Is anyone getting into the Hall of Fame today? Everything you need to know on ballot reveal day
The Baseball Hall of Fame could see a new addition by the end of the night, when the results of the Baseball Writers Association of America balloting are revealed at 6 p.m. ET on MLB Network.
All 28 former players — 14 returnees and 14 newcomers — on this year’s ballot are vying to be recognized as one of the best to ever play the game. However, what most fans don’t realize is that the list of players inducted into Cooperstown is much larger than you think. Oh, it’s still harder to get elected to than the Pro Football Hall of Fame or the Hockey Hall of Fame and certainly the Basketball Hall of Fame, but it’s not just the inner circle, elite of the elite who get elected. You may disagree with that philosophy, but that has been the case ever since the first class of five immortals was elected in 1936.
So, it may surprise you to learn that Scott Rolen and Billy Wagner might get elected.
Did they feel like Hall of Famers while active? Probably not. They need 75% of the vote to join Fred McGriff, who was elected in December via the Contemporary Era committee, at the induction ceremony in July. They might not get there, meaning it’s possible the writers association tosses its second shutout in three years, although because the ballot doesn’t include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling — who finished their BBWAA eligibility last year — it has its weakest list of names in two decades, which helps the borderline candidates.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some key questions heading into the announcement.
1. Will Rolen get in?
It’s going to be a nervous wait for Rolen. Via Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame site, which tracks ballots that voters have publicly revealed, we know that Rolen was polling at 79% as of Monday afternoon. In general, however, players see a decline in their percentage once the final totals are revealed. Last year, Rolen dropped nearly 8 points from his pre-reveal total to his final percentage, finishing at 63.2% (receiving just 34.2% of the private ballots).
As for Rolen’s Hall of Fame case, it’s decently strong even by the tough standards of the BBWAA. While he falls short in some of the career counting numbers — he barely cleared 2,000 hits, for example, and finished with 316 home runs and 1,287 RBIs — third base is sort of a hybrid position, part offense and part defense, and Rolen was an eight-time Gold Glove winner with strong defensive metrics to back up that reputation. His defense is a big part of his Hall of Fame case.
In 2004, his then-manager Tony La Russa called him the best third baseman he’d ever seen. Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, himself a 10-time Gold Glove winner, said Rolen “is better than me.” The idea of Rolen as one of the best defenders ever at the position isn’t some rewriting of history. While he was a big guy at 6-foot-4 and well over 200 pounds, he had that first-step quickness of a shortstop (he was runner-up for Indiana’s Mr. Basketball award as a senior in high school) and a strong arm as well. The defensive metrics at Baseball-Reference.com credit Rolen with the third-most fielding runs among third basemen (behind Brooks Robinson and Adrian Beltre) and I’m buying those numbers. They helped boost his career WAR to 70.1 — ninth-highest among third basemen — and the ninth-best third baseman of all time is a strong Hall of Fame candidate.
From his rookie season with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1997 through 2004, his career year when he finished third in the MVP voting, Rolen ranked third among all position players in WAR, behind only Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. Of course, Rolen’s all-around brilliance went underappreciated in those days, especially in that era of pumped-up offensive numbers. Still, he hit .287/.379/.524 and averaged 28 home runs and 102 RBIs over those eight seasons. It didn’t help that his early seasons, before his 2002 trade to the St. Louis Cardinals, came on mostly bad Phillies teams.
He was also not one for the spotlight. “Rolen doesn’t say a word around here,” Cardinals teammate Steve Kline said in 2002. “He just plays ball. He hustles at everything he does out there. He sprints up and down the line, he sprints on and off the field, and he just plays hard all the time. He gives you everything he has.”
Here’s one way to put Rolen’s 70.1 WAR in another perspective. Since 2000, the BBWAA has elected 38 non-relievers (I’m excluding them because of their lower WAR totals). The average career WAR for that group is 73.5, so Rolen isn’t far below the average. He’s also right smack in the middle of the median — 19 players above him with more WAR, 19 below him with less. Yes, that third-place finish in 2004 was his only top-10 MVP finish and he missed a lot of time in his 30s with injuries, but Rolen is comfortably above the bar for me.
2. How close will Wagner get?
In his eighth time on the ballot, the former Houston Astros/Phillies/New York Mets/Atlanta Braves closer is polling at 73.5%. While that would fall just short of the 75% threshold, it would be a big increase from last year’s 51% total and put him in great position to go over the top in 2024. Don’t dismiss the chance of him getting in this year, however. Unlike Rolen, Wagner’s final total barely slipped from the pre-vote public results last year, as he dropped just 0.7 of a point. With a few additional votes, he could get to 75%.
