If you’re willing to give that much up, Tampa would be foolish to say no 🤷‍♂️

I don't really have a good idea of what Cernak's going to cost, since we have no idea how well Tampa's gonna be able to move salary. Maybe the 2021 2nd instead of the 1st is more reasonable? It's better than Tampa'd get if someone gave him a 5x4M offer sheet.

I honestly don’t know an exact value either but I don’t think he has more value than say Dermott or Jokihariju

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In terms of age, offense, and puck possession, I think Siegenthaler and Cernak are pretty even. Cernak has gotten to play 18 minutes to Siegenthaler's 16, but some of that is coaching. Siegenthaler has gotten slightly more PK time. It evens out. For the difference in their likely salaries this year, WSH could take McNabb from Vegas as a cap dump, and get the same checking. TBL might let Cernak go for Kempny and a 2nd, to get under the cap. Or for Siegenthaler and a 5th? I just think on paper, Siegenthaler and Cernak are carbon copies. I'd want both.

Dermott and Siegs both played predominately sheltered, 3rd pairing minutes this season. Jokiharjiu's closer, but still didn't have as much responsibility as Cernak did playing on Tampa's shutdown pairing with McDonagh. Cernak also stepped up and played almost 21 minutes a night on the cup run. I think he's clearly a cut above all of those guys.

Yes. He did.
He also played with much better players than Dermott, Jokihariju and Siegs.
It is hard to judge.

Tampa played lots of overtime. They had three guys average over 22 minutes a game. Cernak was a distant 4th, just ahead of Shattenkirk. Still good, but WSH could sign Shattenkirk cheaper and keep Siegenthaler and a 1st. http://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?report=timeonice&reportType=season&seasonFrom=20192020&seasonTo=20192020&gameType=3&position=D&playerPlayedFor=franchise.31&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=timeOnIce&page=0&pageSize=100

When most people say sheltered minutes, they mean a high percentage of offensive zone starts. Siegenthaler had 49%, and finished with his side taking as many shots for as they gave up against: http://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?report=percentages&reportType=season&seasonFrom=20192020&seasonTo=20192020&gameType=2&position=D&playerPlayedFor=franchise.24&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=zoneStartPct5v5&page=0&pageSize=100

Cernak was at 47.4 and 49. He is slightly, slightly better, maybe. But since he played with a great defenseman, and Siegenthaler didn't, I have my doubts that he's as good as Siegenthaler. There are players that end up at 40 and 50, without playing next to a $7M defensive ace. edit: here's who I think the Caps should pick up from a cap-crunched team that just made a pretty good run: https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/f/faksara01.html

I'm not referring to zone starts, I'm going by the quality of competition metric used on PuckIQ. They group players into Elite, Middle, and "Gritensity," and then use the difference between the percentage of ice time a player gets against elite players and the percentage they get against gritensity players to quantify usage. Here's the Lightning, and here's the Caps. You can see pretty clearly that Cernak and McDonagh got the tough assignments for Tampa, while Siegs and Gudas were being heavily sheltered by the Caps. If the Caps thought Siegs was capable of playing the sort of minutes Cernak did, they'd pair him with Carlson instead of re-signing Dillon. Siegs is a good PKer, but his skating and play with the puck hold him back at ES. Cernak is an even better PKer (only Jensen has a better GA/60 on the PK than Cernak over the last two years, min. 200 minutes on the PK), and can be trusted to take tough assignments at ES as well. If Siegs reaches his absolute ceiling, he'll be Cernak. I don't want to wait and hope that that happens.

The X-axis says "dangerous Fenwick for percentage. Siegenthaler is beating Cernak with a stick on these charts. 2nd best on his team at controlling chances, compared to 6th for Cernak. Hard pass. Thanks for showing why.

That's cause he's playing much easier minutes. You can't ignore the context that Cernak is playing a much higher percentage of his minutes against top lines. Breaking even in the minutes he played is more impressive than being a slight positive with the sheltering Siegs got. Carlson had a similar level of competition and DFF%, do you think Siegs is better than Carlson by the same logic?

Okay.... right... so.... I called up the whole Stars team to see how it plays out. Up is tougher competition. Right is more success against them. Half of the Stars' dots are connected in a big quarter of a circle. The guys better than most of the team this year are Heiskanen and Ben. The guys worse than most are the ones inside the curve. http://www.puckiq.com/woodmoney?season=20192020&positions=all&team=dal&group_by=player_season_team&min_toi=200

Here's Tampa's whole team: http://www.puckiq.com/woodmoney?season=20192020&positions=all&team=tbl&group_by=player_season_team&min_toi=200

Cernak is on the main trend line. He's an average Tampa guy. That's good. But he's not ahead of it. The guys I want on this graph are Cirelli, Palat, Kucherov, and Point. The next best guys look to me like Shattenkirk and Rutta. Rutta used to play with Kempny and Shattenkirk invited Carlson to his wedding. I could see either eventually signing with WSH, but I think just Shattenkirk is UFA this summer?

Who cares what the coaches think? The idea is to find guys who outperform guys who had similar opportunities.

Looking at the Caps whole team on this, it looks to me like Eller, Orlov, Vrana, and Backstrom stood out this year in terms of controlling the play the best, relative to where they started and who they played against. So those are probably the guys the Caps should hold onto the most, based on this. Siegenthaler's in the middle of the pack, which is pretty good for a 23 year old kid. I'm fine bringing on a Cernak type of player, but I still don't see any need to trade Siegenthaler for him.

edit: this is fun. But of course the context that you don't get on here is who played what percentage of their shifts with whom. So on Arizona you get Hall, Dvorak, and Garland appearing to be the best guys on the team. But you go back a year to take out Hall's influence, and then suddenly Dvorak and Garland aren't as good as Panik, who was one of their better guys. So did they get better or did they just get to play with Hall? Big drop-off in Grabner, post-injury, but this doesn't break it down by parts of the season to check for improvement. Thanks for opening up a whole new rabbit hole to get lost in.