Why notSchlemko? The other day, Arizona Coyotes defenceman David

[knhjb bnvgh nbh]

 Schlemko was put on waivers and went unclaimed. I've been reading a lot about teams that are absolutely desperate for defensive help https://www.ottawafansstore.com/Joey_Daccord_Hoodie-61, so this perplexes me a bit. In Ottawa's case Ottawa Senators Hoodies, we already have a glut of d-men, particularly at LD. On top of that LD Methot is due to come back soon and will exacerbate the problem further.Schlemko is still a fairly young defenceman at 27 years old and with a cap hit and salary of only $1,187,500 and will be a UFA at the end of the year. Teams who have been struggling or been bitten by the injury bug on the back end aren't exactly taking a huge risk on him https://www.ottawafansstore.com/Tim_St?tzle_Face_Mask-262.I'll examine a bit more whether Ottawa should/could have gone after him, but I'd like to throw out some numbers first.Some of his notable stats from last season:The GoodStats are at 5v5 and compared with players on ARI with at least 40GPHighest corsi relative on the Coyotes (2nd, depending on source)Highest FF% at 53.82nd highest CF% at 53.7Highest Shots For % at 55.8GF% of 54.4 despite a relatively low PDO between 99.4 and 99.6 depending on the source. For perspective, of nearly 400 players with 40gp and a 99.7 PDO or lower from 2011-2014, only 42 have positive GF%.2nd highest % of Defensive zone starts among Coyotes' D.When you look at his numbers at 5v5 Close they improve, which is nice.GF% 63SF% 58.6FF% 57.1Though his PDO goes up to 101 at 5v5 close his numbers are still phenomenal. Of 86 players with GF% above 60 at 5v5 close last season only 7 have lower PDO than Schlemko. Of those 7, only Dan Carcillo's GF% was over 61.The Not so GoodEasy competition https://www.ottawafansstore.com/Micheal_Haley_Hoodie-82.Schlemko faced the 3rd easiest competition amongst Arizona defenders last season using either opponent +/- to measure QoC, or Corsi Rel . He faced the easiest competition amongst D if you use either OPPGF/60 as the measure or OppGF%.I wouldn't generally worry about this too much given the 8 game sample size. But in this case https://www.ottawafansstore.com/Nick_Paul_Face_Mask-194, Schlemko's numbers have taken a nosedive from last year and one of the big changes has been his QoC. This year, he's gone from facing the easiest competition among Coyotes D in terms of opponent GF% and OppGF/60 to facing the hardest. He's also facing the toughest competition in terms of SF%/60.Special TeamsSchlemko doesn't strike me as someone who has been particularly outstanding on the powerplay- he appears to have been getting some minutes behind PP workhorses Yandle and OEL. He played more PP minutes per game on average than Methot did last year and less than Phillips, I don't know if that helps to give you an idea. He has put up 3.75 points per 60 minutes of power play time, none of which were goals and 2.5 of which were secondary assists. Not super. He had the 5th highest GF/60 of Coyotes players with more than 30 min of PP time, so he wasn't a drag on the PP, but he only had a primary point (goal or first assist) on 16% of the goals scored while he was on the ice, so he wasn't exactly the straw that stirred the drink either.Shorthanded, the Coyotes spread things out a little more and Schlemko played 1.8 minutes of shorthanded time per game, similar to what Cowen and Legwand are averaging for us so far this year. Schlemko had a GA/60 of 7.83 which puts him a hair below average for the Coyotes at a 0.02 relative for that stat. He was 5th of 11 players in GA/60 who played at least 60 min SH for Arizona. His SA/60 was 2nd highest on the team shorthanded, and he had a significantly higher PDO than his teammates at 5v4.Ultimately it seems like Schlemko is pretty unremarkable in terms of his special teams play.InjuriesSchlemko has undeniably had a hard time trying to stay healthy, he's never suited up for more than 50 games in an nhl season.You can check out this link here that gives a short glimpse at his injury history just from Nov - March 2013. I don't know what his situation is, if he's just unlucky or if he's got chronic problems, but that is concerning.So would he have made sense to go after?For a larger sample size I'll look at his stats from the last 2 seasons and compare them against current Ottawa defenders from the same period of time.GA/60 - First, barely ahead of Wiercioch by 0.01GF/60- Tied with Karlsson for firstGF%- FirstSF% FirstPDO- also tied for first, this time with Cowen at 101.3FF% -Third behind Karlsson and WierciochOPP FF% -FirstCF% FifthOPP CF% FirstHe'd be Fourth on the team in terms of OFZ% and Fifth in DFZ%If you look at his wowy page here, it shows that he has a pretty consistently positive impact on his teammate's Corsi% and GF%His QOC was very similar to Wiercioch's in terms of their Corsi relative last year. Pretty easy.Given his low salary and the fact that picking him up wouldn't have cost us anything, I may have liked to see Ottawa give it a shot.His underlying numbers are great, and we all know how badly we could use help on defence. I wouldn't have wanted to see a young guy, particularly Wiercioch lose a chance or a spot for him.But if Ottawa is going to try for a quantity for quality trade in the near future, or end up trading the likes of Methot or Wiercioch for a forward, I would be ever-so-slightly placated by the idea of someone with fancy stats like Schlemko coming in.I'm not saying he'd actually be a good partner for Karlsson https://www.ottawafansstore.com/Jacob_Bernard_docker_Flag-159, but he's spent more time with Yandle than he has with anyone else since he's been with the Coyotes. In their time together, Schlemko and this offensively minded, puck moving d-man posted CF% of 54.2 and a GF% of 57.1Completely off topic, but I had to throw this in somewhere because I think it's pretty intriguing. Shorthanded, Chiasson has the 3rd highest minutes for forwards on the Senators, the lowest GA/60 and Shots against/60 and a GF% of 50, having been on the ice for only one goal against, and one shorthanded goal. I've been kind of bagging on the guy for his 5v5 play, but he appears to have been a heck of a penalty killer so far for us this year (he wasn't last year)