The Calgary Flames have signed Tobias Rieder to a $700k, one-year two-way contract coming off of a strong performance during his professional try out with the club. The Flames continued their trend of having an abundance of PTO players during training camp and Rieder did enough to earn a contract this time around.
As per John Mastisz of The Score, the deal is a two-way contract and will give the Flames a speedy depth option in the bottom-six. Following the Flames’ last preseason game in San Jose, Head Coach Bill Peters referred to Rieder as an “elite penalty killer”, and could be a replacement for Garnet Hathaway this season.
Breaking down Rieder’s offensive contributions
Using the TWC Player Offensive Evaluation tool, let’s take a look at what this could potentially mean for the Flames’ offensive outputs. The tool uses 5v5 offensive data from the 2016-17 through to the 2018-19 seasons and compares a player to the rest of the league by using standard deviations.
Over the past three seasons, Rieder played for the Arizona Coyotes, Los Angeles Kings, and most recently the Edmonton Oilers. Rieder’s offensive struggles last year were well documented, but the Flames were willing to offer him a contract. The aforementioned cap flexibility could be worth it alone, but the Flames could find use out of Rieder nonetheless.
As proposed by Ryan Pike (@RyanNPike), it could be so that the Flames replace Czarnik’s cap hit with Rieder’s. In doing so, we can compare their offensive impacts to see if it could be a worthwhile trade-off on the ice.
At a cursory glance, Czarnik’s the better player. While neither of the players are offensive powerhouses by any means, Czarnik at least comes out on top when looking at possession, something that often leads to success among depth players.
Should this lead to Czarnik being demoted to the AHL, the Flames would save $375k in cap space. Will the Flames be willing to see less of Czarnik in order to save a bit of cap space? Even if Rieder does in fact take Czarnik’s roster spot as a means to balance the books, the Flames might reap more benefits by slotting in another player to fill out their bottom six such as Dillon Dube or Alan Quine.
If you haven’t checked it out already, here is a direct link:
The Win Column’s Player Offensive Evaluation Tool.
Photo by Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images
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