The soon to be 31 years old Simmonds split last season between Philadelphia and Nashville scoring 17 goals (five on the power play), added eleven assists for the season and signed a one year deal for five million dollars.
Here's basically what you get with Simmonds- a big, physical player that had scored twenty-four or more goals every season before last season, except for the strike-shortened one, he's not a sieve defensively, will provide plenty of toughness (want to bang around Jack Hughes? Get ready to meet Wayne Simmonds) and will help on the power play.
However, Simmonds did see his statistics decline last season (Much like his latter season teammate P.K.Subban) and as All About The Jersey wrote "players that play a physical game typically don't tend to age well, as in the decline of (TRS favorite) Milan Lucic" and that's a great point.
Rough and tumble players will see their bodies break down quicker, usually aren't fleet skaters, to start, and often become albatrosses, unable to keep pace with speed and unable to overpower as they once could find themselves quickly obsolete.
However, the Devils have plenty of cap space remaining as the deal for Simmonds barely brings them to the floor of the cap, the one year contract allows them to see if Simmonds is in the twilight of a career or his numbers dipped simply because he wasn't a great fit with what Nashville does and can easily subtract him should the latter be true.
It is a semi-low (no matter the cap situation, it's still five million) risk, with the chance of a substantial reward.
On a personal level, I know Devils fans (especially Rachel, who short of the Devils signing Scott Hartnell might have preferred signing anyone else in the game) may have some issues with Wayne Simmonds being a former member of the Flyers, where he seemed to often play extremely well (often aggressively so) against the Devils.
I get it.
However, think of Wayne Simmonds in the same way Devils fans did about David Clarkson as in the type of player that you love playing for you and more than likely despise playing for the opposing team.
It'll be interesting to see what Wayne Simmonds has left, but I know one thing for sure- It might take a few games to get used to seeing Wayne Simmonds with red accenting black rather than orange being the supporting color!
2 comments:
It really comes with little risk...I think Boyle would have been a better choice and we could have signed him for the same $5M (or less) over 2 seasons. The locker room presence and the fans love him. Simmonds has a little more offensive upside and I think will have a bit more of a nasty streak. Right now I am OK with it, but prefer Boyle, but if Simmonds does have a comeback year...great job Ray.
I'd say the same, Little risk with a one year deal and in the Devils cap situation, one easily taken
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