Cole Mining: uncovering why the Erik Cole experiment is not working

I?m going to make my point right away so there is no confusion: a serious error was made by management when they decided to sign Erik Cole. This is not an Erik Cole issue as he is a very good hockey player. In fact, at the time, many (myself included) were encouraged when GM Pierre Gauthier signed the power forward to a 4 year deal that would see him earn an average of $4.5M per season.
Here?s the issue; when you pay a forward $4.5M, it is generally assumed that the player can play on your top 2 lines and will see some time on the powerplay. If the player can?t be counted on for both, then the value that forward adds to your team is limited. To put it bluntly, the team in question would have drastically overpaid, considering there are less than 70 forwards in the league (including those injured) who earn that kind of money.
Right now, here are Erik Cole?s average time on ice numbers per game:
13:29 at even strength (#6 among forwards)
1:08 on the powerplay (#9 among forwards)
0:00 w...

Source: http://network.yardbarker.com/nhl/article_external/cole_mining_uncovering_why_the_erik_cole_experiment_is_not_working/7498111

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