We continue our annual, player-by-player look at the 2010-11 Philadelphia Flyers. In no particular order, we’ll analyze one player per day (or so) over the next few weeks. Up next, punching bag (?) Jody Shelley.
If the stats line on the post looks funny to you, try signing up for a BSH account and opting for the “Wide” view. It’ll brighten your day, we promise.
Jody Shelley
#45 / Left Wing / Philadelphia Flyers
6-3
230
Feb 07, 1976
10/11 Salary: $1.2 million
11/12 Salary: $1.2 million
11/12 Cap Hit: $1.1 million
Linemates: Blair Betts, Darroll Powe (40.34%)
Depth Chart Ranking: No. 4 LW
*Fight stats via voters at HockeyFights.com.
Expectations: One thing is for sure about Jody Shelley: he makes a lot of money. It’s hard for us to say we expected him to earn his $1.1 million cap hit, but since we’re forced to live with it, I think our expectations were relatively simple: win a lot of fights, make your presence known every night and just try not to be seen otherwise.
Did that happen?
Really, it’s not too fair to judge Shelley on his actual game. He’s not here to be an agitator. He’s here to be a fighter, plain and simple. He’s not here to play hockey, and if he can get away with a fourth line shift, awesome. He was neither horrible nor great, although he was a downgrade from Ian Laperriere in that spot, but we’ll just kind of push that aside.
So, to his fighting. I think a lot of us think it was worse than it actually was, and I was even surprised to go on HockeyFights.com in preparation to write this and see that he won half of his fights this season — according to the typically fair voters over there.
Perhaps our perception of Shelley’s impact on the team was swayed too much in late October, when Shelley got smoked by Derek Engelland and Derek Boogaard all in one week.
Two big losses against rival enforcers isn’t the way to endear yourself to us, really. And perhaps those two huge losses kind of conditioned us to the jokes about the contract and his punching bag-like ability to get beat to shreds. In his next fight against Matt Kassian 20 days later, he was beaten again, but after that, he didn’t lose a single fight the rest of the year. We didn’t notice` this during the season, did we?
In fact, according to HockeyFights.com, Shelley won each of his last four fights — vs Chris Neil on January 20, vs Kevin Westgarth on February 13, vs Nolan Yonkman on February 22 and against Brian Boyle on March 6.
Who knows? Maybe we gave Shelley a bit of an unfair look when it came to him getting beat up last season. At the same time, it’s not like he was a huge heavyweight that could stack up with the NHL’s best, so to say he’s worth $1.1 million a year for 12 relatively mediocre fights — can you think of one huge win he had all year? — isn’t really right.
We’ll spare you the “goons aren’t important anymore” schtick for now, but given what Shelley brought to the table, is it safe to say he lived up to the expectations created by his contract?
Grading criteria: We assign grades on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being the best. We base our grades on expectations, execution on those expectations and a player’s overall potential. A 10 means that the player had a fantastic, expectation-surpassing season. A 1 means that he was horrible and needs to go. Like, yesterday.
The grade: We’re giving Shelley a 4 — three points for his fighting prowess as compared to his contract and expectations, and one point for that ridiculous goal against Atlanta. In my opinion, he didn’t fight nearly enough (tied for 21st in the NHL), nor was he decisive enough in those fights to convince me that he earned $1.1 million.
Agree? Disagree?
How would you grade Jody Shelley’s year?
| 10 | 5 |
| 9 | 1 |
| 8 | 5 |
| 7 | 9 |
| 6 | 16 |
| 5 | 42 |
| 4 | 43 |
| 3 | 101 |
| 2 | 65 |
| 1 | 60 |
