Caps with Jokipakka

If Jokipakka never got a high profile from being part of a trade deadline deal, you would never have known his name.

Familiar name, but was never good enough.

find out where Connauton, Corrado, Clendenning or other mediocre d-men that get claimed off waivers are at. At least they can play a steady game unlike Polak, Trevor van Riemsdyk, Kris Russell, Gardiner, Griffin Reinhart, Jokipakka who are always chasing or flipping between creating one good chance for every 4 major screwups they create out of the blue.

For some reason GMs lie to themselves that certain bad d-men are good, and certain good goalies are bad. It's almost never the other way around at those positions.

I doubt he earns above minimum. What's the logic in moving Orpik to the right side? Jokipakka and Orpik each have a dropoff of about 3% from their zone starts to their corsi, but Orpik played four more minutes a night, put up 180 hits and alternate captained the best regular season team in the league last year. The knock on Orpik is that his giveaways are twice his takeaways, but Jokipakka's are almost three times, and I'd point out that most hits take the puck away. Jokipakka has fewer hits in his career than Orpik had last year. https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/j/jokipjy01.html

Now, from a salary cap management standpoint, if the Caps have a buyer offering positive value for Orpik
, then replacing him with a not quite as good player twelve years younger and 4.8M cheaper is a no brainer. But I think either player is bad enough with the puck already, without having to play their off side.

No chance Jokipaka stays with us. I'm sure this is to simply motivate and push the younger guys more if there's more competition in camp

I wouldn't be surprised or upset if they don't sign him. The more I look him over, the more I think he's not a good fit, except for Hershey.

On a two way deal, he would provide excellent depth, and if the Caps plan to trade Orpik to free up salary cap space, he'd be a great asset to have around, but if no one in the NHL offers him a one way contract, he can probably make more than an AHL salary, playing in Europe.

Of course, they play the game on the ice, not in a database. If Jokipakka shows up to camp in better shape, as spent the summer working on puck control, and outscores Djoos in the preseason, he's got himself a job, and Djoos keeps getting better in Hershey, so that's win-win for the Caps. I'd honestly be surprised to see either of them start the season playing more minutes than Brooks Orpik, and I think the Caps, an an organization, tend to promote internal candidates first, for the sake of building organizational knowledge. So it's a long shot. But I went digging for silver linings, and although his career zone starts make him look like a rookie, in the last couple years, Jokipakka has taken as many defensive zone shifts as Karl Alzner, and, on average teams, done an average job. Maybe if he's paired with a defensively sound right hander like Matt Niskannen, he can continue to build into a shutdown role in Washington.

What else do you guys make of this: https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/j/jokipjy01.html