Tampa Bay's Cagey Bet on James Wisniewski Could Pay Off Big

Imagine, for a moment, that your NHL team could add an impact player for almost nothing. No trade cost at all is involved in bringing this player in, and his contract is entirely reasonable.  

We’re talking here about a defenceman who can effectively log more than 20 minutes per game, one who can run the power play and kill penalties too. Just for good measure, he’s also a right shot—something that makes him both rarer and more valuable to NHL teams.

The situation we’ve just described is the best-case scenario for the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Bolts recently added James Wisniewski to their training-camp roster at the low, low price of a professional tryout offer. Given his willingness to accept a tryout, it’s also virtually certain that if he’s eventually offered a contract it will be a bargain-bin deal.

While the outcome depicted above is certainly an optimistic view—there’s also a chance that Wisniewski comes to camp, performs poorly and is never seen in the NHL again—it’s hard not to love this gamble by the Lightning.

The biggest reason for this is because not all that long ago Wisniewski was an exceptional hockey player.

It’s easy to miss this point. Wisniewski has bounced around the NHL a little bit and spent much of his prime in small-market Columbus, a team that has been easy to overlook in recent years. Over the five-year period between 2010-11 and 2014-15, however, he was one of the league’s most effective offensive defencemen.

How good was he? Just look at where he ranked league-wide in terms of points per game over that span:

Rank	Player	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	PTS/GP
1	Erik Karlsson	337	79	198	277	0.82
2	Kris Letang	274	45	161	206	0.75
3	Dustin Byfuglien*	337	78	157	235	0.70
4	Keith Yandle	378	46	191	237	0.63
T5	Shea Weber	365	82	144	226	0.62
---	P.K. Subban	364	57	168	225	0.62
T7	Duncan Keith	362	30	188	218	0.60
---	Brent Burns*	273	54	109	163	0.60
---	James Wisniewski	297	36	141	177	0.60
10	Kevin Shattenkirk	338	41	157	198	0.59

Dustin Byfuglien and Brent Burns (particularly the latter) both spent time at forward over this span, too, making Wisniewski’s placement on this list even more impressive. The man has been a much better offensive player than he generally gets credit for.

That’s not all. With the exception of his rookie year and an injury-ravaged 2011-12 campaign in which he played just 48 games, Wisniewski’s on-ice shot metrics have been better than his team’s average every season of his eight-year major league career.

There’s also no question that Wisniewski’s most common defence partners in Columbus benefited greatly from his presence. He played 500-or-more minutes with three different defencemen, and all of them improved when playing with Wisniewski.

The biggest swing can be seen in Wisniewski’s most common partner, Ryan Murray:

Situation	TOI	CF/60	CA/60	CD/60	GF/60	GA/60	GD/60
w/ Wisniewski	776.2	57.1	48.6	8.5	2.55	2.24	0.31
w/o Wisniewski	415.7	47.2	55.4	-8.2	2.45	2.31	0.14
Difference	---	9.9	-6.8	16.7	0.10	-0.07	0.17

In an average hour, the Jackets fired 10 more shot attempts and allowed seven fewer when Murray and Wisniewski were out there together, as opposed to when Murray was out with someone else. They also scored more goals and allowed fewer goals against. The numbers were more modest with Wisniewski’s other regular partners, but Jack Johnson and Fedor Tyutin also improved.

The Lightning could certainly use that kind of player.

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman together form a brilliant top pairing, but the second pair of Braydon Coburn and Jason Garrison is less impressive. Additionally, both Coburn and Garrison are left shots, forcing one of them to play on his off-side; Wisniewski could potentially fill that right-side niche and allow the Bolts to demote one of those two to play with righty Andrej Sustr.

The caveat in all of this is injury. Wisniewski missed all of last season after suffering an ACL injury just 47 seconds into his Carolina Hurricanes career. As NHL.com reported then, the injury required surgery and had a six-month recovery timeline. Wisniewski’s 32 years old, and the combination of knee surgery and a year out of the game could be a career-killer.

From a Lightning perspective, though, there’s no risk in finding out. If Wisniewski comes to camp and struggles, it’s easy enough not to offer him a contract, in which case the Bolts will be no worse off than they were before. If he comes to camp and performs well, the year off makes it possible for Tampa Bay to put a big portion of the money on his next deal in performance bonuses, which would also serve to mitigate the risk.

That lack of downside makes this an excellent decision for the Lightning. At best, they’ll add a significant player to a position of need on the roster. At worst, they’ll just walk away.

Statistics courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com. 

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