In a deal that comes down about 45 minutes before the official trade deadline, Tampa Bay will send undrafted winger Cory Conacher to the Ottawa Senators, along with a fourth round pick, for goalie Ben Bishop. The Lightning address a need that they are lacking (their team save percentage ranks 24th in the NHL this year), as does Ottawa – 24th as well, but in goals for/game. There are different ways to look at this trade, so let me start with Bishop.
Ben Bishop
A 26-year old goaltender with 36 career appearances in the NHL usually don’t get too many people excited. But when you factor in that Bishop is 6’7″ and has a .917 SV% over his last 23 appearances for Ottawa, and now you have something to get excited over.
Now, at face value, that .917 SV% isn’t anything to get overly excited about. But if you look at his career, you see progression:
2008-2009: .897 SV% in 33 AHL games.
2009-2010: .901 SV% in 48 AHL games.
2010-2011: .914 SV% in 35 AHL games.
2011-2012: .928 SV% in 38 AHL games.
2011-2013: .917 SV% in 23 NHL games.
You can see how he has gotten better each year he’s been in the AHL. He’s also gotten better progressively in the NHL.
Another key factor in this: The Ottawa Senators are allowing the most shots against per game in the NHL so far this year at 33.1. Bishop is facing around 30.7 shots/game, which would still put the Senators in the top 10 for worst shots against per game.
We have a bit of a track record on Bishop so it’s safe to say there’s at some promise that he could be a number one goalie. I worry about the rest of this season because he is going from a middle-of-the-pack puck possession team in Ottawa (which skews the validity of shots against argument a bit) to one of the worst. Only Toronto, Buffalo, Columbus and Edmonton possess the puck less than the Lightning, so I hope Bishop is ready to do some sliding around the crease. He may not face as many shots as in Ottawa but the quality of these shots is sure to be much better.
Goalies usually take longer to develop than players. This is why you don’t see 19-year old stud goalies in the NHL anymore. There may also be something to the notion that “big” goaltenders might be like “big” defensemen and take even longer than their shorter counterparts to develop. However, Bishop is starting to reach his cusp and you can’t teach Big.
Cory Conacher
An undrafted free-agent signing back in 2011, Conacher exploded into the AHL last year, posting 80 points in 75 games and finishing second in the scoring race in the league. Not bad.
He followed this up with 28 points in the first 36 games of the AHL season this year while the NHL was locking itself out. This pace continued into the NHL regular season, putting up 18 points in his first 20 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Things have slowed as of late for Conacher, with just six points in his last 15 games. This drop in production has seen him go from playing on the top line to essentially what would be the third line now in Tampa.
There’s not much we can draw from in the way of advanced stats for Conacher. With only 35 NHL games in a shortened season to draw data from, the sample size is too small to make any definite conclusions.
As I said, Tampa isn’t a good puck possession team. This was surely going to mean a bad On-Ice Corsi for him and the rest of his team. This is exactly the case. He’s been their fourth-worst forward with at least 20 games played. Also for the same group of forwards, he has the second-worst On-Ice SV%, which would infer that the scoring chances given up when he’s on the ice are the best that the other team usually sees. I should note that the worst is Steven Stamkos—but I think we can forgive him.
Again, these are all small sample sizes, so how it relates to the rest of the NHL isn’t very clear. But we can use his numbers within the confines of his own team which would give us the best indication of how he’s played relative to the rest of the team and their performance so far this year.
Conacher has been good this year, there’s no doubt. But he’s going to a team that’s missing their top two (possibly three) offensive threats in Jason Spezza, Milan Michalek and Erik Karlsson. His immediate impact for fantasy will be minimal at best, certainly no better than what he’s been doing in Tampa Bay.
