| 18 January 2012
Ville Leino has been the butt-end of every overpaid free agent joke that doesn't involve Scott Gomez. He had one good season and he got $27 million. One reason for this would be that Leino benefitted from lots of offensive zone starts against weak competition. This year it's more of the same, but it's been pretty apparent that he was being carried by his linemates- namely Danny Briere.
That got me to thinking about Leino's former linemate, Scott Hartnell. Last year he played with Briere and Leino and put up some pretty respectable numbers (24 G, 25 A)and did pretty well for himself at even strength. This year, he's playing on a line with Claude Giroux, which is a bit of a 180 from his role last year with the Flyers- less protection and tougher competition on the other team (i.e. tough minute forwards like Patrik Elias and top defensemen like Zdeno Chara vs 3rd liners and bottom pairing D). Hartnell's managed to succed in this role, even improving his scoring rate at evens this year. He's also on pace for career highs in goals, assists, points and falls. And earning every penny of his salary.
As someone who doesn't follow the Flyers that much, I'm not sure whether or not to attribute the improvements to Hartnell playing better this year (he's got a lot of praise for his play) or to playing alongside one of the best players in the league. I just find it interesting that Hartnell was able to transition from protected scorer to top line winger so easily.
