The Pilot’s Logbook looks at the performances of regular Jets players over the course of 2011-12, primarily through time on-ice and Gabe’s player performance charts.
As you might recall, Johnny Oduya was rewarded with a pretty nice contract from the Chicago Blackhawks recently, after we had sent him along for a 2nd and 3rd round pick in 2013. Nevertheless, it is good to have a look at how he was deployed vis-a-vis our other defencemen, just to see where he fit and what holes needed to be filled after he left.
As you can see, he wasn't a top-minutes defenceman for us, so to get a pretty decent shot at an NHLer with two early round picks is a good deal for us. I'm not even going to mention the fact that, early in the year, he seemed to be Randy Jones-ing it all over the place. Okay, I mentioned it.
He had Noel’s wavering confidence, it seems, as his 5v5 time pogo-sticked and he wasn’t the first, second, or third option on the penalty kill. Obviously, that drop-off is from when he left via trade.
via behindthenet.ca
In general, pretty much an average performance.
Performance/Usage Grade: C
He wasn’t extraordinary nor disastrous in his assignments, and he actually played pretty well on the kill. Near-zero offence out of the guy means he needed to be plus value defensively for me to give him any more than a C here, so there you go.
Performance/Contract Grade: C+
He gets a little bump here…D prices have inflated a little bit, even for defensive defencemen (take a look at the top 50 D cap hits), so Oduya’s $3.5 million cap hit last year for (essentially) good PK’ing and marginal play at evens was not as crazy as it seems. I mean, I’d never pay that much for it, hence the grade is still down there, but compared to the rest of the league it’s not an out-there contract. I guess the biggest knock I have is that he didn’t get tons of defensive minutes, particularly on the kill…but I hesitate to downgrade him much for that.
