It has been a little over a week since PK Subban inked his record breaking 8 year 72 million dollar deal making him the defenseman with the highest per year cap hit. Over P.K Subban’s first 4 seasons in the NHL people used a lot of different adjectives to describe the undeniably electric star from the good, to the bad, to the straight up deplorable. As far as I am concerned we can now add another adjective to the list and that would be “grossly overpaid.” I honestly cannot comprehend what kind of bizzaro hockey world we are living in when people who actually get paid to cover the sport (shockingly no one actually pays to write half way comprehensive articles with incredibly poor grammar) think that Erik Karlsson is “Is the most game-changing blue line talent in the world today, doing everything Subban does a bit better. But he’s also better than six of the seven highest-paid defensemen in the league (Weber, Ryan Suter, Kris Letang, Brian Campbell, Dion Phaneuf, and Zdeno Chara), with the lone exception being Drew Doughty, who makes an even $7 million against the cap through 2019.” via Ryan Lambert at Puck Daddy (simply stunning). I’m not going to even bother getting into the blasphemy that is putting any defenseman in the league definitively above Shea Webber but especially not the glorified Power Play specialist that is P.K Subban. I do think that P.K Subban is a young talented defenseman with a ton of potential, however I think you’re crazy if you are going to put him in the class of a top tier number 1 defenseman in the NHL than you just aren’t paying attention.
I’m going to to start by breaking this down as simple stupid as possible without any kind of stats or fancy analytics. To start off I want to reference the most basic scouting report from the hockey news which reflects the basic concenus of Subban around the league. To me the biggest takeaway from pretty much every scouting report I have ever read on Subban is the main knock on him is how he handles the puck in his own end and his defensive ability. Call me crazy, call me inexperienced, call me an absolute dumb ass but if I’m an NHL GM (that might be the biggest IF ever published) I am never going to make any player, the highest paid at his position when the one knock on the guy is the very definition of that fucking position. I may be old fashioned but to me that kind of seems day 1 General Manager shit. I mean shit, he wasn’t even considered to be a top six defenseman in his own country as Mike Babcock only played him for just over 11 minutes in the entire Olympic tournament. You want to know how you know if a guy is good in own zone or not? When his own team is so afraid to deploy him on the penalty kill that he was 211th in the NHL in short handed time on ice per game this past season.
To go a step further aside from the just the eyeball test, not only do I think that PK lacks in his defensive game, but i also think that his offensive game is vastly overrated. The stats simply don’t back up all this offensive acclaim he seems to have garnered. Counting the lockout year we will say he has played 3.5 full NHL seasons, over those 3.5 years he has averaged a 12g-35a-47p all the while coming in at an even 0 for plus minus. For a reference, 10 other listed defenseman in the NHL had equal or greater than point totals last year while each of the 10 was equal to or well above PK’s career 0 plus minus. If you were to take a further look into PK’s offensive numbers one other alarming stat might jump out at. While his career offensive numbers are rather pedestrian as far as “offensive defenseman” are concerned, they look even worse when you consider the fact the half of them (49.1% to be exact) have come on the power play. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having a “PP quarterback” or “PP specialist” as 80% of the GM’s in the NHL are looking for one every year, you’re just not going to find me in the line of guys wanting to make that guy the highest paid at his position. I don’t want to get to crazy but if you want to go fancy with “advanced statistics” that doesn’t bode to well for Subban either, where the stats do suggest that he does drive offense as shown here. When it comes to quality of competition, corsi for, or fenwick for (definitions can be found here) Subban does not even break the top 50.
Despite all the factual evidence staring you in the face as to why PK Subban is overrated and now vastly overpaid, nothing I have listed here is the biggest reason why I would never make PK Subban such a highly paid member of my team has more to do with hockey philosophy than it does any statistic. In today’s salary cap league you can only afford to pay a select amount of guys on your team this kind of money, this means that the couple of individuals that your organization commits long term to, will largely make up the perception and reputation of your team and organization. He is going to become an automatic leader for every other player throughout your entire organization of what you want your players to exemplify. Time and time again PK has showed an inability to get away from his chicken shit childish tactics making a mockery of NHL officials and the game itself. Look I understand that almost every NHL team has guys like this on their roster, but no way are they getting the big checks until they check the stupid shit at the door. PK Subban has all the potential in the world, I believe if he cuts the shit, checks his ego at the door and focuses on the areas in his game that need improvement he can be one of the best we have ever seen, but until then starting a week ago he is going to be one of the most overpaid Defenseman the NHL has to offer (I’m looking at you Orpik.)
PS- Absolutely fed up with Boston media’s coverage of PK Subban as soon as the “racist Boston twitter” story broke out after PK scored the OT game winner in Game 1 of the round 2 matchup with the Bruins this year. Even though it was proved to be a bullshit report, every Boston media member immediately became president of the PK Subban fan club. They were the guy you know who is absolutely a racist but whenever you call them out on it will point to the one black guy they were kinda friends with 5 years ago. (Let’s be real Boston, the biggest gangster in the history of your city is an Irish dude nick named “Whitie,”) Great from a PR standpoint Subban handled it with class, yes, he is very well spoken and give a great interview, so what we are supposed to sit back and admire the almighty PK. As long as he wears Bleu, Blanc y Rouge, continues to be whiny chicken shit taking and dives every other shift, I don’t care if he fucking purple, can’t stand the guy.
PPS- On a personal note good for Subban, I will never blame an athlete for getting every single cent they can while they can, I do not care if you are overpaid or not if someone is willing to sign the checks you sign the bottom line 99 times out of 100
@mikedowns4
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