I am not going to waste any time on the NHL All-Star game, it is a waste of time. I do want to spend some time defending a guy that gets a bad rap from Penguins fans for some reason. It seems that many Penguins fans seem to think that Alex Goligoski is an expendable piece of the puzzle who should be dealt at the deadline for a scoring winger to upgrade our offensive capabilities. I read that he is a defensive liability, he is too small, he plays soft, he can't run the power play, he costs us goals, etc. etc. Well, Alex Goligoski is small, he doesn't hit much, and from time to time he makes some defensive mistakes that piss me off too. But let's step back for a second and forget for a minute about what Goose is not, and talk about what he is. And what he is to the Penguins is the fifth leading scorer on the team with 26 points, including 9 goals and 4 game winners, along with a plus 21 rating. You cannot be invloved in giving up too many goals and be +21, right? The Penguins are also second in the league in goals against, so they really cannot have too many guys on defense who are terrible. Not too shabby. In addition, Goligoski has played 167 games in the NHL at this point, barely more than 2 seasons, so he will only get better. It is not uncommon for NHL defensemen to take 4 or 5 years to really blossom into their roles. In those 167 games, Goligoski has averaged .508 points per game and registered a +35. He is a cap hit of 1.8M dollars, and logs 20+ minutes of ice time per game as the fifth defenseman on the team. He is 25 years old. Let's compare Goligoski to some other prominent defensemen who play similar roles. Kris Letang, who is on a possible Norris Trophy pace is second on the team in scoring with this year with 41 points, including 7 goals and a plus 22 rating. He has more overall points, but is similar in goals and plus/minus rating this season. And overall in 267 games Letang has averaged .71 points per game, and is an overall +12. But a lot of that extra production has come over the past season or so, as he has played 100 more games, or about a season and a quarter. If you look at Letang's statistics at the end of last season, he had played in 147 games, averaging .40 points per game and a collective -6. Many of the same yinzers wanted to see Tanger traded last season for a decent winger. That trade would look pretty bad right now, when you see what an extra season of maturity has done for Letang, who is a legitimate Norris Trophy candidate. And he is 24. So, Goligoski has better statistics at roughly the same point in his career in terms of man games than Letang did. Letang has had a breakout year offensively, and he is more physical, but if Goligoski would continue to improve along the same curve, he will be a hot commodity. Add to that, his 1.8M cap hit makes him an extremely good value for a young defenseman with that kind of output. Letang is now considered a bargain at 3.5M, so at half that money Goligoski is a real bargain. Now, some of these same people say well, Tomas Kaberle is available, a very good offensive defenseman, and we could get him at the deadline to step in for Goligoski, he is better too. Well, I looked at Kaberle's last couple of seasons as a basis of comparison. Keep two things in mind as you read this. First, Kaberle has been in the league since 1998, so he is in his prime, and second, he comes with a 4.25M price tag, more than twice the hit we take for Goligoski. In fact, in terms of cap hit, you could have Goose, Cooke, and Engelland for Kaberle. But Kaberle is WAY better, right? WRONG!! In his past 188 games, Kaberle has averaged .585 points per game, a bit more than Goose, but has been a minus player to the tune of about -16. What about another BIG name offensive defensman with similar stature, Brian Rafalski of the Wings? Well, his numbers are better, in the past 194 games Rafalski has averaged .68 points per game, and been about a +20 player. But he also has been in the league for a long time, and in his prime, and he comes with a cap hit of 6M per year, or more than THREE times that of Goligoski. The Pens have one more year of Goose at 1.8M, and given his favorable performance comparison to other prominent offensive defenseman, and the upside he has he is a bargain in my book. If you are going to trade Goligoski you need to have two things in return. First, you better net a top six winger who will easily pump in 25 + goals who is signed for 3M or less, has term left on his contract, AND you better find another solid OFFENSIVE defenseman in another deal with a cap friendly hit. Not likely. So, yinzers, the Penguins should not deal Goligoski at the deadline for anything that would seem realistic to happen. If they could land a young gun like Jamie Benn or James Neal those are deals that could lead me to move the Goose. They are cap friendly, young power forwards with a resume, so they are not likely targets. Instead, they can package any combination of mid round draft picks, one of their defensive prospects not named Despres, and/or one or two of their 3rd/4th line players who will be UFA after this season for a rental like Bill Guerin was, or for a young guy like Christopher Higgins, Kris Versteeg, or Ales Hemsky who has upside. I would think that next season it will be time to give Eric Tangradi and Dustin Jeffrey prominent roles on the team, so there is no need to panic for that winger. If you think at some point next season that Simon Despres is ready to step up and log big minutes at the NHL level, then you can trade Goligoski NEXT year IF you get the right value in return. Until then, why not applaud the guy for the valuable contributions he does make instead of killing him for his lack of physical play. You should not underestimate what he quietly contributes to this team now, and you should hope that he takes a similar step up in his next 100 games that Letang did. If he does, you may be talking about signing him to an extension for Letang type money, and moving someone else's salary for a winger. That would be a good dilemma to have.
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