When Kevyn Adams was hired as general manager of the Buffalo Sabres back in June, he spoke about using analytics to help make hockey decisions. Director of analytics, Jason Nightingale, added assistant director of scouting to his title. We appeared to be heading in that direction.

“I really believe in analytics,” said Adams back in June. This was one of the many comments from Adams that talked up the Sabres’ desire to use data to make hockey decisions. I bought into it and had hoped this team would finally use the information to make some smarter decisions. They can even help them be more efficient.

Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

The Antithesis of an Analytics Signing

The signing of Cody Eakin is a sign to me that it’s all talk again. They handed out a new contract to the 29-year-old forward to be the third-line center for the next two years at a $2.25 million cap hit. He essentially acts as the replacement for Johan Larsson, which makes this move even more concerning.

Eakin falls in line behind Jack Eichel and Eric Staal as the top three centers on this team. None of which have the ability to handle defensive zone responsibilities. Eakin is another player that has been given heavy offensive zone starts throughout his career and has poor defensive numbers. The last three years he has been deployed at above 56% offensive-zone starts for the Vegas Golden Knights and Winnipeg Jets, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Over the last two years, Eakin has the 29th-worst even-strength defense rating among forwards to play at least 300 minutes in Evolving Hockey’s expected goals above replacement model. It appears that the Sabres plan is to go with Curtis Lazar or Tobias Rieder to fill the defensive role vacated by Larsson. Unlikely that ends well for them.

Back to Eakin, he hasn’t been an impact player at either end of the ice throughout his career. You can see that below in Micah McCurdy’s impact charts.

He’s the type of player that will produce around 25 points and fail to positively impact the club in other areas. Two years ago Eakin put together a career season (2018-19) for the Vegas Golden Knights, but it was fools gold. He scored 22 goals but had a career-high shooting percentage of 18%. According to Moneypuck, he shot 6.8 goals above replacement. He also benefited from a quality of teammate boost when he played with two impact wingers in Max Pacioretty and Alex Tuch that season.

A team that doesn’t look into the underlying data gets fooled into believing that he can replicate that production level. The two years before 2018-19 he scored 11 and 3 goals respectively. Last season, he scored five goals in 49 games. They don’t have the depth in forwards that they can place on his wing to lift him above his expected performance levels.

They’re making the same mistakes again. At 5 on 5, he has been above 50% in shot share and quality only once in the last five years. Let me remind you that he played for one of the best possession teams in hockey (Golden Knights) for the last three years and still posted those results. There is nothing that the numbers could have told them that this is a quality signing.

The only benefit I see in this deal is that price is cheap at $2.25 million and the term is short at two years. He’s also a player they can expose in the expansion draft to Seattle next offseason.

Data via: Evolving Hockey, Hockeyviz.com, Natural Stat Trick, and Moneypuck

Photo Credit: Codie McLachlan/Getty Images