Jakub Kindl’s contract is up and he will be an unrestricted free agent this summer. Based on the last couple of seasons in which he has played for us, it’s best that we don’t re-sign him.
In 39 games played this season, Jakub recorded 0 goals, 4 assists, combining for a total of 4 points. That’s bad. His defense on the other hand is what’s worse. Kindl defensively is a living nightmare. First, his skating is very weak. As we saw countless amounts of times this year, Jakub was constantly caught flat-footed when skating backwards.
Secondly, all his shots either missed the net or were blocked entirely, leaving the opponent going back the other way given a scoring chance. This relates to point one above, as when Jakub shots were blocked, he was always caught in a flat-footed spot, which allowed for his opponent to blow right by him. Simple, isn’t it?
Thirdly, his defensive awareness is just awful. Too many times did I see him covering the wrong man, often leaving his guy wide open in the slot. Jakub is like a “headless chicken” when in the defensive end, defending with no purpose.
So apart from his flaws, I really wanted to see what Jakub was like with and without his defensive partner. In this case, I will be using a metric called “WOWY” (With or Without You). The metric analyzes what a certain player is like when playing or not playing with his line or partner. Let’s jump right in!
First, will start with Aaron Ekblad. The two weren’t paired together for long, but it’s still worth analyzing. When Aaron is with Jakub, he holds a CF% of 49.88%. When he’s not with Kindl, Aaron holds a CF% of 51.77%. Not much of a difference, but had it been a better year for Ekblad, you surely would see a larger difference between the two figures. Next, will move on to Alex Petrovic. When Alex is with Jakub, he puts up a CF% of 50.86%. When Petro isn’t playing with Kindl, his CF% goes up to 51.76%, also showing that he’s better off not playing with him.
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Lastly, will end off with Mark Pysyk. When the two are together, Mark has a CF% of 48.81%. When he’s not with Jakub, Pysyk’s CF% rises to 51.62%. See the trend going with Kindl? Players who don’t play with Kindl are better off statistically, thus making their productions rise. Yes, I only used one metric (Corsi For %), but if you look at all the other metrics, the results would end up the same. Overall, this shows that players (defenseman mainly) are better off not being paired with Kindl.
It’s also worth mentioning that Jakub’s salary was $3,000,000 (2016-17 season) according to CapFriendly. For someone who has a GF60 (Goals For per 60 minutes) of 1.92 and a GA60 (Goals Against per 60 minutes) of 3.04 just isn’t worth three million in salary. I will also throw out there that his SCF60 (Scoring Chances For per 60 minutes) was 5.93 and his SCA60 (Scoring Chances Against per 60 minutes) was 8.23. That’s horrible, especially since he was making three million in salary.
Overall, it’s quite clear that Jakub Kindl should not be re-signed. At age 30, Jakub has hit “rock bottom” in his play. If he wants to see anymore playing time, he may have to do it overseas, as it’s likely that no NHL team will pick him up this summer.