Wagner was a revelation when he came up with the Astros in 1995, a short lefty with a blazing fastball that would reach triple digits with today’s technology. His fastball drew comparisons to Nolan Ryan’s. Early in his career, the Astros had him junk his curveball to work on a slider on the sidelines. In the meantime, he just threw his fastball, one after another. Batters still couldn’t touch it. In 1997, he became the first pitcher with at least 50 innings to strike out 14 batters per nine innings. His career strikeout rate of 11.92 per nine innings remains the best ever among pitchers with at least 900 innings.
He was also remarkably consistent — his only season with an ERA above 3.00 was when he was injured in 2000 and appeared in just 28 games. His 2.31 career ERA is just a hair above Mariano Rivera’s 2.21, although Rivera pitched more innings and more than doubled him in career WAR (56.3 to 27.8). Wagner was also the antithesis of Rivera in limited postseason appearances, posting a 10.03 ERA in 11⅔ innings. He’s sixth all-time in saves, behind Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Lee Smith (all Hall of Famers) but also behind Francisco Rodriguez (who is on this ballot) and John Franco.
It’s a strong case, no doubt, and his election now seems inevitable — whether this year, next year or by some future committee. My only issue: The Hall is already bloated with closers, at least in comparison with other positions. Since the modern closer emerged in the 1970s, more of them have been elected to the Hall of Fame than any position except starting pitchers. Broken down by position, the Hall of Famers who produced most of their value in the 1970s or later were starting pitchers (17) and closers (seven), with all other positions at six or less.
While I understand that closer is a “position” and they should be evaluated on their merits, it’s also clear that voters have been softer on closers while maintaining rigorous standards at other positions. For instance, Andy Pettitte is polling at just 17% — even though he pitched 2,413 more innings than Wagner and was a huge factor in the postseason behind five World Series titles for the New York Yankees.
3. Will Todd Helton and Andruw Jones continue to see their support increase?
Helton received 52% of the vote last year, his fourth on the ballot, while Jones came in at 41% on his fifth ballot. As with Wagner, jumping past that 50% mark for Helton is a good sign for future induction. In fact, we might be underselling Helton’s chances a bit by first writing about Rolen and Wagner. He edged ahead of Rolen in the public vote at 79.6%. His pre-result total fell 5% last year, so it appears he’s going to be right at that 75% threshold as well. Jones is at 68%.
I dug a little bit into their cases last week, but both were high-peak performers who weren’t as good in their 30s. Helton battled back injuries, and Jones flamed out quickly after turning 30. Both, however, had five seasons of 6-plus WAR — and only 47 position players since integration in 1947 have done that. Helton did it with offense over a five-year stretch in which he hit .349/.450/.643; Jones did it with perhaps the best center-field defense of all time and over 400 career home runs. Their career WAR totals — 61.8 for Helton, 62.7 for Jones — are a little soft.
Jones joins Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. as the only outfielders with 10 Gold Gloves and 400 home runs (Mike Schmidt is the only other player to do it). Of course, that’s meant to make Jones look good, but he obviously isn’t in the same company as Mays or Griffey as an all-around player. (Actually, to put it even more bluntly: Mays’ career WAR is higher than Griffey’s PLUS Jones’. Willie Mays was good!)
Jones created an estimated 119 runs more than average as a hitter. That’s comparable to the likes of Mike Greenwell, Johnny Grubb, Carlos Pena, Matt Stairs and Michael Cuddyer. His case rests on his defense, not getting compared to Mays and Griffey.
4. How will Carlos Beltran do?
The most interesting new candidate on the ballot is Beltran. Like Rolen, he was a marvelous two-way performer, a nine-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove center fielder who was one of the best postseason performers of the wild-card era, hitting .307/.412/.609 with 16 home runs in 65 playoff games. He has more impressive counting stats than Rolen with 435 home runs, 1,582 runs and 1,587 RBIs. That makes him one of 29 players in the just-invented-yet-exclusive 400/1500/1500 club — and of those 29, only Mays and Alex Rodriguez also stole 300 bases. In 2003-04, Beltran swiped 83 bases in 90 attempts; he was also 31-for-32 in 2001. The young Beltran was something to watch.
