When the Nashville Predators put Eeli Tolvanen on waivers earlier this season, it surprised a lot of the hockey world. Sure, he hadn’t found a ton of success yet, but Tolvanen was just 23 and had a ton of obvious scoring talent. Since being claimed by the Seattle Kraken, the young forward has three goals and five points in five games, leading to some interesting comments from Predators general manager David Poile on Nashville radio this morning:
Did we give him enough opportunities? Should we have played him higher? Time will tell. Seattle plays differently than us – they rotate their four lines equally. Offensively they have put him in a higher position.
This could be a mistake on our part. That’s on me if he turns out to be really successful. But we thought we tried him on a lot of different areas, different places. We really hoped we could get him through on waivers so he could play in Milwaukee a bit.
In Tolvanen’s 135 games with the Predators over parts of five seasons, he received 16 or more minutes of ice time just 19 times. While it’s gone well early for him in Seattle, it should be noted that they too are limiting his ice time – he’s averaging just 12:32 through five games, less than he received in Nashville.
- The Ottawa 67’s have added another top talent, acquiring Anaheim Ducks’ prospect Pavel Mintyukov from the Saginaw Spirit. The 19-year-old defenseman was the 10th overall pick in last summer’s draft and scored 54 points in 37 games for Saginaw before the move. It’s a package of nine picks going the other way, including three second-rounders.
- Auston Matthews was missing from Toronto Maple Leafs practice today, and while head coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters including David Alter of Sports Illustrated that it was a maintenance day, the star forward will be a game-time decision for tomorrow’s match against the Predators.
Poile’s comment that the Kraken rotate their lines equally is just plain wrong. The Preds fourth line players have about the same TOI / 60 as the Kraken. Seattle does not have a typical 4th line, that’s true. Both Tolvanen and Sprong play on the 4th line and get significant power play time. Instead of being a checking line, the Kraken 4th line has two guys known for offense instead of defense. It may not work once the playoffs roll around. But it’s working now.
Tolvanen is playing on the 3rd line I think, not that it really matters a lot whether it’s “2nd” or “3rd”. It’s definitely not the 4th though. That’s Tanev, Geekie/Donato, Sprong.
Tolvanen was on the 3rd line against the Sabres. Up until that game he was on the 4th line with Tanev on the 3rd. Once they got the lead in the third Tanev was getting more ice than Tolvanen and Tanev ended up with 4 minutes and 26 seconds more ice time than Tolvanen. Though a lot of that was on the PK.
Maybe GMDP is using “new math”, where he declares that if the top line forwards’ ATOI is less than or equal to ten minutes difference compared to the bottom forwards, that equates to four lines of equal minutes. And, remember, kids, quiz at 11:00 on this.
Sometimes Poile reveals his foolishness for all to see.
Somehow Mark Jankowski can play every night for the Preds but no room can be found for Tolvanen. This kind of talent evaluation is why the Preds are the definition of mediocre.