistically I get it, but it's not really reflective of the game.

If two guys breakout at their Blueline on a 2 on 1, that's a scoring opportunity. The fans stand up. If the shooter whiffs on the pass across, the homesite fans let out a collective groan yet it's not included in the xGF stat. I get that a missed shot has zero percent chance of going in, so does a 30 foot putt that pulls up an inch short.

Anyway, our offence is stronger. That should help with possession. Our D is stronger and that should help transitioning out.

 

[Micklebot]

I'm not a big fan of the xGF stat. Statistically I get it, but it's not really reflective of the game.

If two guys breakout at their Blueline on a 2 on 1, that's a scoring opportunity. The fans stand up. If the shooter whiffs on the pass across, the homesite fans let out a collective groan yet it's not included in the xGF stat. I get that a missed shot has zero percent chance of going in, so does a 30 foot putt that pulls up an inch short.

Anyway, our offence is stronger. That should help with possession. Our D is stronger and that should help transitioning out.

It's certainly not perfect but neither is a goals stat when it comes to predicting future outcomes. When a goalie let's in a stinker, that's not representative of offence created by the opposition, but these sceneraios are generally going to balance out, so while I can point to specific scenarios where either stat fails, you need to look at the forest, not the trees if you want to get a more reliable sense of what the future entails.

The one thing xG stats do well is remove goaltending from the equation, and besides, if your team is wiffing on passes so frequently that it's affect the metric, well, that will probably show up in goals stats too. The problem they have is they also remove finishing ability, so a muffin of a shot is weighed equally to a sniper wiring it. Tkachuk is a bit of a poster boy for creating a ton of xGF without actually creating high quality chances.

I'm not going to argue xG are the be all and end all of stats by any means, but I definitely feel they add something to just looking at Goals stats, the more data the better, with goals you only get 200-300 data points for a given team, with xG your looking at 3000-4000. There will be some garbage in either data set, but I guess the hope is the size of the sample is enough to smooth out the garbage. I think the smaller the games set you have, the better off you are looking at xGF. Where it evens out I'm not sure.

 

[JD1]

It's certainly not perfect but neither is a goals stat when it comes to predicting future outcomes. When a goalie let's in a stinker, that's not representative of offence created by the opposition, but these sceneraios are generally going to balance out, so while I can point to specific scenarios where either stat fails, you need to look at the forest, not the trees if you want to get a more reliable sense of what the future entails.

The one thing xG stats do well is remove goaltending from the equation, and besides, if your team is wiffing on passes so frequently that it's affect the metric, well, that will probably show up in goals stats too. The problem they have is they also remove finishing ability, so a muffin of a shot is weighed equally to a sniper wiring it. Tkachuk is a bit of a poster boy for creating a ton of xGF without actually creating high quality chances.

I'm not going to argue xG are the be all and end all of stats by any means, but I definitely feel they add something to just looking at Goals stats, the more data the better, with goals you only get 200-300 data points for a given team, with xG your looking at 3000-4000. There will be some garbage in either data set, but I guess the hope is the size of the sample is enough to smooth out the garbage. I think the smaller the games set you have, the better off you are looking at xGF. Where it evens out I'm not sure.

I prefer scoring chances and hdcf.

 

[Micklebot]

I prefer scoring chances and hdcf.

Interesting, all three have all the same flaws, just break things up a bit different. I like to look at all of them together to be honest, but if I'm using just one to express an observation, xG usually conveys the overall message most succinctly.

It would be nice if the video based metrics done by SportlogIQ or any similar stuff were publicly available, I feel like all the stuff the pulls from the real time stats tends to leave a lot to be desired especially on the defensive side of the ledger.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Interesting, all three have all the same flaws, just break things up a bit different. I like to look at all of them together to be honest, but if I'm using just one to express an observation, xG usually conveys the overall message most succinctly.

It would be nice if the video based metrics done by SportlogIQ or any similar stuff were publicly available, I feel like all the stuff the pulls from the real time stats tends to leave a lot to be desired especially on the defensive side of the ledger.

Well teams pay around 200k each to use sportlogiq , so not likely their giving anything away.

 

[Micklebot]

Well teams pay around 200k each to use sportlogiq , so not likely their giving anything away.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath or anything. At some point though, the technology becomes easy enough to recreate that the league can do it internally and do away with having guys manually tracking things at each rink. Once the league is doing it, I can imagine they'd start pumping it out on their own websites to increase engagement, especially with sports betting being part of their long term strategy.

 

[R2010]

Interesting, all three have all the same flaws, just break things up a bit different. I like to look at all of them together to be honest, but if I'm using just one to express an observation, xG usually conveys the overall message most succinctly.

It would be nice if the video based metrics done by SportlogIQ or any similar stuff were publicly available, I feel like all the stuff the pulls from the real time stats tends to leave a lot to be desired especially on the defensive side of the ledger.

Micah's xG model is alright. Most others suck. His at least tries to have some theory behind it that's not just curve fitting.

 

[PatrickEaves]

I’ve heard good news is coming shortly on the Zub front, no details. Fingers crossed.

So. Any updates?

 

[GCK]

So. Any updates?

Nope. When I heard it I thought it would have been announced yesterday or today. Looks like it was just bullshit which sucks.

 

[playasRus]

I am sad.

 

[DJB]

Nope. When I heard it I thought it would have been announced yesterday or today. Looks like it was just bullshit which sucks.

Talks are ongoing. Don’t give up yet bud

 

[PatrickEaves]

Talks are ongoing. Don’t give up yet bud

Too late. Jumping off a bridge It's a Wonderful Life style.

 

[topshelf15]

How exactly did you determine those were Zub's comparables?

Why not guys like:

Tanev 4.5 x 4
Toews 4.1 x 4
Larsson 4 x 4
Manson 4.5 x 4
Oleksiak 4.6 x 5

Anyone of those deals are just fine,dont think many would even blink an eye TBH