[Wild About Numbers]: Should The Wild Sign Any Of The UFA Defencemen Left On The Market?

Yesterday could hardly have gone better for the Wild. Clayton Stoner, Cody McCormick and Willie Mitchell all ended up not signing with the Wild and instead signed comically bad contracts elsewhere, Vanek signed for an incredibly short term and the Iowa Wild roster was shored up with the signings of Guillaume Gelinas as well as Stu Bickel and Brett Sutter.

Apparently the Wild are still looking for a "physical" defenceman to replace Stoner, but Chuck Fletcher is concerned by how bare the market is and how much players like that have been overpaid so far. This means he could go the trade route to fill that role, but if he decides to take a harder look at the UFAs available, he might find there are some decent options left, both in the "physical" mold and the regular just-a-good-defenceman mold.

I used CapGeek's UFA Finder feature to compile a list of UFA defencemen who played at least 40 games last season. I excluded Anton Belov because he is headed for the KHL and Nate Prosser because he just left the Wild, leaving 21 candidates.

That's still a lot of names so, to narrow it down, I've eliminated players who were in the negative last year and also on average since 2007/08 except for Chris Butler, Jamie McBain and Raphael Diaz, who are 3 players I would like to look at a bit closer due to discussion of them on the blog yesterday.

-Here's the updated list with more details:

Before starting my main analysis, I looked a bit closer at the year-to-year numbers for McBain, Butler and Diaz to see if their average was being skewed by one bad year in an otherwise decent career:

• Butler has put up one positive rating in 6 seasons, which suggests that he is not worth pursuing.

• The sample size is small for Diaz, but he has been positive in 2 out of 3 seasons. The problem is that his one bad season was really bad. He might be a decent bet to take a flier on, but I won't be analysing him any further in this article as there are better options worth devoting more time to.

• McBain is another interesting case. His most recent season and his rookie year were terrible, but he had a couple of decent years in between. I don't think his good years were quite good enough for me to consider him as a good signing for the Wild.

-That leaves us with 7 defencemen to consider. Here's how they've performed year-to-year (open in new tab to see full size):

• It's worth noting that Paul Ranger played from 2007/08 to 2009/10 and then didn't play again in the NHL until 2013/14 after taking a personal break from hockey, which is why his data looks a bit strange on the line graph.

• Ranger's numbers before he took his break are very good (his negative year was one in which he only played a handful of games). His comeback season wasn't too shabby either, making him an interesting option for the Wild.

• Michael Del Zotto has been fairly up and down, but is still young and just had a decent season. I wouldn't be adverse to the Wild trading for him.

• Andre Benoit had one very good season out of his three, but he has only played 120 NHL so the sample size is a bit too small for me to say for certain that he could do a job for the Wild.

• Sami Salo will be 40 next year, has injury problems and just doesn't have numbers impressive enough to make me want the Wild to sign him, despite a decent 2013/14.

• I think it's clear that the safest bets are Tallinder, Sarich and Volchenkov, who I will analyse in more detail below.

Anton Volchenkov

Henrik Tallinder

Corey Sarich

• It's funny that Tallinder had the worst rating last season out of the 3, but the best average since 2007/08, whereas Volchenkov is the total opposite. Either way, all 3 have put up very decent numbers over the last few years.

• Volchenkov and Sarich have been a little bit more consistent overall, but the highs have been pretty high for Tallinder.

• None of these guys are particularly good offensively, but Sarich is clearly the strongest in that regard.

*

Overall, I think the safest bet for the Wild to make is a 1-year deal for Volchenkov, Tallinder or Sarich. My pick of the 3 is Volchenkov because of his age, his aggressive play and the fact that he is left-sided.

With Volchenkov on board, the depth chart could look like this:

SUTER-BRODIN

SCANDELLA-SPURGEON

VOLCHENKOV-FOLIN

(BALLARD)

Michael Del Zotto would be a good signing if the Wild are interested in a low risk/high reward project and Paul Ranger is a bit of a mystery but could pay dividends on a cheap contract.

Either way, there are clearly some solid options still out there, so I hope Chuck Fletcher signs one of these guys rather than someone like Tim Gleason or, God forbid, Douglas Murray.

What do you think, Wilderness? Are any of these guys worth signing?

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Thanks to Extra Skater, Hockey Analysis, Hockey Abstract and SomeKindOfNinja for all the data.

For a quick advanced stats 101, read this. For more in-depth stuff, read this.