All that should scream first-ballot inductee … except Beltran arrives on the ballot with the stink of the Astros’ cheating scandal. He was the only player named in the commissioner’s report, although that’s a little misleading because he was retired at the time, making him an easy target since commissioner Rob Manfred made it a point not to punish the active players in order to get their cooperation. Still, Beltran and coach Alex Cora came across as the architects of the whole idea, with Beltran the initial instigator in suggesting the Astros were behind the times.
My quick take:
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Absent the scandal, I don’t believe Beltran would have been a first-ballot inductee anyway. As impressive as his career numbers are, he’s correctly not viewed as an inner-circle type — as evidenced by just two top-10 MVP finishes. His career WAR of 70.1 is better than that of many Hall of Famers, but Beltran is the kind of qualified candidate some voters still purposely hold back on as a first-ballot choice, believing that it holds special honor.
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The scandal is going to cost him some votes. He’s polling at 55.2%, which feels a little low given his numbers. We’ve seen a handful of voters say they’ll withhold a vote for at least a year as punishment — and, I’m guessing, more than a few will perhaps permanently withhold a vote, classifying him alongside the PED guys.
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Still, if he can get close to 50%, that’s a strong start. Given that we’ve seen Rolen rise from 10.2% his first year (no player has started that low and eventually been inducted by the BBWAA) and Wagner climb from 10.5%, Beltran should see his support rise in the future as the cheating scandal recedes into the past.
All that said, I could be wrong. Maybe the cheating cloud will hang over Beltran and he goes the way of Bonds and Clemens.
5. Who’s reaching the end of their eligibility?
It’s the final ballot for Jeff Kent, and he’s not going to get in, polling at 50.8%.
Kent is the all-time home run leader among second basemen and third in RBIs. While the BBWAA has given him a collective thumbs-down, he is the kind of player a future Contemporary Era ballot will almost certainly favor. This is how he compares to McGriff, who received 16 of 16 votes from the committee back in December:
McGriff: 493 HRs, 1550 RBIs, 2490 hits, 1349 runs, 52.6 WAR
Kent: 377 HRs, 1518 RBIs, 2561 hits, 1320 runs, 55.4 WAR
It’s also the ninth year for Gary Sheffield, who, fun fact, was a better hitter than Ken Griffey Jr. As somebody who has a Griffey bobblehead on my bookshelf, it pains me to say this, but it’s true.
Griffey hit more home runs, but Sheffield produced an estimated 561 runs more than average as a hitter compared to 440 for Griffey. That’s the value of Sheffield’s ability to get on base. Griffey’s career-high OBP was .408 and he topped .400 just twice, but Sheffield topped .400 in 10 seasons. If you’re a better hitter than Ken Griffey Jr., maybe you have a strong case for Cooperstown.
Sheffield is polling at 63.3%, up from his 2022 final total of 40.6%, and perhaps putting him within shouting distance of getting elected in 2024. Larry Walker shot up from 54.6% in his ninth year to 76.6%, so it’s possible although unlikely in Sheffield’s case. (Sheffield’s vote might be hurt by his admitting in 2004 that he had used “The Cream,” a designer steroid he claimed Barry Bonds introduced to him, during the 2002 season.)
6. What about Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez?
In his second year, A-Rod is at 39.8% and Manny, now in his seventh year (!) on the ballot, is at 37%. Bonds and Clemens fell short in their final year last January at 66%, then got immediately bumped over to the Contemporary Era committee and received fewer than four votes. Given that Rodriguez and Ramirez were both suspended (unlike Bonds and Clemens), it doesn’t look good for them.
Will we have another year of no one surpassing the 75% threshold, or will some variation of Rolen, Helton or Wagner be able to? We’ll soon see.
The Washington Capitals and Vegas Golden Knights are at the same crossroads, facing 2-1 deficits ahead of road playoff games Monday.
First up on the schedule is Capitals-Carolina Hurricanes (7 p.m. ET, TNT), followed by Golden Knights-Edmonton Oilers (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT).
Read on for game previews with statistical insights from ESPN Research, a recap of what went down in Sunday’s games and the Three Stars of Sunday from Arda Öcal.
Matchup notes
Washington Capitals at Carolina Hurricanes
Game 4 | 7 p.m. ET | TNT
With a 2-1 series lead, the Canes are now -650 favorites to win this series, while the Capitals are +425. Carolina has also jumped to second in the Stanley Cup futures table, at +350, while the Capitals are now +2500.
