In NHL news yesterday, the Avalanche rained on my parade a bit by signing forward Tomáš Tatar to a one-year deal for $1.5 million. A bargain rate, indeed, for a seven-time 20-goal scorer. In the process, squelching hopes among Penguins faithful that Kyle Dubas would somehow perform another miracle and land the play-driving forward.
Count me among those who thought Tatar would’ve looked mighty nice sporting the black and gold.
As I wrote the other day, I’m concerned about a lack of scoring depth and a possible regression among our top-six. IMHO, Tatar would’ve been a great add while serving as an insurance (or INsurance as they say in the south) policy for our offense.
Oh well. No use crying over spilled milk. What’s done is done.
Speaking of offense, might there be a player under our collective noses who could provide a Tatar-ish impact?
The answer would appear to be yes.
When Dubas acquired forward Rem Pitlick from Montreal as part of the return in the Erik Karlsson blockbuster, I immediately checked his tale of the tape (5’11” 186…sigh) and glanced at his boxcars. Which were okay, but nothing to write home about.
Then I took a gander at his JFresh WAR chart.
Downright ghastly. I confess, I immediately dismissed him. That is, until fellow PPer Caleb Di’Natale weighed in, calling the former University of Minnesota star an intriguing get with possibilities.
I decided to delve a little deeper. Poking into Pitlick’s stats, I discovered something shocking. During a 20-game stint with the Wild to open the 2021-22 campaign, the Ottawa native tallied six goals and 11 points, including a natural hat trick against the Kraken on November 13. Solid production when you consider he only averaged 9:42 of ice time.
Then I noticed his shooting percentage…and was blown away. A shade over 46 percent (46.2 to be exact)!!! I had to do a double and even triple-take to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. In all my years of following hockey, I’ve never seen a shooting percentage that high for such an extended period.
Ah, but there’s a caveat. Despite Pitlick’s garish accuracy, hard-line Wild coach Dean Evason had little use for him. Which led to Pitlick being placed on waivers and claimed by Montreal in January. It marked the second time he’d been waived and claimed that season. The Wild had plucked him from the Predators, the club that drafted him, that fall.
With his shooting percentage leveling off to a still excellent 17.3 percent with the Habs, Pitlick tallied a respectable nine goals and 26 points in 46 games north of the border. Giving him 15 goals and 37 points on the season.
Used more in a bottom-six role last season, the former third-round pick started slowly with a lone goal in his first 15 games, which earned him a demotion to the Laval Titan of the AHL. Recalled in January, he managed an okay five goals and 14 points in his remaining 31 games.
His underlying 5v5 metrics were, to be kind, dreadful. A 38.98 Corsi, a 33.33 goals for percentage and a 35.04 expected goals percentage. Yet remarkably, his shooting percentage remained stellar at an even 20 percent.
So what can we reasonably expect? Given his defensive impacts (or lack of), the 26-year-old would appear to be ill-suited for the prevent-‘em-from-scoring dynamic we’re trying to create in our bottom six. It’s equally difficult to see him cracking our top six, at least on a full-time basis. But the ability to snipe and score a la former black-and-gold prospect Daniel Sprong are there.
Perhaps Pitlick fills a utility role, playing up and down the lineup and plugging gaps the way Bryan Rust once did. In the process providing some much-needed scoring depth. Or maybe he’ll be sent to the Baby Pens or waived again.
One of the many lingering questions that’ll be answered come training camp.
Sorry Rick,
Yes, in a world of probabilities, there is always a 1 in α chance of something happening. Perhaps Pitlick needs a coach that doesn’t want him to shoot much, a coach that would prefer that he cover the points for wandering Defensemen in the offensive zone or protecting his team’s crease for roaming defensemen in the defensive zone. Maybe on team whose system doesn’t want Pitlick to have the puck, he will mysteriously generate Shots and Gs but to my mind that represents a logical absurdity on par with a squared circle.
Also, understand that when the game is on the line, within 1 G, (5 on 5) over the last 3 seasons, your boy Pitlick, despite having a 53.59% O-Zone starting percentage, only has a CORSI of 40.94%, a Fenwick of 40.62% and a Shot differential of 41.85% leading him to have a Goal differential of 41.89%.
Caleb may like Pitlick but he is also the guy who told us that E-Rod was going to score 30 or more Gs for the Penguins.
I prefer to play the Percentages and the Percentages are far and away against Pitlick. He has scored only 0.39 Gs/60 in those 1 Goal games
Hey Rick,
Hate to jump in here to temper your enthusiasm again, but I took your thoughts to heart and looked to see why Pitlick had an outlier 20 GP with Min in 2020-2021.
1st and foremost were offensive zone starts (5on5). In that 20 game stretch, Pitlick had 53.19 of his starts in the o-Zone. That helps out a lot.
2nd 7 of the 20 Goalies he faced finished the season with Sv% under 0.900.
3rd the sample size was too small to really infer anything. Pitlick only managed 20 total shots (5on5) with only about half of them on net (13)
And that 20 total shot attempts is why Minn cut ties with him, those 20 Shot Attempts only equaled 6.53 Shot Attempts/60 and his CORSI was well underwater at (47.93%). Despite having only a fraction of his starts in the defensive zone, his lines were getting way out chanced.
Stats really don’t lie, but few people take the time to actually look deep enough to see the why s of where for s of the results or the people using them intentionally try to redirect our attention from the man behind the curtain.
Oh, and only 3 of the Goalies he faced during that 20 Game outlier had Sv% of 0.915 that season.
Hey Other Rick,
I hear what you’re saying. But I don’t care if he’s shooting at cardboard cut-outs…46 percent is still way impressive. So is his career shooting percentage of 19.8 (in 123 NHL games). Pitlick can snipe.
What he doesn’t do, as you aptly pointed out, is generate shot volume or just about anything else it seems, according to his metrics which are almost uniformly awful. Hence the ugly WAR chart.
I do wonder if he’s been used properly and in a way that would give him the greatest chance to succeed. Again, not unlike Sprong, who bounced from team to team until he found a home in Seattle…and a coach who knew how to get the most from his talents (Dave Hakstol).
Rick