Looking for some Snarl with Your LOFT?

One of the things that keeps kind of leaping out to serious followers of the CBJ, is that there is a bit of a lack of 'snarl' on the back end.  Boll and Dorsett are undersized, but will bring some snark.  Not many others on the CBJ follow that lead.  How does one assess that?  The only real statistic out there is Penalties in Minutes (PIM) that might indicate that a tendency to throw that elbow a bit too much.  On the other hand, Kris Letang of the Pittsburgh Penguins is number 6 on the ranking of PIM, and he is not exactly going to strike fear into anyone's heart.  Kris Russel is 108, and we know how scared the Predators players are of him.  So this isn't perfect by any stretch.  But it does allow you to weigh the relative merits of Free Agents before you head out to the ATM on July 1.

Back in our Demolition Experts post we looked at Defensemen that could shift our LOFT tiers.  These players were assessed based on their ability to not only put the puck in the net, but to have an effective plus/minus ranking.  But there are days when that is not enough, and you look for some snarl as well.  And that will tend to show up in the PIM column.

Interestingly enough, many of those top tier defensemen we looked at before, showed up here as well.  Taking the average of their 2010-11 ranking for Points, plus/minus, AND PIM shows the following free agents:

Player - Average Rank
Christian Ehrhoff - 27
Steve Montador - 34
Kevin Bieksa - 36
Roman Hamrlik - 44

To give you a frame of reference on these ranks, Shea Weber ranks a 41 in this assessment technique.  Also, Erhoff and Bieksa are relatively young, at age 29 and 28 respectively.  Monatador is 31, and Hamrlik is 37.  But these are Free Agents who arguably are going to change your team's cumulative LOFT tiers.  They are going to cost you some dough, so it would be a good idea to fire up the printing press in the bottom of Nationwide arena, and start printing up some greenbacks.

GO JACKETS!