Dan Girardi? Seems Lightning fans should get used to the idea

By Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
June 29, 2017

BRANDON – Sure seems like it doesn’t take much these days to rile up Lightning fans on Twitter (or any social media platform, to be honest).

Free agency opens on Saturday at noon and Steve Yzerman has a shopping list. It’s not a long one, certainly not like years past when Tampa Bay had some significant holes in the lineup to try to fill. But the Lightning do have some holes, just maybe not of the gaping variety.

On the list are a defenseman of some sort, preferably a right-handed shot that might be able to help the power play, and perhaps a forward, though that may not be as pressing as the first thing on the list.

A backup goaltender was on the list, but that was taken care of when Peter Budaj was re-signed last week, though another veteran type goaltender to serve as the No. 3 in the organization and serve as the regular starter Syracuse will be on the list if Mike McKenna does not return.

But has Tampa Bay already found the defenseman they are looking for during the exclusive free agent window to talk to teams? It would appear so, and Lightning fans seem none too happy about it.

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A couple of days ago reports surfaced that Tampa Bay had reached out to pending free agent Dan Girardi, who was recently bought out by the New York Rangers. Needless to say it caused a bit of an uproar.

So you can imagine how that swelled on Thursday when Elliotte Friedman put out some free agency thoughts and indicated that a deal is all but done (even if numbers are not allowed to be exchanged during the free agency window) and Girardi will sign with the Lightning when free agency opens on Saturday.

One person replied to me on Twitter with a floating poop emoji . . . . a floating poop emoji because a stationary one apparently wasn’t enough to get the point across on how they felt about the potential signing. Somebody else sent me SpongeBob Squarepants burying himself in the sand, assuming to try to hide from the news. Another person actually did send me a poop emoji in a reply while someone else suggested Tampa Bay general manager Steve Yzerman was trying to sabotage the team. Another simply stated “he stinks’’ when referring to Girardi while there were a couple of comparisons to Matt Carle.

There were a couple of quasi-positive comments sprinkled in here and there, but pretty much the response to the report was summed up by the person who simply said. “nooooooooooo’’.

Twitter can really be . . . .something.

But here is the thing, why the freak out?

Girardi, by all accounts, is on the decline. At the age of 33 he’s not the same player he was a few years ago when he was a Norris Trophy candidate. The eye test indicates this to be true, even as his points per game has not fallen off that drastically going from 0.30 to 0.24 to 0.23 to 0.24 the past four years. Injuries have limited some of his effectiveness as he’s played 74 and 63 games, respectively, the past two seasons.

But the eye test is not the indicator many like to go by these days. So we turn to the advanced stats (I’m not a huge proponent of all advance stats, but I understand how they work and how some use them to measure a players value and play.

So I went to look at some of the advance stats for Girardi on Hockey Reference. Since Corsi is the most commonly used metric (shot attempts for while on the ice vs. shot attempts against), let’s take a look here.

Historically, Girardi has never been a huge even strength Corsi guy with a career high of 54 percent coming his rookie year followed by 53.1 the following season. Since then he’s never been above 50 percent. He did hold pretty steady between 46 percent and 49 percent during his prime years from 2009-2015. The past two years there has been a dip, dropping to 41.3 in 2015-16 to 44 percent last year.

His Fenwick, which measures unblocked shot attempts for and against, has been a little better through is career, above 50 percent four times in his career and hovering between 47 and 55 percent his first seven years in the league. The past three years it’s been between 43 and 46.5 percent.

While examining this, keep in mind that he primarily gets his starts in the defensive zone, over 50 percent in the past eight seasons. The past three years, his defensive zone starts have been 57.6, 59.4 and 55.7 percent, so this has an effect on the two stats referenced above.

Now, in looking at some of his numbers, the one that did alarm me a little was the fact he was credited with 27 giveaways in 12 playoff games last season, this while averaging 22 minutes of ice time in the postseason. That’s a rather high number at more than two-per-game and to me indicates an issue with puck protection and decision making.

So read in to those stats as you will.

This is how I look at the possibility of Girardi being signed by the Lightning – it’s a low risk, high reward type of deal.

After being bought out from the final three years of his contract with the Rangers, which had $13 million still remaining, Girardi has some motivation to prove his detractors wrong (believe me, I saw many of them on Thursday). He won’t be expensive to bring in because of that buy out, which won’t put much of a crimp on the Lightning salary cap (remember Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Jake Dotchin and Slater Koekkoek all need new contracts as restricted free agents).

I can’t imagine any deal is going to be any sort of a long-term contract and based on something Yzerman said last week, it fits right in line when he stated the team could bring in somebody “temporary until some of our young guys come in. Because going out and signing a player to a long-term deal through free agency isn’t exactly what we need and could put us in a bad spot.’’

So don’t look for a long-term commitment here, and that also means you can pretty much rule out Kevin Shattenkirk and Karl Alzner, the two best available defensemen in an otherwise thin market.

Let’s add in the fact that Girardi is close friends with Ryan Callahan from their days with the Rangers.

I think you are going to see a player with a pretty good set of motivating factors that could lead to a bounce back season while playing in a bit of an assumed reduced role.

I get the concerns, but why such outrage? If some want to make the comparisons to Matt Carle, remember that Carle signed a six-year deal. Girardi is not going to be signing a six-year deal. In fact, there’s no way this will be more than a two-year commitment on Tampa Bay’s end, with one year being more ideal under the circumstances of having other young defensemen being moved in to the regular lineup.

And that’s the next question, what does the lineup look like. Both Jake Dotchin and Slater Koekkoek are no longer waiver exempt and the team would not risk sending either back down to Syracuse for fear of losing them to another team. Then there is Mikhail Sergachev, who seems like a lock to at least start the season with Tampa Bay.

So, that leaves the potential depth chart as: Victor Hedman, Anton Stralman, Andrej Sustr, Braydon Coburn, Koekkoek, Dotchin, Sergachev and Girardi. Take Girardi out of that mix and how comfortable are you with that defensive corps? You can see why there is a void to fill after Jason Garrison was selected by Vegas in the expansion draft. And in that group are three rookies (Koekkoek, Dotchin and Sergachev) and a player in Sustr many fans may have more angst for than Girardi.

While Yzerman has stated that roster spots have to be cleared for some of the younger players coming in, I’m not sure throwing potentially three rookies on the blue line in to the lineup on a regular basis is what he had in mind, particularly with a first-year starter in goal, as good as Andrei Vasilevskiy has shown.

With all that in mind, I’ll end on this last note – let’s not overreact to one July move until training camp comes around and the roster starts to come in to full focus. I still feel there are more moves to be made to the blue line and what we see today, there is a good chance it won’t look the same in September.

So step back, take a breath and let things play out. You’ll have a better chance to maintain your sanity through all this.

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