Varada

Hello.

Mike Hoffman. Mike Hoffman is a thing now. Is he a legitimate thing? What is legitimate? What is “thing”? What we know is that he’s 26, has 84 points in 137 games, and, oh, is currently on pace for 51 goals with a totally sustainable 19.8% shooting percentage.

So, where are you on Hoffman? Sign him long-term? Trade him while his value is high? Give me your delicious takes.

Luke

Man, I hope I can keep this under 3000 words because this thing’s got more angles than a mid-90s rendering of Lara Croft.

First off: Mike Hoffman’s pace is more torrid than that love affair I had in Europe last year, and to Hoffman’s credit it seems to be considerably longer lasting. I’ll get our friends at Silver Seven to break it down:

– Since last year, tied for 5th in even strength points per 60 minutes played.

– Since last year, Hoffman is tied for 3rd in goals scored per 60 minutes played.

– Tied for 4th in goals this season.

What’s more is he’s just as strong at even strength as he is on the powerplay.

Is that 19.8% shooting percentage gonna come down? Yeah, obviously. Is he, statistically speaking, at his exact peak right now? Yes, almost certainly. After Destroyer of Worlds Mike Hoffman turns back into Normal Mike Hoffman, will he still be good? Yeah, I think he will be.

Hoffman’s just one piece of a very strong core. Erik Karlsson is the best player on the team, and I’d put Mark Stone 2nd on that list because he’s the only player I can remember who can look to be in the midst of a soul crushing slump while still being a point-per-game player. (Seriously, we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of Mark Stone.) After that, you can put Bobby Ryan, Mika Zibanejad, Kyle Turris, and Mike Hoffman in any order depending on the night. (Get a healthy Clarke MacArthur back and good lord is that Top 6 ever cooking with gas. Get well soon, you curly-haired rescue puppy of a man.)

The thing I like most about Hoffman is that what he creates is different than almost any other player on the team. I watch Kyle Turris and Mark Stone and I see two players with high end skill who are cerebral and can slow the game down to play the game at a different pace than other players. I watch Mika Zibanejad and Bobby Ryan and I see two players who are heavy on the puck, gifted with superb vision, and can finish plays with the best of them. I watch Erik Karlsson and see one of God’s Original Creations, a player who can do it all and usually does because he has to.

Hoffman’s not like those other guys. He can create for himself with his speed, but because his shot is so lethal, he creates for others by drawing the defense to him and opening up space for his teammates to operate. Mike Hoffman is pure, distilled liquid offense in a way no other player on the Senators is.

For what it’s worth, I think Hoffman’s ability to “drive the play” *makes wanking motion* is a little too ballyhooed around the Sensphere. Looks to me that Hoffman’s excellent With-Or-Without-You (WOWY) percentages are more a function of playing with Erik Karlsson than Hoffman being The Chosen One (Please click on these images from Friend of the Blog, Micah Blake McCurdy for more), but that is really a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. Area Player is Pretty Good in General but is Goddamn Outstanding When Playing With Karlsson is not a headline I’m ever going to feel rage towards.

Put it all together and I get one conclusion: Mike Hoffman is A Thing now.

What does this mean for The Future? Well, I don’t think Ottawa’s ever had an asset as tradeable as Mike Hoffman is this season. I think most teams would consider him an established known quantity at this point, he’s still going to be under team control for another off season, and Ottawa would be dealing him from an area of relative strength (high end forwards) to address a position of weakness (goaltending. lol jk it’s the defense obvs).

I was struck with a sudden case of The Fear yesterday because I imagined a future where all of Mike Hoffman’s money was being given to Jared Cowen next season so they had to let him walk. I am more of a Murray Apologist than most, but a scenario where next year’s Ottawa Senators are paying Jared Cowen $4.5MM and paying Mike Hoffman $0.0MM would be unforgivable. Luckily with Chris Phillips coming off the books and a buyout of Jared Cowen coming down the pipe (please God), I foresee a solid $5.5MM in monies easily being available for Mike Hoffman’s next contract. We’ll even have enough cash left over to re-sign Chris Neil (a thing that is definitely going to happen, by the way).

In short, I don’t think The Infernal Budget is going to be a factor in Mike Hoffman’s future.

Which finally leaves us to wonder the following: Should Noted Good Player, Mike Hoffman, be traded so that the Ottawa Senators can acquire a Noted Good Defenseman?

The answer to this question is yes.

