A lot of fans and bloggers have been bashing the Cody Ceci signing by Edmonton Oilers general manager Ken Holland. Why? Because of advanced stats. Unless you’re new to my readership, you know exactly what I think of advanced stats – they’re about as useful as a used paper towel. In other words, good for nothing. Useless.
Ceci was signed by the Oilers to replace Adam Larsson on the blueline. A lot of people are criticizing this move, some still believing he is a “pylon.” If this were two seasons or more ago I would’ve agreed with that assessment, but that is no longer the case.
I already compared the numbers of the two players here, but let me repeat this for emphasis as of last season:
Larsson vs. Ceci, head to head
Hits – Larsson wins, but Ceci isn’t a slouch in this area, putting up 74 last season for the Pens.
Blocked shots – Larsson wins, but worth noting that Ceci still led the Pens in blocked shots last year. Larsson barely wins in that regard. Both players led their teams in this stat.
PK TOI – virtually identical
+/- – Ceci beat Larsson by a country mile, +18 to +2
Total TOI – virtually identical
Secondary offence last season – Ceci beat Larsson in offence last season, 17 points to 10. You never know how that difference would stack up – maybe the Oilers might’ve gotten another win or two with a few extra points from the blueliners. They only finished five points back of the Leafs last year, maybe this might’ve made the difference between winning the division and second place.
Career offence – Ceci’s put up more points in less games than Larsson, so no question who wins this in my mind. Neither guy is known as an offensive dynamo, but Ceci is clearly the superior player at putting secondary offence vs. Larsson. That’s definitely a need from the blueline because the first pairing of Nurse-Barrie can’t carry the entire load, no matter how good they are.
Health – This is a big one – and it’s one new category I’m introducing now because I’m the author and I can do that. As I can’t find a site that lists games lost for a player for free, let’s measure this as such – a healthy player should be able to play at least 70 games, right? That would mean being injured for a maximum of 12 games, which is a ripple in the season. Last season was only 56 games so let’s say 50 games is the cutoff.
Ceci has been in the league for eight seasons now, and of those eight seasons, he’s had six seasons where he’s met these two thresholds – and one of the two seasons for him includes his rookie season where he split time between the AHL and the NHL. I don’t think we can chalk that up to injury.
Larsson, on the other hand, has an injury history. He’s been in the league for 10 seasons now and during that time has only had four seasons where he’s met the injury threshold mark.
Let me repeat that for emphasis – Larsson has only had four seasons out of 10 in which he’s been healthy enough to contribute to the team for a significant part of the season. Even if you take out the two seasons in which he split significant time in the AHL and the NHL, that still looks pretty bad.
We may have given up a leader who was great at hitting and blocking shots, and yes that’s a loss that will be felt, but what we gained is a player who is younger, has a cap hit that’s $750,000 cheaper, can produce more offence, broke out defensively last year to the point where he was actually way better than Larsson (he was actually better than Larsson two seasons ago as well, +7 vs. 0), and can eat up the same minutes at both even strength and on the PK.
I don’t know about you, but to me, the numbers say we have a more all-around player than what we were forced to give up.
Larsson wasn’t coming back here anyway.
As we later found out, Larsson chose to walk in free agency the fact that he rejected the exact same contract with the Oilers that he signed with the Kraken. Even if they offered him an overpay, he wouldn’t have signed it.
I don’t blame him at all for jumping ship to Seattle. That was his right, and he took advantage of it. But I’m also not going to chide his replacement on the roster – especially before he even plays a game for us. The numbers don’t lie. Very few NHL players are irreplaceable. General managers are always going to try and adapt to find new players.