Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 93
From Adam Clendening comparisons to a 1997 Islanders arbitration hearing that reduced Tommy Salo to tears, this week's ombudsman report has some real history in it.
Welcome back to the Blueshirt Bandwidth Podcast Ombudsman Report. Each week, Charlie Vidal will listen to the latest episode of the podcast and correct the record on anything Joe and Eric (or, in this case, Chip) get wrong. If you aren't already, you can listen and subscribe to the podcast here.
Ombudsman Report
After the cut in, Joe said that I probably disparaged him. I mostly disparaged Chip in last week’s report.
Defensive Logjam
Despite the fact that Braden Schneider had not yet inked his one-year, $5.5 million deal to avoid arbitration at the time that the podcast was recorded, much of the discussion was centered around the plethora of third pair defensemen that the New York Rangers have.
When discussing Scott Morrow’s poor defense and inability to crack the lineup, it was mentioned that if Morrow could play defense even a little, he’d be in the lineup, but instead is more like Zac Jones.
Jones did not play in the NHL at all last season, but looking back over the past two seasons, Morrow has been the worst defensively among Schneider, Jones, and himself, according to Evolving Hockey:
Chip suggested that if the Rangers are forced to keep Morrow on the roster to avoid losing him for nothing he “will be stapled to the Adam Clendening memorial press box.” Clendening spent the 2016-17 season with the Rangers and played in only 31 games, being healthy scratched 51 times that season.
Finally, Chip said of the logjam that there are “too many left-shot defensemen.” Vincent Iorio, Morrow, and Schneider are all right-shot defensemen, while Drew Foretescue, Alberts Smits, Matthew Robertson, and Urho Vaakanainen are left-shots, giving the Rangers a fairly even split among potential third-pairing defensemen.
Schneider to the Sharks
When discussing possible landing spots for Braden Schneider this offseason, Joe said that, “Mike Grier would’ve been better off with Schneider than Nurse at full price or Jacob Trouba." While, as previously discussed, Nurse is a middle-of-the-pack defenseman with too large of a cap hit, Trouba projects to be worse than Schneider and is 7 years older:
Arbitration
When discussing the prospects of Braden Schneider going to arbitration, Chip pointed out that there are instances where players come out of it feeling really bad about the team due to the adversarial nature of the proceedings.
The most notorious arbitration case occurred during the summer of 1997. While the New York Rangers were attempting to pry away Joe Sakic from the Colorado Avalanche, noted footwear enthusiast Mike Milbury went to arbitration in an attempt to save $350,000 on goaltender Tommy Salo’s contract.
Milbury laid out evidence that Salo was the worst conditioned athlete on the team, blaming him for allowing late goals that cost the New York Islanders many games during the 1996-97 season. Salo was left in tears. He remained the Islanders starting goalie for another season and a half.
While $350,000 doesn’t seem like a lot in today’s NHL, it was actually the net worth of the Islanders owner at one point in the late 1990s.
Salo might be better known for another breakdown five years later during the 2002 Winter Olympics. I sure hope that Sweden was able to find a better goalie in time for the 2006 games.
Nikolay Zherdev
Both Joe and Chip were adamant that Nikolay Zherdev was actually good, and that it was a mistake to walk away from his arbitration award. The numbers back them up. Hockeystats.com has Zherdev as an 89 percent WAR player in the summer of 2009, and Evolving Hockey has Zherdev as the Rangers third best forward by xGAR/60 that season:
The arbitration award that the Rangers walked away from was $3.9 million, which was higher than the $3.2 million that the Rangers offered. That $3.9 million would have been 6.8 percent of the cap, which would be equivalent to $7.15 million today.
Chip commented that, “up until last year [Zherdev] was still playing.” While Zherdev had a lengthy career in Russia and Austria, he last played in the 2021-22 season.
FInally, Joe remembers Zherdev scoring a last second goal against the Pittsburgh Penguins. On Oct. 25, 2008, Zherdev scored with eight seconds left to send the game to overtime, and later Fredrik Sjostrom would score the only goal in the shootout to give the Rangers the win:
