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Thursday Morning Skate: NHL Rejects Chris Kelly Deal, Thank Goodness

By Cornelius Hardenbergh
and there was much rejoicing!
and there was much rejoicing!

Parades thrown! Paeans written! Excel tables decorated with fireworks clipart! I believe a very well-budgeted band is striking up a beat right now! Intrepid RDS writer tweets:

Trumpets sound! Peter Chiarelli is saved from his own bad deal! Chris Kelly is a "glue guy" and "good in the room" yes but we all know that "good in the room" means "bad on the ice" and Chris Kelly has scored 15 or more goals 3 out of his 7 years in the NHL (I'm not counting his 4-game year). He also has yet to top 40 points in any of those years, even the one where he scored 20 goals for us. He also has the highest PDO in the league last year. What's PDO, you ask?

PDO is simple: it's the on-ice save percentage + shooting percentage. So if the player happens to be on when the save percentage of their goalie is quite high (lots of pucks at the net but few go in) and they get lucky shooting (say for example they shoot up from a career 10.8 shooting percentage to 16.4 for a year) Then they will have a very high PDO. A high PDO says that while yes, the player played well, they were quite lucky. Conversely, if they had a very low PDO, then their numbers are worse than they should be and you would be smart to pick them up as a fantasy sleeper next year. Here's a link to last year's regular season even-strength PDO for the Bruins.

As you can see, Chris Kelly is nearly at the top. I'm pretty sure he's at the top, and what goes up must come down. So, thank you, NHL, for getting us out of that terrible contract.

Unforunately, the glow wears off when you read that they won't sign until July 1st and then it's back at it. If I were Chris Kelly I might test the market to see if any suckers are going to sign me for more than 12 million in 4 years. Like 12 million in 3 years in Ottawa or Buffalo, maybe? Yeah, that would be cool.

After all, it looks like Jay McClement is probably available....

Patrice Bergeron Highlight Video:


Remember when Patrice Bergeron scored 2 goals, and it looked like he scored a third but on review he didn't touch it, then he scored again? What a guy. Enjoy the dulcet tones of Jack Edwards extolling the virtues of St. Patrice. There's even a Marc Savard sighting. Remember him? Sigh....

Programming note: Do youtube videos still kill some people's auto-scroll? Let me know.