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Let Kris Russell Walk

Time and time again I hear about the Oilers needing to re-sign Russel and the entire concept is ridiculous. He's a detriment to the on-ice product, he is going to get a high salary, and he won't have Sekera to cover for his liabilities until December. Signing him is a disaster waiting to happen, him leaving is a blessing. And not even in disguise.

Full disclosure,I'm an Avalanche fan first, and an Oilers fan second. What this means is that I know more about recognizing really shitty defensemen than Kevin Lowe thinks he knows about winning. There are a few metrics we can use to distinguish that Kris Russel's play isn't worth the stick he's using but I'm going to stick to just a few of them. The Advanced Stats, the Raw Stats, and the Eye-test. My hypothesis is that he's not going to come out looking good in any of them.

The Advanced Stats:

This one has been beaten into the ground. We know that he had a 46.5CF%, we know his CRel% of -4.4 is bad, we know that that means he was getting shot one hell of a lot more than his team was taking shots and we know that he was largely paired with really good possession players all year, so I'm not going to put too much analysis into that. The advanced stats say he's terrible, and as Interior Crocidile Aligator pointed out in one of the comments the other day, he's worse than Francois Beauchemin. If you want to know how bad Beauchemin is, head over to MHH and ask someone about how they felt of the buyout. Yes, the shittiest team in hockey's shittiest defenseman is better than Kris Russell.AO6aXrl.0.png

The Raw Stats: 1-12-13

One goal, twelve assists, and that's it. I'm aware that he's not an offensive defenseman and he's going to have defenders of this ridiculously low point total despite the fact that he was playing twenty-plus minutes per night on a really offensively skilled team. When Fedor Tyutin is outscoring you, there's a problem. There is no way to defend this output especially given that in the last 25 games of the season they had him out with the McDavid line as often as possible.

The Eye Test:

This is where people are going to point out that he's actually really good because they saw him block a shot. This is also non-sense. Let's watch the highlights from here and I'll let you try and suggest that he's a good player.

Yes I did pick out the game where he got scored on the most, but that's important for eye-test people who only base play on results. In this game he keeps losing his man, and the result is a goal. Usually not that many goals result from in, but there is a high danger scoring chance for the other team every third shift he is on the ice. Just think of how many times we've seen an opposing player wind up, Russell go down to block, the opposing player fakes the shot and leaves Russell way out of position and then he gets up and immediately chases the puck carrier regardless of if it's his man. This results in a shot coming from close to the net, multiple times per game.

The Shot blocking you say? As I pointed out the other day, shot blocking in hockey is a skill equivalent to getting out of the sand in golf. It's nice to be able to do when you're in that position, but if you're in that position multiple times per game it paints more of a fun house mirror picture than a portrait. He fails the eye-test almost worse than the Advanced stats section. He's a black hole on the ice.

Conclusion: Kris Russell wasn't good on the ice for the Oil by any metric. He was buried in his own end, didn't score and looked bad doing it. The Oilers would be better off not having him in the lineup than signing him even at league minimum. Some people believe that leadership and grit are skills (they aren't) and that it's worth paying a premium to have them, but those people are wrong. I have nothing against Kris Russell the person, but as a player, he's gotta go!

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