March 1st,

2013 – a landmark date in Vancouver Canucks

history. That was the fateful day on which the Canucks claimed Tom Sestito off of the waiver

wire, ushering in the glorious era of #TopSixtito and moral victories for everyone!

Well, not quite. The actual story goes like this:

With too

many men on their roster, the Canucks were forced to put Aaron Volpatti on waivers in

hopes of sending him to the Chicago Wolves. Unfortunately for the Canucks, the

Washington Capitals claimed the B.C.-born grinder, and to make matters worse, only a few short hours after Volpatti was put on waivers, Canucks brass was informed that Ryan Kesler was

injured and Vancouver did not need to waive anyone. To make up for the lost man, Vancouver claimed whomever they could on waivers the next day in a reactionary move, and that lucky man was none

other than Tom Sestito.

Many fans,

except those who love face-punchers, were not too happy with this turn of events,

especially considering how it all unfolded. Further to

their disliking, Sestito was re-signed that summer to a two-year, one-way, $1.5M contract

by Mike Gillis. Last season, after a

total of 34 NHL games played over his previous six, Tom Sestito played his first full

season in the NHL, leading the entire league in fighting majors and PIMs.

Read past the jump to see how Sestito fared in his first real NHL season. Spoilers: it wasn’t good.

2013-2014

Performance









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In his

first full season in the NHL, playing a total of 77 games, Sestito had a career high

of 9 points with 5 goals and 4 assists.

He also earned the honour of leading the league in penalty minutes with

213, edging out fellow face-puncher Chis Neil by just two PIMs. He also earned the title of “The Worst Person in

the Sports World” bestowed upon him by Keith Olbermann after he earned 27 PIM

in 1 second of play against the L.A. Kings.

I honestly

have a hard time trying to find anything positive to say about Tom

Sestito. He’s the worst player on the

Canucks in just about every metric we track. This is especially baffling since the Canucks, under Mike Gillis, had always been

looking for new ways to find a competitive advantage, so it makes you wonder

why they would ice someone as bad as Sestito with such regularity and overpay

him to do so.

From his

statistics above we see that he has scored a career high in points and

goals, but this is most likely due to appearing in a career-high number of NHL games. He saw almost

no special teams time (a total of 8 minutes on the power play) and was never

used on the penalty kill. One might be

quick to point out his team-high shooting percentage of 13.79%, but it’s unlikely that Sestito can sustain a shooting percentage of a high-end sniper. Given every season

for him has been a small sample size though, it’s difficult to know where his shooting talent truly

lies. I would make the educated guess

that’s it’s much lower than the league average of ~9%, however.

It’s harder

to analyze a 4th liner’s possession numbers with such limited data,

and the fact that Sestito only had a 25% OZ start rate also muddles what his “true-talent” deployment neutral possession skill really is. But, from above, we can still clearly see that every

teammate was far, far better without Sestito than with him – definitely not a positive

sign. League wide, he was at the very bottom of nearly every possession statistic.



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Those who

are in favour of players such as Sestito will cite it’s the other things on the

ice that he does so well, but this does not appear to be true either. Sestito was 4th on Vancouver hits, but the fact that he was chasing the play so much surely plays a large part in this. He’s not even a good of a fighter either, with his Punch

Corsi (or “Kordic”) well below 50%, and having only won 7 of 19 fights in 2013-2014 accordingto NEW NATION NETWORK PARTNER HockeyFights.com.

2014-2015

Outlook

Tom Sestito on upcoming season: “I think I’m going to go for 50 goals this year…”

WATCH: http://t.co/W9ysLvCx5R pic.twitter.com/GYUdtMYRS6 — Vancouver Canucks (@VanCanucks) October 1, 2014

The

2014-2015 season can really only end in one of two ways for Sestito, and right

now it’s not clear which is most likely to happen. Currently, the Canucks have to cut just one more player to get their roster to 23, and Sestito happen to be one of those

guys who is still with the big club.

Whether he is cut or not it is up to Jim Benning & Co. who were talking up the need for a solid 4th line all summer. If it were up to us, Sestito would be in

Utica.

If Sestito

is sent on the Utica path, he would head back home where Comets fans will

absolutely love their huge local boy who hits, fights and scores once in a

while. He will be out of harm’s way for the Canucks and will open up a roster

spot for one of the young players that the Canucks were touting all summer

about giving the chance to play. This is

something the fans want to see: more of the Kid Line and less of Top Sixtito.

Realistically,

my gut feeling points me toward believing that we will see more of Sestito

in Vancouver this year, where he would only continue to harm

the Canucks while he’s on the ice (this also seems probable thanks to Nicklas Jensen’s demotion this morning). It’s likely

he would play with Derek Dorsett this year on the 4th line, who might help bring up Sestito’s possession and GoalsFor% numbers, but like his teammates in

2013-2014 I would bet that Dorsett will perform better without Sestito on the ice.

Offensively,

it is unlikely that the Canucks get 5 goals from him again, though it may be possible too

depending how his puck luck is this season.

Additional changes in his deployment from Willie Desjardins could

possibly increase his OZ start rate, which could also help him score more.

At the end

of the season, Sestito will be looking for a new contract. Whether Jim Benning decides to re-sign him will be interesting to see. 4th

line players are easy to acquire, especially ones that are cheaper and perform

better than Sestito has. In fact, it’s entirely possible that Vancouver has better 4th line options in Utica right now, including Mike Zalewski, Dustin Jeffery, Darren Archibald, or Brandon DeFazio. There is value

in having face-punchers that can do more than punch faces, but unfortunately

Sestito is not one of those players.





