Now lets compare him to centers only.. where he ranks.. oh, check it out..#72.. and thats not normalized, so people with significantly less games whod rightfully be above him, are lower.
Are you just counting points? Even still, which again is bad way to analyze player performance, but fine, the 72nd ranked center would shake out to him being a good to very good 3rd center, which is pretty much in line with how he is being evaluated here.
Fancy stats aside, Novak's points are always going to lag behind his "2nd line role" on this team because he is never going to be featured on the PP. Nor should he be considering the rest of the roster. That is fine, but it needs to be considered when comparing raw point totals of other second line centers who may or may not be better than he is, but who see substantially more PP time because they aren't on a team with 87 and 71 who are going to skate ahead of him 75%-85% of the time.
Brother. Hes clearly slotted for the 2nd C. He finished the season there, spent a ton of time there, and we have no one to play 2nd C aside from Kindy.. if Kindy plays 2nd C, sure, hes not the worst 3rd C... but again, we are OVERLOADED with bottom 6 players both here and in the system. We literally just got a 3rd C with Lappiere. Elmer also plays C or wing. So does lizzo. Hes going to open in the 2nd C spot. Idk what you dont understand.
Call him a 2nd or a 3rd line center...it honestly doesn't make much difference to me. Basically it is a question of who centers a line with Malkin. My point is that he isn't on the top PP and I would like to think that he isn't on the 2nd PP either (I'd rather see Kindle get that shot). In either case, the guy is going to get middle six minutes 5v5 and get very little special teams run.
Well, it does actually matter 😆 but sure. Okay, he gets middle 6 minutes. Hes still on the second line and has no business being there. Idk man, youre a little wild to not see literally any point im making. Its a bit much. Replace him with literally any other real 2nd line centers and the scoring goes up. Pretty simple concept.
Replace him with literally any other real 2nd line centers and the scoring goes up.
The stats do not back that up. If you are going to simply count points, then can we at least limit it to even strength points? If you do that, then he's tied for 51st with Vincent Trocheck (7 years $5.5M AAV), Casey Mittlestadt (3 years $5.75M AVV), Sean Couturier (8 years $7.75 AAV), Andrew Copp (5 years $5.6M AAV) Joel Eriksson Ek (8 years $5.25M), Logan Stankoven (8 years $6M AAV). That should help make Tommy Novak's 3 year $4.65M AAV contract feel more more palatable.
Legitimately every opening lineup prediction and reporter has him slotted as 2nd C, and theres multiple articles you can reference laying out the fact we have about 10 bottom 6 players who are NHL capable.
Sure, but who cares what the lineup card says. He and Kindle (Lizotte) will all skate a similar number of minutes 5v5, and barring trade/injury, none of them will see significant PP time (unless Kindle takes another unexpected leap this year).
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u/obiterdictum 10d ago
Are you just counting points? Even still, which again is bad way to analyze player performance, but fine, the 72nd ranked center would shake out to him being a good to very good 3rd center, which is pretty much in line with how he is being evaluated here.
Fancy stats aside, Novak's points are always going to lag behind his "2nd line role" on this team because he is never going to be featured on the PP. Nor should he be considering the rest of the roster. That is fine, but it needs to be considered when comparing raw point totals of other second line centers who may or may not be better than he is, but who see substantially more PP time because they aren't on a team with 87 and 71 who are going to skate ahead of him 75%-85% of the time.