2010-11 Season Review: Rob Scuderi

Rob Scuderi
2010-11 Stats: 82 GP, 2 G, 13 A, 15 PTS, +1, 0 PPP, 16 PIM  
Signed thru 2012-13; $3.4 million

 What a year for Rob Scuderi.  He set a career-high in goals with...two.  All kidding aside, Scuderi had himself a solid second year in L.A.  Scuds and JJ were the only two Kings defenseman to appear in all 82 games this season.  Here's what I wrote about Scuds in the 2009-10 season review...

Scuds is an interesting one; $3.4 million for 0 goals and 11 assists sounds crazy but that’s the price the market dictated last July.  Scuds was as-advertised.  A solid stay-at-home defenseman.  Nothing more. Nothing Less.  He's just a hard-working minutes cruncher that won’t put your team in danger.

In a nutshell, that pretty much sums up Scuderi's 2010-11 season also.  He doesn't do anything flashy but plays a simple game based on positioning that makes him invaluable to the Kings.  Adding Mitchell to the fold helped take some of the pressure of Scuderi to constantly play the big minutes against other team's top lines and power play units.

A bit alarming to some was Scuderi's +/- rating dip from a +16 to +1.  A significant drop off considering that the Kings goal differential stayed relatively the same from last season.  Scuderi's ice-time increased from just over 19 minutes to 20 minutes per game, his penalty-kill time increase slightly, and his quality of competition rating rose slightly.  It appears that two factors played a role in his +/- rating drop.  The first seems to be Scuderi's increase in giveaways this season which rose from 33 to 59 (his takeaways dropped from 23 to 22).  His giveaway to takeaway ratio rose from 1.43 to 2.6, the only Kings defenseman that saw a significant increase.

Another difference this season appears to be Scuderi's quality of teammates.  His QUALTEAM rating dropped from .163 which to -.088 this past season.  For a player like Scuderi who isn't much of a threat to create offense on his own, his +/- rating relies heavily on the production of his linemates.  Last year's +16 rating was likely a product of Drew Doughty's career year.


FINAL GRADE: B; I'd love to see Scuds play more physical but even more than that...I want to see Scuds shoot the puck.  His insistence on sending the puck around the boards and not even fake a shot is frustrating to watch sometimes.  A dominant cycle for 20 seconds will lead to a pass to the point where Scuds will pass up the shot to flip the puck back into a corner.  Scuderi does so many things well in the defensive zone it's hard to fault his lack of offense.