“I have been told he is a much better player,” Alain Vigneault said of the Rangers' 23-year-old defenseman. “I have not seen that on a consistent enough basis. We’ll see how he responds.”
Rough translation: They told me he was good, and he's not. What Del Zotto (one points, three assists) is responding to is a three-game stint in the press box. He's likely to return on Thursday night against the Dallas Stars.
All things considered, Del Zotto's even-strength play hasn't necessarily fallen off all that much since last season. He's just being used differently; with Marc Staal back at full strength, Del Zotto is playing on the third pairing. That means less minutes against worse players.
Consider Del Zotto's even-strength usage chart from last season, via hockeyabstract.com. The size of the bubble represents ice time. The bluer the bubble, the more shots a player's team takes when he's on the ice. The higher a bubble, the better competition a player faces. As the bubble moves farther right, it signifies more offensive-zone shifts.
Weaker competition, more offensive-zone starts and a slightly more positive impact on possession. That's not a disaster. Neither are his scoring numbers, relatively speaking: he averaged .80 even-strength points per 60 minutes last season, and he's at .78 in 2013-14.
His shooting percentage has actually risen from 3.7 to 4.0, but that's still way down from 8.8 in 2011-12, when he scored 10 goals in 77 games. If that's what Vigneault is expecting, he shouldn't hold his breath.
The most obvious difference between this season and last: the power play. In 46 games last season, Del Zotto produced eight assists (3.49 points per 60 minutes). In 2013, he has one assist in 16 games (1.42 points per 60 minutes). His average time with the unit has dropped from 2:54 to 2:41 per game, but he still leads the team. If he were producing at last season's rate, things would look a lot better — actually, he'd look like a third-pairing power-play specialist, which is what he probably should be.
In the meantime, Del Zotto's name will keep coming up in trade rumors. "Five or six" teams have asked about him, and he'd "probably embrace a change," according to TSN's Darren Dreger. He's in the second and final year of a contract that carries a $2.55 million cap hit.
NHL SERIOUS ON GOAL REVIEWS
Here's some (sort of) good news for anyone tired of the ol' "inconclusive replay" excuse for disallowed goals, courtesy of TSN's Darren Dreger:
NHL Hockey Operations is expected to meet with a group in the near future that has designed a camera system that can be installed in the posts of the nets. This system may provide a more clear view of the goal line and by design may assist the league in determining — conclusively — whether or not the puck crosses the line.
Dreger went on to say that the meeting was in place well before the best, most recent example of system failure, which came on Tuesday night. Ottawa's Kyle Turris appeared to score on Flyers goalie Steve Mason, but the call on the ice was no goal, and referee Paul Devorski didn't see enough to overturn it.
Dreger also said that other measures — a "verification line" on the ice and different camera systems — were considered, but "there doesn't appear to be a visual aid or device that has been developed that is worth the cost and can guarantee perfection."
The easy questions: Why is that the league's standard? Why does the new system have to guarantee perfection? Is any system — in any field — 100-percent foolproof? And how expensive does something have to be to be too pricy for a league expecting to generate $5 billion in revenue per year in the near future?
So in short, the league should drop the quixotic "100 percent accuracy" stuff, and settle for "appreciably better than what we have currently," then, if it comes down to it, fork over the second-line center-caliber amount of money (or whatever) it'd cost to install more cameras in the posts.
Really, even baseball is trying to get better with this stuff — and nobody wants to be less progressive than baseball.
GRIGORENKO BACK IN BUFFALO
Sabres center Mikhail Grigorenko was back in Buffalo on Wednesday after the NHL blocked the team's attempt to send the rookie to the minors on a two-week conditioning assignment.
In reaching its decision, the league cited its agreement with the Canadian Hockey League preventing teams from assigning players with junior eligibility to the American Hockey League.
"We determined that the assignment would not have been consistent with our obligations under the league's agreement with the CHL," NHL spokesman Frank Brown wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Interim coach Ted Nolan accepted the league's ruling, which came a day after the Sabres demoted Grigorenko to their AHL affiliate in Rochester N.Y., for conditioning.
"We thought we were doing it by the rulebook, but unfortunately we weren't," Nolan said. "Now he's back with us. We'll have to sit down and evaluate what the next step is."
Players remain on their NHL team's roster and are paid their full salary during conditioning stints, which last no more than 14 days.
The question became whether the 19-year-old Grigorenko qualified for assignment.
The ruling limits the Sabres' options in determining how to develop a player who has had difficulty earning regular ice time in Buffalo. Grigorenko has two goals and one assist in 15 games this season and had missed two straight games and five of seven as a healthy scratch before being assigned to AHL Rochester.
The Sabres must now choose between keeping Grigorenko on their roster and returning him to his Canadian junior team in Quebec.
After opening last season playing in Quebec, Grigorenko earned a spot on the Sabres roster at the end of the NHL lockout. He had a goal and four assists in 22 games before the Sabres elected to return him to Quebec. Grigorenko then came back to Buffalo to play the final three games of the season and two more for Rochester in the playoffs after Quebec's season ended.
Contributors: Sean Gentille, The Associated Press