This is the second straight series in which the Canes led 2-1 (they beat the Devils in five games in Round 1). Carolina/Hartford is 9-4 all time in best-of-seven series when leading 2-1.
Game 3 was the Canes’ first playoff shutout win since Game 2 of the 2022 second round against the Rangers. It was the Caps’ first shutout loss since Game 5 of the 2020 first round against the Islanders.
Frederik Andersen‘s shutout was the fourth of his playoff career, but his first postseason clean sheet as a Hurricane. He joins Cam Talbot as the only active goalies with a playoff shutout for three different franchises.
Andrei Svechnikov now has six goals this postseason, which is the 17th instance of a Hurricanes/Whalers player scoring six or more goals in a single postseason.
The four goals allowed by Logan Thompson in Game 3 were more than his combined goals against in Games 1 and 2, and the most since Game 3 of the first round against Montreal (five).
Vegas Golden Knights at Edmonton Oilers
Game 4 | 9:30 p.m. ET | TNT
The Oilers’ and Knights’ series odds contracted after Vegas’ Game 3 win. Edmonton is now -250 to win, whereas Vegas is +200 to do so. The Oilers have the third-shortest Cup futures odds at +360, while the Knights are third longest at +1000.
Vegas’ Reilly Smith was credited with the winning goal in Game 3 with 0.4 seconds left on the clock after the puck angled in off Leon Draisaitl‘s stick. It goes in the record books as being scored with one second left in the third period — tied for the latest go-ahead goal in regulation in Stanley Cup playoff history with Colorado’s Nazem Kadri in 2020 and Carolina’s Jussi Jokinen in 2009.
Jack Eichel enters Game 4 riding an active six-game assist streak, which is tied for the Golden Knights’ postseason record. Mark Stone (2023) and Smith (2018) also accomplished the feat.
Connor McDavid now has 40 career playoff goals; he’s the seventh Oilers player to reach that benchmark.
Edmonton’s Corey Perry scored two goals in the first period of Game 3, becoming the third-oldest player in Stanley Cup playoff history with a multigoal period; at 39 years, 359 days old, he is behind Nicklas Lidstrom (41) and Teemu Selanne (40) at the time they had a multigoal period in a playoff game.
Öcal’s Three Stars from Sunday
The reigning Stanley Cup champions played their best game of the postseason. They limited the Maple Leafs to 22 shots on goal, owned the neutral zone, and peppered Toronto’s Joseph Woll with 37 shots en route to a 2-0 win. (Small shoutout to Woll, who played great — this game could’ve easily been 8-0.)
With a goal and two assists in Game 3, Rantanen became the first player in Stanley Cup playoffs history with five three-point games through a team’s first 10 contests. His first of those games was in Game 5 of the first round.
Bobrovsky didn’t have the busiest night of his playoff career, but he stopped all 22 shots on goal, his fifth career postseason clean sheet.
Sunday’s recaps
Dallas Stars 5, Winnipeg Jets 2
DAL leads 2-1 | Game 4 Tuesday
The Stars returned home having earned home-ice advantage in the series with a split of the first two games in Winnipeg, and from the start of this one, they looked like they did not want to give it back. Dallas’ Roope Hintz scored 2:27 in on a power play, and while Kyle Connor answered midway through the first, Thomas Harley responded thereafter, giving Dallas a 2-1 edge after the first. Nino Niederreiter scored his fourth goal of the playoffs to knot the game at two, but then the third period was all Stars. Alexander Petrovic and Mikko Rantanen scored within 50 seconds of each other, and Wyatt Johnston put the exclamation point on the contest with a goal at 14:06. Full recap.
1:29
Tempers flare late after Max Domi’s big hit on Aleksander Barkov
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov is shaken up after taking a hit from Max Domi late in the game.
Florida Panthers 2, Toronto Maple Leafs 0
Series tied 2-2 | Game 5 Wednesday
It’s down to a best-of-three for the Atlantic Division crown. Carter Verhaeghe kicked off the scoring for the Panthers at 15:45 of the first, and the 1-0 score would persist until 12:09 of the third, when Sam Bennett added his fifth of the postseason to make it 2-0. That was more than enough for Sergei Bobrovsky, who saved all 23 shots the Maple Leafs sent on goal. Joseph Woll was no slouch in the Leafs’ cage, either, saving 35 of 37. Tempers flared late in the game after Toronto’s Max Domi boarded Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov and a small melee ensued. Will that carry over into Game 5? Full recap.
