Is Ivan Barbashev the best scoring winger on the market after Timo Meier?

Daily Faceoff‘s Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk were joined by regular guest Cam Charron for another “Number Crunch” segment on Wednesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live.

The trio discussed some of the top wingers available on the trade market leading up to the trade deadline on Mar. 3. After talking about what makes the San Jose Sharks’ Timo Meier so appealing to contending teams, Charron shared some of his thoughts on a potential consolation prize: Ivan Barbashev.

The 27-year-old St. Louis Blues winger has 10 goals and 27 points in 53 games this season and is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. He also won the Stanley Cup with the Blues in 2019.

Here’s an excerpt from the conversation about Barbashev:

Frank Seravalli: So, Cam, if there is a bidding war, that means that someone’s gonna end up losing out. And if you’re the GM that misses on Meier, you were just saying you were looking at the Trade Targets board and none of them were all that appealing. But there’s some other scoring wingers out there, some rentals, some with term. Who would you have your eye on?

Cam Charron: So, I don’t think I would pay a first-round pick for anyone else on the board, or a top prospect — and that includes a guy like [Patrick] Kane. The guy that I’m really interested in, actually, is Ivan Barbashev. So, this graph here is pretty simple, this is just 5-on-5 points per 60 from the COVID season up until last year and then this season. