Can Veterans Brandon Prust, Mason Raymond Help Your NHL Team After Being Cut?

Mason Raymond of the Calgary Flames and Brandon Prust of the Vancouver Canucks have combined for more than 1,000 regular-season contests and have 116 playoff games between them. Raymond had 45 points as recently as 2014, while the tough-as-nails Prust played all 82 games for Montreal just last season.

Both found themselves on the waiver wire Tuesday morning, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman:

Prust stands the best chance of being claimed by some team thanks to his expiring contract. He’s in the final season of a four-year, $10 million contract, which the Canadiens awarded him with in the summer of 2012. His $2.5 million cap hit is a bit of a concern, but less than half of that is still on the books, and if he goes unclaimed on Feb. 2, the Canucks may be open to retaining salary in a trade.

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Prust earned his pricey contract after a playoff performance with New York in which he played a key role on the penalty kill and delivered consistently physical play in a bottom-six role. This year, he’s not playing much on the penalty kill, his hit counts have fallen off significantly (though he still fights) and the Canucks have several physical wingers on the roster. All of that has combined to make him expendable in Vancouver.

The question is whether he might be of more help to a team with a different makeup.

Prust’s on-ice shot metrics are the worst of any Vancouver forward at five-on-five, but there are some caveats. The team has asked him to start a high percentage of his shifts in the defensive end of the rink. He’s also played mostly with underwhelming linemates. He can’t drive a line, but he might be serviceable in a limited role.

He’s a competent enough scorer in that kind of role, with his points-per-hour totals at five-on-five basically unchanged since 2013-14. His 1.06 points per hour ranks 320th among NHL forwards (minimum 1,000 minutes) over that span, making him an average fourth-liner offensively. He’s also a good penalty-killer; no regular Montreal forward saw fewer shots directed at his net than Prust did last season.

The trouble is that even the pro-rated percentage of that $2.5 million remaining is a lot of cap space to use on a physical fourth-liner who can kill penalties. A desperate team might be willing to take the chance, but even an interested club would probably do well to wait and see if Prust clears and then talk to the Canucks about a deal in which they retain salary.

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While Prust’s contract isn’t good, it’s significantly better than the one the Flames signed with Raymond. Raymond is partway through the second year of a three-season pact, and he still has another campaign at $3.15 million to come. For that reason, there’s virtually no chance he’s claimed on waivers.

However, the possibility of a bad-contract-for-bad-contract trade exists if there’s a team that sees something in this player.

Raymond earned that contract with a 19-goal, 45-point performance in Toronto in 2013-14, and despite falling out of favor with Calgary’s coaching staff last season, it’s not like he’s been uniformly bad since. In 2014-15, for example, he was more likely to pick up a point in any given even-strength shift than either Johnny Gaudreau or Sean Monahan. There’s offensive ability there.

That’s a glass-half-full look, though. Raymond’s point production has been cut in half this season, and his on-ice shot metrics lag most of his teammates in Calgary, despite the fact that he’s mostly avoided particularly onerous defensive zone assignments. It’s been a bad season.

There is some evidence that in the right role, however, Raymond can still be successful. When playing with Mikael Backlund this season, he’s had a measure of success. He’s averaging a touch under 1.5 points per hour in that role, which is basically his career average. The Flames also crack a 50 percent Corsi with that duo on the ice despite tough zone starts, and they outscore their opponents at a rate of almost 2-to-1.

If there’s a team out there with a contract it’s dying to get rid of and a need for a scoring winger, there could be a deal here that would work out nicely. Otherwise, Raymond’s cap hit makes him a non-starter.

Statistics courtesy of NHL.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com. Salary-cap information via GeneralFanager.com.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.