FanPost

Is Chris Kunitz really as bad as we think he is?

Ryan Wilson wrote a great article detailing how the lion's share of the blame for the lack of scoring falls on Johnston, due to the unlikelihood of every single player on the team underachieving. The Bylsma Penguins ranked 6th in shots and 2nd in shooting percentage over his tenure, while Johnston's squads rank 13th and 23rd respectively during his time in the league. With that in mind, we have chastised Kunitz for losing his hands and becoming somewhat of a contractual liability. But shouldn't the same logic apply to him?

It should be noted that Kuni's underlying numbers still look solid. He has a zone-adjusted SF% of 53.5% versus 47.8% for his teammates; essentially he has 3rd liners playing at a 1st line possession clip. This gives me reason to believe that his box car stats could follow suit. Just as recently as the start of last season he put up 9 goals and 11 assists in the first 23 games prior to his foot injury; he is only about a calendar year removed from dynamic offensive play, which is especially encouraging since it came with Johnston at the helm.

We also need to slightly tamper our expectations of Kunitz based on his mitigated role on the power play. About a third of his career goals (76 of 227) and a quarter of his career assists (70 of 287) have come with the man advantage, but he has averaged just 2.47 minutes per game of power play time versus 3.28 for his previous Pens campaigns; this equates to a loss of 2 goals and 2 assists over a full season based on deployment alone.

Even with this in mind, I still see #14 as a bounce-back candidate should the system change. What could we expect from him down the stretch? In his final 62 games under Bylsma, Kunitz notched 52 points; this translates into 46 when you account for the power play adjustment for that season. In the right system he is still capable of top 6 scoring prowess.

Getting a productive Kuni would have a marvelous trickle-down effect on the roster; it would make Perron expendable for a much-needed defenseman. It would result in one of two super-lines of 14-87-72 (3.39 ppg in '14-'15 pre-injury), or 14-71-81 (essentially a recreation of the firing line from '11-'12, which piled up 3.18 ppg). The same could be said about any number of struggling Pens getting their acts together, but Kunitz seems to have been written off altogether, yet he might still have something left in the tank.

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