Attempting to give my hot take on Brayden Schenn yesterday, I called him a Western Conference mediocre-team enigma. Which is a snarky way of saying I haven't any clue about the guy.

For years now, St. Louis has been a team that plays Boston defence without any elite scoring talent. Now Boston doesn't play defence, and St. Louis has a forward I'd take in a heartbeat. But they aren't going to trade Jordan Kyrou. The lesson that has to be relearned every deadline is that no one is giving up the young and talented. Instead, they are going to trade you the players poised on the precipice of decline. A deadline deal is a gamble on how fast that decline comes, along with the hope they don't get injured right away because they aren't 25 anymore.

Brayden Schenn

I know about the glory days of the Schenn Boys in Philly. That was then and this is now, and we've already tried the late-stage career of Luke. What does Brayden offer?

Schenn is 33, and he turns 34 this summer. He's a left-shooting centre, and he's under contract through to 2028, the summer he turns 37. He's average sized for the NHL, but he plays "big" so it's likely people have a hazy idea he's primarily a physical player of considerable heft. This is incorrect.

The AAV of his contract is $6.5 million – a normal amount for a top-liner in 2019 when it was signed. He has a full no-trade clause this year, and a 15-team no-trade each year after that.

This means two things: no one is trading for him without salary retention, and he's got to agree to the trade. Those kinds of deals usually involve the player (their agent, really) involved to some extent in the early discussions. Teams don't finalize a deal and then go cap-in-hand and ask the player to waive the no-trade. They have to know in advance there's a point to it.

Schenn has been supplanted as the 1C on the Blues by Robert Thomas but his minutes per game hasn't changed. He's been at 18-19 for all but his first year on the Blues in 2017-2018 when he was at 20. He played less in Philadelphia when he was younger, but that team was fairly stacked with talent.

Using Hockeyviz's measure of individual value, his best year was 2018-2019, the year they won the cup. He was also very good in the short 2021 season, an interesting thing that might be about his health or about workload or just a blip. He's more legitimately a third-line player now than the second-liner he is on the Blues.

His value is coming from the power-play, his finishing results, and a measure Hockeyviz has, that I find very interesting: Ice Won and Ice Lost. The point of this measure is to calculate how much you impact the shift that follows you. Do you move the puck up ice and keep it from sliding back down ice? Schenn does this at least at the average level which many forwards don't do, particularly not the ones who score goals. His impact on defence is fairly poor. More on that later, however.

Evolving Hockey's RAPM model also says his best year recently was when the Blues won the cup. He has a positive impact this season on Corsi For, a bad one on Corsi Against and a less intense effect on Expected Goals For and Against in the same direction as the Corsi.

A quick look at the visuals on EH shows a man whose biggest asset is his impact on goal-scoring and the power play.

I like these examinations of isolated impact, and I take them seriously, but they aren't the revealed truth of the player. These models do very well at separating a lot of the team effects, and there's nothing we need to be say about mitigating for zone starts or other very minor impacts on results – that's in there. So is Quality of Competition, another not very meaningful thing. The big thing that these models do is allow for Quality of Teammates, the single biggest impact on individual results and the thing that makes on-ice stats lie to you so often.

But there are some weaknesses in these models – some teams aren't trying to be good or they have a lot of sub-replacement level players. Impact requires an object (other players) to be acted upon. And if they're made of foam rubber, you aren't really going to show up as doing a lot. I also believe that the defensive impacts reported for forwards are less reliable than the offensive and are largely team effects.

St. Louis is not Chicago, however. Remember looking at Jake McCabe's results and being deeply underwhelmed? That's the level of difference you'd see on the Leafs with this player, I don't believe.

Belately, I realized you might want to know some things I tend to ignore. So here they are:

In the last three years, including this season, Schenn has won 1,363 faceoffs and lost 1,433.

His Goals per 60 is 0.79 and his Points per 60 is 2.19 over that period. That's in the Järnkrok and Knies region for points, but Knies scores more goals and Järnkrok less over the same period.

The Leafs

The reports say the Leafs are very interested in him – crucially from Chris Johnston – but I don't really know how they want to use him. One presumes as the 3C – John Tavares is clearly better in all categories – but who knows.

I am absolutely sure he's better than Pontus Holmberg, and how a third line with him on it functions depends on the wingers. He and Bobby McMann would wreck shit as Schenn is a veteran of using physicality to advance the goal of scoring more. He and Max Domi... It would be a bit like an Elvis impersonator finding out actual Elvis is coming to do gigs with him. I'd laugh. I'm not sure that's really the point of a deadline deal though.

All of that is analysis of the moment. I have no great hope he'll have gas in the tank at 36, but you never know about that for sure. It often depends on health and luck regarding injuries. That's also much less of a problem than people make out.

The Price

Price is what it depends on – not just for my opinion, but for the Leafs as well. I do think the Leafs should go for it hard this deadline. Don't waste the Stolarz/Woll magic because it may never come again. I'm not at all sure Schenn isn't more famous than useful. And then I think again about his power play and his shot and getting to the net and... maybe. For a low AAV after some retention, he's a good-priced 3C.

St. Louis would likely get more back for him when his full no-trade turns into a 15-team no-trade, though. They don't actually have to trade him, near as I can see, they just want to transition the team younger.

We will, as usual, see where this goes.

We'll See Where This Goes