This is not to say I don’t have concerns. It may be many moons before we get another player of Mike Hoffman’s unique talents into the organization. Proper evaluation of defenseman is obscenely tricky, so I worry about getting fair value back in return. However, I do not believe the Ottawa Senators can seriously expect to compete in the playoffs with one NHL calibre defense pairing. The Chicago Blackhawks recently showed you only need to play 4 good defenseman to win a Stanley Cup.  Making a trade in Today’s NHL™ seems to be about as easy as hammering out a legally binding international carbon emissions agreement, but in much the same way ending the world’s reliance on coal and oil is necessary to the long-term survival of our civilization, acquiring a Legitimate Top 4 Defenseman is an important next step if Ottawa is to be considered a serious threat to win more than one playoff round.

Enjoy Mike Hoffman while you can. His speedy sharpshooting is soon to be replaced by steady but unsexy defending, and we will be both better and worse for it.

Or maybe Clarke MacArthur will come back, Patrick Wiercioch will find his Sea Legs again, and everything will be fixed. I’m not made of answers.

James

As Chort Smelters and Lunch Pairisty mentioned on “Advanced Chats: the Blogger Show with your host The Gawdbody Ian Mendes, a Presentation of Robillard Hearing Centres Now With Nine Convenient Locations to Serve You,” Hoffman is an interesting case as he is kind of an unprecedented type of player.

Basically, Bobby Ryan earned a lucrative contract on an otherwise cheap team mainly because of his success during his formative years with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (Ed Note: Actual professional sports team name). His reputation preceded him coming here. We paid for those 30 goal seasons in Anaheim. Hoffman, however is still very much in the process of establishing his reputation hence the arbitration case in the summer and why this upcoming contract is such a tricky one.

Especially tricky when you consider his age. It’s not unusual for players to start hitting their “prime years” around Hoffman’s age, but typically they’ve been in the league longer than a season and a half by then. There’s a reason that he lost his arbitration case and I would think it was lack of a track record at the NHL level. That said, while I’m running my yap about sample size the kid is snapping twine…you see what I did th– twine is what nets are made out o— let’s move on…

If Turris was worth the risk of a long term deal without much of a track record, then so too is Hoffman. Mistakes were made with this philosophy, signing Greening and Cowen [thxu Tim Murray], but I think we can agree Hoffman is clearly a much better hockey player than both of them…combined.

Whatever he’s worth, pay it, but I just don’t know what that is. 5 million? 6? I don’t know. I’d be fine with it in that same way Bobby Ryan might not be worth his contract price but I’m more about keeping him in the fold going forward than getting a bargain every time. The elephant in the room on this one is “Can the organization do it?”

The funny thing is, name me a player Murray has failed to re-sign during this budget era. Ryan, Anderson, Lehner (RIP), Stone, Zibanejad, MacArthur, Methot, Pageau, etc. were all re-upped during that parade of signings.

[Shameful afterthought: Hi, I totally forgot that he failed to re-sign Alfie which is TOTALLY understandable seeing as he was a marginal AHL 3rd string goaltender and not much was made of the story in the local media. SORRY SO SLOPPY! Anyway, back to me ranting despite not being very smart…] 

Spezza, I guess, but we were going to have to foolishly overpay for him and Hemsky was simply not worth what he asked.  Anyway I just want the team to have space and funds for Erik Karlsson’s impending 10 billion dollar raise, so lock up the as many good players as possible before then.

The thing I was glad to see with one more year before pushing the chips in on Hoff was that his game is more than his speed. That was my only concern after last season. The guy’s got insane wheels but as demonstrated the other night against the Los Angeles Krangs, his hands are as deadly as his feet. If he slows a bit as he ages (which will probably still be above average speed tbh), it’s not like he will stop being able to release the puck like he has been doing night after night. I think the risk is actually decently low despite the unique situation.

So put me in camp “PAIY HEEM HEEZ FAAKING MAHNEE.” I am really, really enjoying having one of the most exciting and productive forward corps in the East and I don’t want to change that. 1000 years of putting five past Jonathan Quick.

All this said, as per Andrew’s recent post, Hoffman is exactly the kind of player who could net us not just a top four defenceman but a KWALIT-E defenceman, which is what is clearly holding this team back from taking the next step. Gets into this thing where maybe we’d rely on Hoffman’s scoring less if we had better defence…so…uhh….gotta go!

Andrew

What Luke said, basically.

I think Hoffman is legit and has been for awhile, but the organization, for whatever reason, seems cool on him, so I’ve kept my distance. This is actually something that can be measured, like I don’t want to invest 30 hours working on a Mike Hoffman painting only to see him in St. Louis next year.

I think he’s going to be traded for blue line help, or rather, one of our decent/good forward pieces should be moved for a good defender, and he seems the most likely candidate. But I would also rather “PAIY HEEM HEEZ FAAKING MAHNEE” because I like blowouts and this team can score and that’s a lot more fun.

