2013-14 Season in Review: Taylor Pyatt

Age: 32

Contract Status: UFA this summer

2013-14 Stats

Most Frequent Forward Linemates

We gave up nothing to get Pyatt and only paid part of his salary this year. So part of me doesn't want to blame anyone for trying. But my goodness--it's tough to envision anyone in the NHL regularly putting up worse numbers. He scored 0 goals while on the ice with his most common linemates and was a possession disaster at every turn. The guy only eclipsed an on-ice CF% of 40% once when he was out with his most common linemates. He's a replacement level player who won't be in the NHL much longer.

Pyatt to the Penguins?

It was a bit surprising when the Penguins picked up Pyatt off the waiver wire, but given their injuries and depth, it shouldn't have been. I think most can agree, though, it didn't work out. There really isn't a lot to say other than noting that Pyatt never seemed to get off his feet once he got here; though he scored a few goals, he was so ineffective in literally every facet of the game. The guys over at the fabulous Get to our Game blog had a nice piece on how terrible Taylor Pyatt was this year. Their killer paragraph (in my opinion) is below:

Since being claimed in January, Pyatt has 2 goals, no assists, and only 18 shots on goal in 16 games.  He's a -11. To put in perspective how unproductive Pyatt has been this season, here's a list of the four least productive players who have played at least 350 total minutes over at least 35 games (an average of 10+ minutes/night).

I'm not even sure John McCarthy is a real person -- he sounds like a U.S. Senator from the 1950's -- and Rinaldo and Konopka are two of the worst players in the NHL.  Yet they're Pyatt's peers this season.

When comparing Pyatt to similar players, you have to pull up some of worst names in the business. That should tell you something about his job prospects.

GIF of the Year

Dreamy eyes, I tell ya.

Preseason Expectations

None of us had any preseason expectations for Pyatt because he was not on the team to begin with. Midway through the year, after it became clear that our depth wasn't great and our injuries were eating up all of our bottom six forwards, it made sense to pick up a guy like Pyatt off of waivers and see if he could work out. Given that he was on waivers to begin with, expectations probably weren't that high. We'd hope he could score some goals and use his size to his advantage around the net. If he could do that, then maybe things wouldn't be terrible.

Verdict

But things were terrible. Pyatt was slow and awful at maintaining possession of the puck. He couldn't pass well or win many battles along the boards. Once the team got healthy, he was a healthy scratch throughout the entire playoffs, which highlighted that the only reason he had a spot on this team was because of the massive amount of injuries during the regular season. In short, he was a stop gap whose time ran out as the season wore down.

According to capgeek, he's got about $12M in career earnings, so even if no one picks him up next year, he should have a nice chunk of change in his bank account that should allow for a comfortable retirement.