0:34
Wyatt Johnston pokes in Stars’ 3rd goal of 3rd period
Wyatt Johnston taps in a goal for the Stars to pad their lead in the third period vs. the Jets.
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Ryan S. Clark
LAS VEGAS — Jack Eichel is everything everywhere all at once for the Vegas Golden Knights.
You’re going to see Eichel start games. You’re going to see him score goals. You’re going to see his work lead to goals for his teammates. You’re going to see him score on the power play. Chances are — and not as in Chance, the Golden Knights’ mascot — you already knew that.
But what you might not realize? You’re also going to see him winning defensive zone faceoffs while playing a big role on the penalty kill. You’re going to see him among the special group that Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy trusts to either get the lead or defend the lead in the final two minutes.
Eichel’s status as a top-line center made him the centerpiece of possibly the biggest trade in the history of a franchise that has embodied the winning-at-all-costs philosophy. But Eichel’s focus was on something more: becoming a complete center who can be sent out on the ice in any situation.
Getting there involved earning Cassidy’s trust — which meant arriving at a certain realization about his game.
“When I got here, we had Chandler Stephenson, who is a really good-way center. You have William Karlsson, who is a really good two-way center,” Eichel said. “I looked around and said, ‘If I want to get the ice time and be trusted in these situations, I have to earn the trust of the coach and become more detailed and responsible defensively.'”
For all the different moves that Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon has made to tweak his roster, there are constants. One of them is having a stack of two-way centers on all four lines, to the point that one of them might be moved to the wing because the Golden Knights have that much depth.
Not that Eichel couldn’t be used in defensive situations earlier in his career. It’s just that the No. 2 pick of the 2015 NHL draft was always known more for what he did in the offensive zone, going back to his time at Boston University, where he won the Hobey Baker Award in his lone season, and in six seasons with the Buffalo Sabres.
“I [penalty] killed a little bit when I was in Buffalo, and sometimes when you have a team that’s not winning, you can be honed as a poor defensive forward or a defensive liability,” Eichel said. “I also think just part of it is maturity. It’s understanding what it takes to win, and coming here and having the opportunity to play in this system with this organization, and then allowing me to grow my game, and then having the opportunity to do that.”
THERE WERE A NUMBER of terms that were associated with Eichel when he was a draft prospect in 2015: Future captain. Future All-Star. Future franchise savior.
Being the strongest penalty killer, however, wasn’t one of them.
Eichel acknowledges he was on the penalty kill with the Sabres. It was enough to make him a contributor, but he never was the center anchoring a short-handed unit. The most short-handed minutes he received in a single season was 53:13 in his third season in Buffalo, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“It’s about the details, but I think a lot of young players when they come into the league are a bit raw,” Eichel explained. “They’re still used to having the puck on their stick for so much time during the game and they rely on their offense. You have to find out ways to round your game off and become a more complete player.”
Getting traded to Vegas in November 2021 was a significant shift. It took Eichel from a franchise that struggled to win — despite finding lots of talented players — to an organization for which “failure” was finishing that 2021-22 season with 94 points and missing the postseason by a single point — after reaching the playoffs in four consecutive campaigns.
That playoff miss prompted the Golden Knights to move on from coach Peter DeBoer and hire Cassidy, who had just been let go by the Boston Bruins. In Cassidy, the Golden Knights got an experienced coach whose defensive philosophies were at the core of why the Bruins reached the playoffs in six straight seasons.
“It did take time,” Karlsson said about learning Cassidy’s system. “We weren’t used to it. But once we learn it, you react with your instincts. You don’t have to think about it anymore because it’s a really good system. He usually has the center in a really good position, but also a really good position to transition into the offensive zone. But there are a lot of defensive details.”
Eichel made an impact in his first full season with Vegas in 2022-23. He led the Golden Knights with 66 points, and his 27 goals were second on the team. Eichel also led the club with 223 shots on goal, while scoring 14 power-play points.
The way McCrimmon constructed the Golden Knights meant that for Eichel to attain more ice time in those crucial situations, he needed to find room in a crowded landscape. The Knights had Karlsson and Stephenson. And they also had Ivan Barbashev, Brett Howden, Nicolas Roy, Reilly Smith and Mark Stone as part of the forward core. All of them logged more short-handed minutes than Eichel when they won the Stanley Cup in 2023.