For the record, Mike Hoffman, you had me at TEEN WOLF CASTING CALL.

Steph

Hey guys, I only have 20 words left to work with after those responses. Anyway, shouldn’t trade Mike Hoffman, he’s

Sent from Outlook Mobile

Varada

Guys, guys, guuuuuuuuuuys….we’re forgetting about Mike Hoffman’s EPIC attitude problems and the fact that, in the NHL, you always take the coach’s side. Lest we forget that the last time we had an elite sniper who hated his coach, one enchanted ventriloquist’s doll named Cory Clouston, we chose CORY CLOUSTON over one of the three players we’d basically built our entire team around. Thus was heralded in the Cheechoo era.

All this to say, while the undisputed champion of Torching His Relationship with Management remains Jared Cowen, Mike Hoffman is also turning a wee bit into a sour patch kid. I don’t think it’s his fault or anything, but there’s a track record evolving here. They go to arbitration. He shoots daggers at Dave Cameron. He clearly wants term and to be paid – as is the right of any human who can score goals like this at the highest level of hockey in the world.

All that to say that I would love to see Michel Hhaffmann re-signed, and I wouldn’t mind tacking on a couple of extra years on the end to keep his cap hit down, knowing that he’s waiting an extra-long time to make the NHL and wants to stay in the show now that he’s here. But it’s hard for me to see giving the guy the $6m-$7m an elite scorer would get on the open market. His speed and shooting percentage are not the sort of thing people build strategies around, because both erode in time and he’s already 26.

I guess I’m overthinking the part here where Hoffman occasionally gets nailed to the bench for defensive lapses that are all but naked to my untrained eye. Maybe the coach is saying, “Go out there and execute play x and y” and Hoffman is saying “I’m just going to shoot the puck, you wiener” and so the coach benches him. There’s something happening there that we don’t necessarily have access to.

And if Ray Emery can get us to the Cup Final, get re-signed, then bought out for being Not Our Kind of Guy, then an RFA with snooty-patootie airs is going to get shipped off for 2017’s Marc Methot.

Just to be clear I DON’T WANT THAT.

James

Not trying to Actually you here just playin a little word jazz as something you brought up got me thinkin’.

It’s interesting the examples of Bad Attitude Bears you mentioned:

Corey Clouston was maybe the worst choice of coach to side with over player but, disaster that it was at the time, it’s crazy to think the Sens actually won a trade where they were handcuffed from getting maximum value for a two time 50 goal scorer and, like you’re saying, guy Ottawa built the team around, for Milan Michalek, a 2nd round pick and Jonathan Cheechoo.

Sure, because of chronic knee injuries Milo’s more of a 3rd line player and, sure, Cheechoo is in the KHL, but at least Michalek is still IN the NHL and at least Cheechoo has recently been an all star in the KHL. Heatley is in the GERMAN LEAGUE. And after not living up to a one year, 1 million dollar deal and getting waived. In his last year with the Sens homie was making TEN MILLION DOLLARS. Ovechkin money! He was making 8 million as recently as the season Karlsson won his first Norris. What a world.

Meanwhile at Geppetto’s Workshop: Clouston was recently fired from the WHL.

Oh, and that ever-so-valuable second was traded for Andy Sutton for our LEGENDARY 6 game playoff run of 2010.

I will always be fascinated by this ever-unfolding saga.

As for Ray Emery, despite that Cup Final run, I think we have a special case here as well. Dude was getting into a Latrell Sprewell level of bad eggness at the time. Being late for practice [not a game] is one thing but fighting your teammates, threatening to kill the townsfolk, “partying” *rubs gums* to the point that it’s local lore even on a roster where a dude KILLED a guy? I mean, dude played himself out of the whole league for a while there. No one wanted to pick up a relatively young, pretty cheap goalie who just started in the big dance? Who is he, Annti Niemi? *Rim shot, mean-spirited applause* He wasn’t let go because he showed up to games dressed like The Mask and drove an iridescent Hummer.

To his credit, he’s rebuilt himself into an inspirational redemption story, but when the Sens cut ties with him he seemed like a nightmare douche…even for a pro athlete.

AAAAAAAAANYWAAAAAAAY, all this to say, if the same treatment were to happen to Hoffman because something something he got mad at being demoted despite being one of the league’s top scorers, t’would be some new heights of mismanagement. Especially considering Jared Cowen, who, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, stinks at hockey and seems like a tool, is still a regular fixture in the lineup. Pray4FenceMending.