C Jim Slater: Faceoff magician

[garret9]

YEAR | GP | ESTOI/60 | ESP/60 | ESG | ESA | PPTOI/60 | PPP/60 | PPG | PPA | SHTOI/60 | SHP/60 | SHG | SHA | SOG | SH%
2007| 69|09.10| 1.05| 06|05 | 0.09| 00.00| 0|0 | 1.20| 1.44|2|0 |095| 15.8
2008| 60|08.47| 1.89| 06|10 | 0.06| 00.00| 0|0 | 2.60| 0.77|2|0 |094| 12.5
2009| 61|10.34| 1.62| 10|07 | 0.10| 10.23| 1|0 | 1.61| 0.00|0|0 |107| 19.0
2010| 36|09.42| 2.12| 04|07 | 0.14| 00.00| 0|0 | 0.90| 0.00|0|0 |053| 15.2
2011| 78|12.32| 1.25| 12|08 | 0.12| 00.00| 0|0 | 2.14| 0.36|1|0 |118| 15.8

Hope for Slater to be a dominate offensive weapon disappeared even to the (incompetent) ATL management. By 2007 Slater was mostly being used in defensive or sheltered roles with lots of PK.

Even Strength Advance Stats

YEAR | RelQoC | OZS | RelCorsi | Corsi | G/60 | A1/60 | P/60
2007| 0.307| 40.5| -07.6| -19.40| 0.57| 0.29| 1.05
2008| -0.258| 46.7| -00.3| -06.26| 0.71| 0.35| 1.89
2009| 0.542| 38.4| -06.6| -07.90| 0.95| 0.48| 1.62
2010| -0.418| 43.4| -02.5| -10.98| 0.89| 0.71| 2.12
2011| 0.900| 28.5| -27.9| -20.11| 0.75| 0.37| 1.25

2007: Slater decently tough minutes and gets beat baaad Corsi wise... but how bad was Atlanta that year when the average was around -12 (looking how he's only 7.6 below the team average).
2008: Slater faces much weaker competition, starts scoring a lot more goals, and becomes less of a defensive liability.
2009: Slater gets pushed back to tough match-ups and as a good sign his Corsi doesn't drop much. His goal scoring and primary assists go up, but his secondary assists go down more so.
2010: Slater gets pushed into a semi-sheltered (most of his career) minutes as LLW take all the tough minutes. Oddly his Corsi drops severely but he's not too much below the team's average.
2011: Noel absolutely uses and abuses GST as Slater faces 63 hardest RelQoC in NHL and 4th lowest OZS (Van's Malhotra, Weise and Lapiere are 1st 2nd and 3rd). Slater's Corsi plummets expectedly although he is in much worse shape than some in similar roles (Boyle -4.41, Pahlsson -6.69, Wyman -15.35)... He is the best goal scorer of the group though. It be interesting to see how Slater would have done with better linemates. GST did receive way too much TOI as they Slater almost got as much 5v5 time as some 2nd line players for other teams.

Overall
Slater has never been a defensive specialist who can shutdown top lines, nor has he been a top PKer. What Slater does (should) bring is very solid scoring from the 4th, good enough for secondary penalty kill and a great face-off specialist. Hopefully Noel keeps the 4th line minutes a lot lower but uses Slater also as a FO specialist since Burmistrov, Antropov and Jokinen aren't well known for their prowess at the dot.

Click to read more...

 

[garret9]

can one of the mods put in something funny or interesting in Slater's title... I was stumped

EDIT:
It can be anything... as long as it isn't super offensive

POST-EDIT EDIT:
Thanks!

 

[wpgsilver]

Hilarious.