Still, Eichel would be second on the team in 5-on-5 minutes during the playoffs behind Jonathan Marchessault, while finishing with six goals and 26 points in 22 games.
How did Eichel go about letting Cassidy know that he could be trusted in those situations? It wasn’t through anything he said. It was about using every practice and every game to prove he was ready to handle those demands.
“If I’m put in a situation and I don’t produce a result that is positive for the group? Then, I’m not going to have opportunities,” Eichel said. “It’s about gaining trust through good play, working with the coaches on the structure, what they are looking for and then being able to go out and execute it. I think that’s been a big, big thing.”
Even if he wasn’t heavily used on the penalty kill with the Sabres, Eichel was still playing a lot. He averaged more than 19 minutes per game in every season in Buffalo, and had four straight seasons of more than 20 minutes per contest.
In his first season with Cassidy in 2022-23, Eichel averaged a career-low 18:46 of ice time per game in the regular season, and logged 18:59 per game in the playoffs en route to the Cup.
The investment Eichel made in becoming a more responsible player paved the way for his increased minutes in the seasons that followed. There was also an opportunity for someone to take those short-handed minutes, because Smith was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins following the Cup win in 2023.
Eichel would finish 2023-24 with a career-high 20:31 in ice time per game in 2023-24, and 123:48 in short-handed ice time, which was second among all Vegas centers behind Karlsson. He was also second in total power-play ice time, and seventh in total 5-on-5 ice time on the team — mainly due to missing 19 games.
“We’ve always had good centers. I think we definitely took a crazy step forward when we added Jack,” said Stone, a two-time Selke Trophy finalist as the game’s best two-way forward. “You go from having three guys to four guys, maybe five guys, even. Last year, he kind of took over and this year he took over for Stephenson.”
LOSING MARCHESSAULT AND STEPHENSON to free agency — in an offseason in which they saw six players from their 2023 Stanley Cup-winning team depart — meant the Golden Knights needed to find solutions to make up for those departures.
Eichel provided the Golden Knights with the best season of his career. His 66 assists and 94 points were both career highs. Some point out that Eichel could have had his first 100-point campaign if not for missing five games.
Then there’s his usage. Eichel led all Golden Knights forwards in average ice time (a career high of 20:32 per game), 5-on-5 ice time and power-play minutes. As for short-handed minutes? Eichel led all forwards in that too, by a margin of 35 minutes more than Howden. He was second in defensive zone faceoffs taken.
There was also an underlying theme of limiting mistakes. Vegas finished the regular season with the second-fewest penalty minutes in the NHL. And yes, Eichel was at the heart of that too, as he had only eight penalty minutes.
“It helps when you have the puck a lot,” Stone said. “He’s good in the D-zone, but he has the puck on his stick more than he doesn’t. He plays the D-zone quick, but when you’re that good of a player, the other team is thinking about not making mistakes.”
Karlsson explained how Cassidy’s system can be physically demanding for anyone playing down the middle. He said there are the natural expectations that come with playing center in today’s NHL. But one of the reasons why the Golden Knights place such an emphasis on conditioning and strength training is so their centers are prepared to play those longer shifts in the event they can’t get off the ice.
Stone added that Cassidy’s structure means centers are doing “a lot of skating,” while the wingers are expected to deny the other team from getting shots from the point and being active in the top of the ice.
“He’s been handling it well this year,” Karlsson said. “He’s in Year 3 now of Butch and his assistants. It’s kind of natural to him now and he’s good. He’s good at picking up things like stripping a guy off the top as he’s a big, strong guy. He reads the game well, so he’s really turning into a 200-foot player.”
During Cassidy’s time with the Bruins, he worked with venerable two-way centers such as six-time Selke Trophy winner Patrice Bergeron and stalwart second-line pivot David Krejci. In discussing those two, Cassidy admitted that they “probably taught me more than I taught them.”
But when it came to his conversations with Eichel, Cassidy said that he talked about what he saw from Bergeron and Krejci — the value they saw and provided in efficient operations in the defensive zone.
Cassidy said he and his staff started seeing that investment in Eichel pay off during their championship season. He’s since grown in those responsibilities as a two-way player who can now be used in every situation.
“That’s on the player,” Cassidy said. “They’ve got to decide if that’s what they want to do because it’s not easy to check. It’s a mindset a lot of nights, and we’ve got to be going to work and he’s done it. He’s getting credit for it, and he should.”
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