Non-Penguins Offseason Moves 2014

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

Flyers off season has been pretty amusing

[Pitts]

Del Zotto, more like Del Zaster

Why is this though? I always thought he had talent and a good offensive upside.

[meow]

He has the hockey sense of a house plant. And not a good house plant. One of those fake plastic ones that has half an inch of dust on it on top of a china cabinet at your grandmothers house.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

I would imagine a fake house plant has better hockey sense than a real one.

[SolidSnake]

How can the Flyers take on more salary? cause of the Timmon news?

[mikey287]

I remember Del Zotto coming into the OHL Draft a number of years back being super-hyped...in the Stamkos, Alex Pietrangelo hemisphere...and it just never really materialized...he hit his ceiling early, probably due to a high level of athletic and technical skills (mostly technical, as he's not that great of a skater really) but a lack of hockey sense. Hockey sense is the great unseen (by most) hand in development...people go, "why did this player bust? He had 400 goals in one season in junior..." or "what happened to this guy, he showed such great skill...?" the answer, more often than not, is hockey sense. Tough to learn from mistakes you don't know you're making, tough to understand the game when you don't instinctually know it...

Anyway, that's a discussion for another time...maybe a Brandon Sutter thread if he doesn't score 30 goals this year or whatever he needs to have to be considered good defensively...

Del Zotto's best asset is his outlet pass ability (when the passes aren't absolute grenades, lasered about tramp-stamp-high diagonally across the rink) which is the Flyers biggest need and has been. So, there's that aspect which is a plus. The minuses are virtually everything else. For an offensive-defenseman of his ilk, you'd expect better puck carrying and a better shot, but MDZ struggles in both of these areas. Defensively, he ranges from below average to hilarious. A lot of lower hockey IQ players have the physical and mentally ability to process one-on-one defense, as it is the simplest - in principle - to execute (Dion Phaneuf, is a good example of this), Del Zotto though, so poorly positions his skates and his shoulders against on-rushing forwards, that he is often walked before you can finish saying his name. Strangely, the defense has regressed over time, not improved. He's not a particularly resilient player, and as a result, once things go bad, they tend to snowball on him. If he makes a mistake or two early in the game, he'll start to feel bad about himself and kind of just shut off...when things are going well, he's a capable offensive-minded defenseman that can at least not be butchered by lower-tier forwards...but honestly, your post sums it up pretty well..."why...though?" and it's a great question...it seems like there'd be more...I know I've been waiting for more, the Rangers waited for more, the Predators couldn't take any more...so he gets another kick at the can, and we'll see what he can do with it. Outletting pucks to a player of Giroux's caliber hasn't happened to him since he played with John Tavares in the Ontario League...maybe he puts the pieces back together...no better awakening than getting traded for by a team that could use a player like you, have no takers when the "offer to all" button was hit all June long, no qualifying offer and then it took Kimmo Timonen's impending, forced retirement for you to secure a one-year contract in the first week of August...

[pcm]

Krejci at $7m+ per? Hmm...

[Kraftster]

Seems like a decent deal for one of the league's most underrated players.

[JS©]

it does, but Boston has to be creeping near the cap, if they aren't above it.

[Pavel Bure]

Seems like a decent deal for one of the league's most underrated players.

I like him but not at that price... They handcuffed themselves by trading Seguin in leverage department. How many years is this deal cause I'd like him a lot more at around 5.5M.

[Avyran]

6 years, at 7.25 for the first two years and 7.5 for the last four. This year is his final year for the 5.25 deal.

[meow]

I'm not a big Krejci fan. I respect his skill set and all, but he's just so soft.

[Pavel Bure]

6 years, at 7.25 for the first two years and 7.5 for the last four. This year is his final year for the 5.25 deal.

Yuck.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

meh, I'd say it's about right. I'd be surprised if they don't end up trading him before it ends though. 6 years is a while.