2008-09 Rink Wrap: Shaone Morrisonn

Hey, where do we vote? :)

Yeah, but it’s what Mo does outside of his time with Green, combined with his Tallinder-like salary, which is the bone of contention. Gave him a 5, hope he’s an attractive trade that someone will overpay on.

Too bad I can’t wait until after camp to answer this. (Mo’s a RFA this summer, right? Or was that last summer?) Right off the bat, since I’m an optimist (I like the looks of our D kiddies very much), I’d say the answer is zero. Let him walk. Or package him up with something of value for a trade.

The bad section kind of summed up Morrisonn’s season for me. He started off poorly, so poorly he wasn’t even matched with Green at the start of the season. He looked just horrible.

Even when he began to play better, and was matched up again with Green, he did nothing to stand out to take away the initial impressions of the bad start. He had probably been moved back to that pairing for a month before I even noticed; he was just so non-noticeable out there that it didn’t register.

Kind of noticeable that he got about 10 minutes less of icetime per game than the guy he was paired with. That kind of screams that there is a problem, and it isn’t with the guy getting the larger amount of icetime.

For that, he got a 3. He went backwards from last year.

Unless there is a trade in the works, I’m not even sure that the Caps tender the qualifying offer. With what we have in the wings, I’m just not sure that we have a place for his salary, even with no increase from last year, much less what he wants or will get from arbitration.

There are probably two ways he could get 10 for next season. The first, sign the minimum qualifying offer, be an impact #1 pairing d-man. The more likely way is to be packaged in a trade (with whatever involved in the trade that it takes) to get one of our weaknesses taken care of.
       1. Top pairing D-man.
       2. 2nd Line center.
       3. 1st or 2nd line right wing.

Mo gets a 4 from me – below expectations. He didn’t progress at all, imo, and the fact that he was 5th among the 7 regular Ds (including Alzner, not including Pothier) in Quality of Competition faced at 5-on-5 says a lot.

He’s a serviceable NHL defenseman, to be sure, but he’s not worth $3m (at least to this team).

I’m concerned about his QO. 1.9 is way too much to pay for someone who didn’t show any improvement, if maybe even a step back from the previous season. If we qualify him, and no other teams are willing to poach, we’re stuck with an over paid defenseman, something this team doesn’t need.

The plus side, though, is we are going to have a lot of defensive turnover this year IF we don’t resign a lot of our players.

I gave him a 5 though. Guys like him will never stand out, but for him to get a 10, he’d have to show the kind of improvement Erskine showed in the last half, but throughout the whole season. EC Finals… yadda.

Going into the year I remember frequenters to this site talking about how good Mo was, how important he was to 52, how solid a D he was. So if he was the player you thought he was, you rate him a 5-6.

I can’t imagine anyone thinking Mo was all that this year, yet he’s getting all those fives? Interesting.

I didn’t want him back last year. We need to make room for some youngsters and Mo has to go.

We already have a crowded blueline.

Green, Poti, Pothier, Erskine, Jurcina, Schultz, Alzner and Carlson. Maybe Kronwall and Sloan.

I expect that Jurcina and Schultz will be resigned.

I’d like to see Poti shipped out, he’s was brought here to add scoring punch from the blueline and has failed both years to do so. As THE veteran on the blueline he has made some of the more colossal mistakes of the bunch.

Based largely on my high expectations for him coming into the year. I firmly expected Mo to take a nice, meaty step forward this year, and be the lockdown end of a dominant first pairing with Mike Green. Even if he had stayed at his 07-08 level, I probably would have given him a 5.

But his regression was completely unexpected and highly disappointing.

Given the tightness of cap space (sounds vaguely indecent, doesn’t it?) and the needs of the team (well hashed out here so I will not plow that furrow again (more vague indecency)) I see him putting on his traveling boots.

If Mo was making $1 million, he’d probably be valuable as 5/6 defenseman. At $2 million, he’s a liability. As the late Roger Crozier liked to say, you can’t trade a dinghy for a yacht. If the Caps retain his rights, they’d probably be lucky to get a third or fourth round draft choice for him. A second would be a steal, but given his cap hit, I have a hard time seeing another team making that deal. However, he could be packaged with another player and picks for a big defenseman.

He had a good year and was solid and unspectacular, which is what you expect. Bonus points for scoring an OT winner at MSG just before Xmas. (How can the box say his GWG is 0 for the season??)

Weird stat: Mo has 4 goals in the last 2 seasons, and 2 of them are Game Winners.

Now comes the weird part with him, which is this coming offseason. I have no doubt that George will give him a qualifying offer, because to get nothing for him doesn’t make sense. Mo, considering what happened last year with Mr. Arbitrator, will probably not accept it, although he probably should.

If Mo doesn’t accept it, it wouldn’t surprise me to see George pull it off the table and offer him less (once a QO is made and refused, it can be withdrawn).

The thing is, if Mo accepts the QO, then the logjam on the backline continues, as we know that Mo’s skill set can be replaced (Alzner, Collins, etc.). This is the one offseason contract situation to keep an eye on.

My expectations coming into the season were that he was at best a #4 defenseman with no offensive skill. Although he got top-pair minutes through most of the season, he proved to be exactly what I thought he was. Therefore, a 5.

No need to bring him back. We have too many defensemen and he’s taking up a top-4 spot that Alzner should have next season. Plus, Erskine/Jurcina are cheaper alternatives as #5/#6 defensemen. So there’s no room for him.

My expectations of Mo coming into this year were pretty guarded. I wanted him to be that Top 4 D-man, but I wasn’t too optimistic. In just about every way he actually went backwards in my eyes. Little offensive upside, not physical enough, seemed to be disappear for long stretches of time. My main problem with Mo is that he’s average at best in every facet of his game…and we got some young guns with upside in the wings…to me Mo is odd man out

I was originally thinking to give him a five, for being ordinary. But then I read some comments, gave it some more thought and dropped it to a four. I guess the determining factor has to be his salary. Maybe on a comparative basis it’s a fair salary, but not here, not now, not with that performance, which was less than last year. And if he thinks he’s getting $3 million next year, either he’s a fool, or the arbitrator is, ’cause no way is McPhee giving it to him voluntarily. And if he wins it, then he should be allowed to walk.