Dallas Drake’s the Depth Forward?
He’s not the only one who’s perplexed
To quote John McEnroe “you cannot be serious!”? Apparently the Red Wings are, as it was reported today that they’ve signed Dallas Drake to a one year contract.
My only question is why? And why now?
He’s 38 years old and will turn 39 in the middle of next season. How many forwards have anything left in the tank as they approach 40? The answer of course is very, very few. And given the fact Drake was placed on waivers by the St. Louis Blues you have to think he’s done. And by done I mean Jeremy Roenick done.
Just for the record, the St. Louis Blues have had one of the worst records in the NHL since the lockout. They are the Boston Celtics of the NBA. The Kansas City Royals of MLB. The…well…Detroit Lions of the NFL. Okay, now if the Lions were hiring Drake it would make perfect sense. But the Red Wings?
In a quote from the TSN article, Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said the team liked his physical play. Yeah, well they liked Brad Norton’s physical play and ability to fight last year. He lasted all of 6 games in Detroit before he was sent to Grand Rapids due to his inability to do anything other than fight…badly.
Drake’s missed 20 games each of the past two seasons due to ailments and being suspended for questionable hits. He was also completely ineffective when he was playing as a penalty killer last year…or when he was actually just skating on the ice for that matter.
Here are some pertinent stats from Behind the Net.
Drake played a little over 191 minutes on the PK.
In that time the Blues scored 3 short-handed goals
They allowed 27 power play goals
The Blues gave up 7.53 more goals than they scored per 60 minutes of PK time when Drake was on the ice. That didn’t rank him in the top 360 players for top penalty killers. To put that in perspective, there were 12 better penalty killers on every single team in the NHL who were better than Drake.
If you think that’s just because St. Louis as a whole was terrible that’s not the case. Jamal Mayers was a much better PK’er. Mayers was on the ice in short-handed situations 46 more minutes than Drake and the Blues allowed 6 fewer power play goals with him on the ice. The Blues gave up 4.81 more goals than they scored per 60 mins of PK time when Mayers was on the ice. That’s a drastic difference from Drake’s PK skills.
Jay McClement was on the ice for 206 minutes of short-handed play and the Blues only allowed 17 power play goals over that span. So Drake’s penalty kill skills are greatly exaggerated at this late stage of his career. Okay, well then how about instigating? Drake is supposed to be another Kirk Maltby, great at getting under the opponent’s skin and drawing penalties. Maltby isn’t as good as he once was, but we’ll save that debate for another time.
The stats show this isn’t true either. Returning to Behind the Net here is how Drake performed drawing and taking penalties.
Dallas Drake drew 56 penalties
But he took 57 penalties
So in the finally net tally he put his team at a man disadvantage. However the ultimate stat might be that a bad St. Louis Blues team was actually better when he was off the ice than when he was playing. Let’s get the pertinent stats from Behind the Net.
With Dallas Drake on the bench the Blues outscored the opponent by 0.37 goals per 60 minutes
With Dallas Drake on the ice the Blues were outscored by their opponent by 1.63 goals per 60 minutes
That’s a pretty telling stat. Whatever mystical presence Dallas Drake brings with his physical/gritty play, it sure doesn’t seem to do much as far as helping his team kill penalties, draw penalties, or just outscore their opponent. And I haven’t even really touched on the fact he’s one of the biggest cheapshot hitters in the league. That doesn’t concern me if you can actually bring something else to the table. Right now I highly doubt Drake can.
So why am I complaining about a guy who is likely to be a depth guy? The main reason is that the signing could limit Detroit’s ability to sign a player who would be an arbitration casualty. If a team decides to walk away from an arbitration award then that player becomes a free agent. It happened last year with J.P. Dumont when Buffalo chose to cut him loose. Nashville signed him and he had a decent season for them, scoring 21 goals and 66 points. That’s second line forward production.
The Red Wings would like to sign a top 6 forward and there could potentially be one to be had via the arbitration process. Derek Roy could be this year’s Dumont. Mike Ribiero, Michael Ryder, Mike Cammalleri, and Lee Stempniak are guys who figure to be top 2 line forwards right now. If one gets a high enough arbitration award the Wings would be in the best position to have as much of their cap space available as possible to try and sign a guy who would be a good fit.
Besides, if Detroit strikes out with any or all of these guys or their teams honor the arbitration award or they settle before the hearing, the Red Wings could then go in Joe Kocur fashion and pluck Dallas Drake off his beer league team at the start of the season. There wasn’t anyone who was competing to sign him to a contract. With that being the case there was really no real need to sign Dallas Drake right now.
I almost universally accept whatever the Red Wings decide to do given their track record with acquiring and developing talent. But this signing really makes me scratch my head. They want to get greasier, to use Mike Babcock’s phrase, and I get that and think it makes sense. But when they try to achieve that objective by signing guys like Brad Norton and Dallas Drake it seems to me that they are headed in the wrong direction.
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Par for the course for your idiot GM.
Well, like I said at the end of the post, I generally support the moves he’s made. Is there really an organization that’s had more success over the past 10 years?
If Dallas Drake is headed to Grand Rapids then this signing is fine. In fact it’s a decent move. But Drake’s career is as a grind liner and a PK’er. He likely won’t play in either capacity in Detroit.
[…] Now I can’t speak for Ken Holland and I would never presume to do so. With that being said, it’s difficult to argue with many of the decisions the Red Wings have made. I mean the only real criticism I’ve had was signing Dallas Drake, who in the best case scenario plays on the fourth line as an energy guy/cheap shot hack for like 5:00 game - when he doesn’t watch the games from the press box. […]
[…] Granted, when I looked at Dallas Drake’s stats in St. Louis last season they were really bad too. He hasn’t been glarlingly bad on the fourth line and while playing on the PK. But he’s played much fewer PK minutes in Detroit [about 100 less at this point in the season] and he’s only been on the ice for five power play goals against. So by limiting his ice time the Wings have been able to get some production from him. […]
[…] As Wings fans we love to recycle old Red Wings players and come up with scenarios where Martin Lapointe, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov or Mike Knuble come back to Detroit. And sometimes we complain when older players like Dallas Drake are actually brought back [guilty]. Regardless, this is yet another great article by Bruce that gives us insight into the team we seldom get anywhere else. Red Wings […]