Los Angeles Kings acquire Christian Wolanin from the Ottawa Senators for Michael Amadio
We've got another trade to announce ahead of the NHL 2020-21 deadline. The Los Angeles Kings announced on Twitter today that they'd acquired Christian Wolanin from the Ottawa Senators, sending Michael Amadio the other way to the nation's capital.
I've gotta say, I didn't peg the Los Angeles Kings as one of the deadline's busiest teams, but here they are with their second move in the last three days.The Ottawa Senators, a team that most would fairly characterize as a should-be seller running clearance on just about anyone over the age of 25 -- now that makes sense!
For the Kings, one has to imagine that the allure of a once-promising, relatively young, puck-moving defenceman as a reclamation project was an enticing draw. Wolanin, 26, was originally a 2015 fourth-round pick by the Senators, and a player they signed out of -- you guessed it -- the University of North Dakota at the conclusion of his junior season in 2018.
He's been in and out of the Senators lineup since, and last Friday's waiver clearance seemed like the end of the road. Turns out, that instinct served anyone who shared it well.
Wolanin hasn't played often enough to meet the threshold for one of colleague JFresh's player cards, but Evolving-Hockey's RAPM (Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus) charts paint his two-way contributions in a relatively favourable light, particularly in the offensive zone.
Likewise, Micah Blake McCurdy's website, HockeyViz, shows Wolanin as a marginal net-positive player with a substantially greater impact in the final third of the ice than the defensive. In other words, the type of defenceman that coaches tend to tire of pretty quickly.
Amadio, meanwhile, profiles as the sort of player that, paradoxically given their on-ice outputs, will never run afoul of their respective bench bosses. Colleague JFresh's awesome, informative player cards can account for Amadio's contributions, and they're that of a replacement-level fourth-liner as ineffective at any one end of the ice as the other.
Michael Amadio, acquired by OTT, is a replacement-level fourth liner. #GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/zdm3Sfpt4K
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) March 29, 2021
The Kings drafted Amadio in the third-round of the 2014 draft out of the OHL's North Bay Battalion. He'd risen steadily in their organization, turning pro in 2016, and bouncing between the Kings and the Ontario Reign's lineups until ascending to a full-time spot in the big leagues last season.
Ultimately, it's the type of rearranged deck chairs type of transaction that isn't likely to drastically alter the fortunes of either franchise in the short- or long-term.
That said, one has to give a slight edge to the Kings for landing Wolanin, who at his very worst looks like a possession-neutral offensive defenceman, perhaps with yet untapped potential at the NHL level. The Senators got... a dude, one who will have to quarantine before joining the team at that.
