After the Calgary Flames’ recent trade of Nikita Zadorov, it’s obvious that the team is nowhere near done tinkering with their blueline.
From the pending free agency of both Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin, combined with the emergence of some of their young prospects, as well as hopefully the return of Oliver Kylington down the line, there is a lot of change about to happen.
Since the trade opened up an additional $3.75M in salary cap space, creating a current cap room of ~$4.28M, the Flames have a variety of options at their disposal. One option that some insiders have speculated on has been that the team may look to add to their team in the interim.
Enter Tyson Barrie.
Barrie’s on-ice production and results
On the Chris Johnston Show, the NHL insider speculated about a link between Barrie and the Flames. Since Barrie and his representatives have been permitted to talk to teams and seek a new home before hitting free agency this summer, Johnston thought that one of those new homes could be in Calgary.
Now the biggest reason for this is primarily due to Barrie’s offensive-focused game, which the Flames are in serious need of. His power play quarterback resume also speaks for itself, another area of pain for the Flames. His time in Nashville has been less than stellar, but over his career, he’s been strong in his opponent’s end. I’ll be using charts from HockeyViz.com and Evolving-Hockey.com to assess his play.
First, his isolated 5v5 impact. It’s a little hard to see given his long career, but the gist is this: Barrie best days playing defence are behind him. In fact, his defensive impacts were only good over his first four NHL seasons. Since then, it’s been eight consecutive seasons of being a below-average defenceman. Every xGA value since 2015–16 is positive, meaning more goals are expected when Barrie is on the ice compared to when he’s not.
Ever since his trade from the Colorado Avalanche, he hasn’t been able to quite find his game reaching the same heights as it used to, but last season he had one of his best split between the Edmonton Oilers and Nashville Predators. Again, the similarities in his chart are evident: He’s good on offence, bad on defence. Good on the power play, bad on the penalty kill.
Now of course there is a massive elephant in the room when looking at these charts and that is his defensive play. Even with a dominant offensive season like last year, Barrie’s numbers show that he is a liability in his zone. This year things have gotten even worse with his play in Nashville.
The bar charts are a little easier to digest: his impacts this year are more negative than not; both at even strength (bar chart on the left) and on the power play (bar chart on the right).
The second chart shows Barrie’s With or Without. It’s a little hard to take everything in, but when Barrie is on the ice, both his xGF/60 and xGA/60 get worse for his team.
Barrie’s fit with the Flames
The team would not be acquiring Barrie to shore up the blue line, that’s for sure.
If the Flames were to trade for Barrie after a hypothetical Tanev deal, you’d have to call 9-1-1 so fast on account of the whiplash. Now how would Barrie fare in a Huska’s system alongside a defensive-minded partner on the blueline? It could be a massive improvement. But there is evidence based on the chart above that Barrie has negatively impacted the team’s play when he’s on the ice, which makes this a bit of an unknown.
If you add in the hopes that he could lead the power play anywhere out the league’s basement, you can see the intrigue, but at what cost?
The cost to acquire Barrie
Similar to what the Flames are facing right now, the cost of a UFA defenceman looks to be lower than what most expect. Add in the defensive woes and poor season noted above and the expiring contract and suddenly Barrie could be an interesting trade for a lower-than-market value.
Barrie’s trade value has dropped significantly since his deal from the Colorado Avalanche, with last season being more of a salary match dump for the Oilers. This season he has been splitting his time between the second or third pairings, with his ice-time at 18:51 on the season which would be the second lowest of his career.
His situation is eerily similar to that of Zadorov, with Barrie having a higher cap hit at $4.5M. If the Flames are serious about adding Barrie’s full salary to the books for the rest of the year, then the acquisition cost could be similar to that of Zadorov.
Is that the best use of the assets the team just received? Probably not. If the Flames are going to re-vamp their entire blue line then taking a chance on Barrie could end up doing more harm than good.
Barrie is bad, but fun!
The best way to summarize a Barrie fit with the Flames is that he would be terrible defensively, but could add a splash of excitement to the power play. Not sure that is the best place to play with at this point of a re-tool, but you could see the team wanting to try something different.
Barrie has always been applauded for his personality and fit with any team he has been a part of, and since the departure of Zadorov, there is a big hole to fill in terms of personality. That being said, I’d wonder if Barrie would entertain a move to Calgary based solely on his roots with the Oilers.
It’s not the smartest idea, but it’s also not the worst idea that Craig Conroy could cook up.
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