Steve MacIntyre is on pace to play a career high number of games this season. At 14 already and just over half way through the season, it is fairly likely that he get in to 25-30 games this year (previous high, 22). Though at 3:55 of ice time per night, he will be on the ice for about the same amount of time this season that Tom Gilbert will play in around 4 games. In spite of this, you don't have to look too hard to find people proclaiming the necessity and value of having Steve MacIntyre on your hockey club. Jim Matheson's article here shows Tom Renney, a man paid money to coach hockey, talking about the virtues of having the 250lb goon in the line.
“Moving forward, he’s going to play more and he’ll make his contribution in other ways outside of the obvious,” said Renney.
“Ways outside the obvious” might be the understatement of the year. The implication, of course, is that with MacIntyre in the lineup, the rest of the team will be free of worry of other teams goons beating them up, giving them space to play the game. This sentiment, in my opinion, is completely insane. In order to actually deter anyone from taking runs at stars like Hall, Eberle, and Hemsky, you probably at least need to occasionally step on the ice. It would be even better if you were able to skate well enough to actually catch up to a guy you want to go after.
That's not to say that MacIntyre does nothing out there. He is an average of an alarming 5.5 penalties per 60 minutes of ice time. The next highest on the Oilers is Linus Omark at 1.8. MacIntyre leads the league in this category (when considering only players that have got in to at least 10 games this year). Not only that, he is getting absolutely dominated in the shots department. A Relative Corsi of -20.2 is just ugly. The only reason he is getting scored against more often is a PDO of 1.017, and the fact that he just doesn't play very much. In his 3:55 seconds of ice time, the Oilers get absolutely dominated.
Yet Tom Renney insists on continuing to put him in the lineup. 14 times and counting. You only get to dress 20 skaters a night, and carry 23 players on your roster. Spending one of those on a guy that makes no positive contribution to the team winning is completely ridiculous. The Oilers have the leagues worst penalty kill, and second worst power play. They are 1-6 in the shootout. For what it is worth, they are also 2nd last in faceoff win percentage. If you are going to dress a player that can only play about 4 minutes at even strength, why can't they at least be able to contribute as a specialist to something that might actually help win games. Liam Reddox could have been up earlier to help the penalty kill; Linus Omark could have been in the lineup for the shootout, and maybe the power play.
Steve MacIntyre is not the reason the Edmonton Oilers are in second last place in the entire league. However, his existence on the roster is just one more reason for Oiler fans to question if the people running the team have the ability to ever substantially improve the team beyond this level. There was a time when the Oilers talked of “The Detroit Model” of team building, which they seem to have taken to mean they need to employ a lot of front office staff. They don't seem to realize that one key thing that Detroit does is not dress a completely useless hockey player. The Oilers have done this 14 times already this year, and if the head coach has any say in it, they will be dressing one even more often down the stretch. Seems like a recipe for success to me!
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