Buyer beware! If you’re thinking of handing out Matt Beleskey a contract north of $4.5-5 million per year on a multi-year deal, you may want to rethink that course of action.
By all means, Beleskey will fetch a staggering deal when the free agent market opens up. One that Anaheim Ducks general manager Bob Murray shouldn’t attempt to match. The 26-year-old winger is coming off a 22-goal campaign and scored eight goals in 16 playoff games to help Anaheim reach the Western Conference finals. Coming off a two-year deal that paid Beleskey $1.35 million per year, he’ll be expecting an expensive raise and Murray knows it.
“Boy, it’s going to be hard,” Murray said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s going to be hard. I do not regret not trading either one of them [Beauchemin and Beleskey]. I wanted to give this team every chance to run at the Cup, and they did run at it.”
For Beleskey, he’s taking a “wait and see” approach. While he has made it clear he would prefer to stay in Anaheim, he knows he’s in line for a big pay upgrade and teams will be lining up for his services on July 1. While it seems like the right decision to bring in someone that can score big goals, both in the regular season and in the playoffs, teams are also lining up to make a big mistake. One that has been done once already, recently even.
In the 2011-12 season, David Clarkson scored a career-high 30 goals in 80 games, while following it up with a 12-point performance in 24 games during the playoffs to help his team reach the Stanley Cup finals. Before anyone could reflect upon his season, the Toronto Maple Leafs threw a seven-year, $5.25 million per offer at the New Jersey Devils winger, and he signed it in a hurry. The one thing they overlooked was that in the previous three seasons before his 30-goal campaign, Clarkson had scored 49 goals in 291 games.
For Matt Beleskey, hitting 22 goals in just 65 games was a nice bonus for the Ducks, and for him as well seeing it’s a contract year and what better time to surpass your numbers than now? In his career, minus last season’s totals, Beleskey has 35 goals in 264 games. Sound familiar?
Before this season, Beleskey had 80 points in 264 games. Clarkson before his big season? 100 points 298 games.
The only difference between the two is Clarkson had one more year on his contract at the time, which he scored 15 goals in the lock-out shortened season of 48 games. The one constant is the differential between goals scored and assists. In Clarkson’s 30-goal season, he notched 16 assists, to his 9 assists the following season when he scored 15. Matt Beleskey notched just 10 assists during his 22-goal year despite finishing just about every other season with more assists. The 2014-15 season was about Beleskey being in the right place, at the right time to score goals off bounces and rebounds. Much like Clarkson’s 30-goal campaign with the New Jersey Devils.
Both Clarkson (2011-12) and Beleskey (2014-15) also share comparable ice-time averages and on-ice competition.
Clarkson received 12.9 minutes per game compared to Beleskey’s 12.8.
The offensive zone vs defensive zone relative for Clarkson was -2.8 compared to Beleskey’s 1.0.
Clarkson held a 52.7 CF% (Corsi For) compared to Beleskey’s 53.5 CF%.
Clarkson’s PDO (On-ice save percentage plus shooting percentage) was 100.7 compared to Beleskey’s 102.6
The minor differences in numbers can be attributed mainly to Beleskey’s slightly higher percentage of offensive zone starts.
Even the shooting percentage numbers are close, as Beleskey put up a 13.9% in 2014-15 compared to Clarkson’s 10.0% in 2011-12.
In terms of charts, the corsi numbers for both Clarkson and Beleskey spiked ahead, soaring higher than the past season. Clarkson has the extra 48-game season to his name and his corsi slightly higher playing in the same role as the last season. Comparing it to Beleskey, there is a similarity in the spike in corsi, where both played the same role, the same ice time and slight difference in zone starts that correlates to the minor difference in CF% and PDO.
Matt Beleskey should be expecting a contract close to what Clarkson signed and will undoubtedly get top-6 minutes, much like Clarkson got in Toronto. A stint that lasted two seasons and saw his CF% drop, his zone starts tip more towards the defensive zone and PDO dipped. Clarkson had an amped up average ice time due to his role on the Maple Leafs, but his inability to maintain the shooting percentage of 10.0% hurt him the most, touching at 4.3% in the first season with the Leafs.
Both Randy Carlye and Peter Horachek tried to do everything with him. Give him more ice time, more shifts with talented players, time on the powerplay. Anything. Yet Clarkson continued to NOT produce on the powerplay, his play was abysmal and he was sent packing to Columbus for Nathan Horton, a player whose future as a hockey player is in the air.
That was the future of David Clarkson after having a similar past that compares to Matt Beleskey.
Take your chance and sign him up but there’s a very good chance that Beleskey turns into the next David Clarkson. A player who was signed to a big contract with the expectation that his big season would carry over to a new time, at a higher level on the team taking on better competition each shift. Exactly what Beleskey faces if he signs a grand contract.
*Advanced statistics thanks to war-on-ice.com
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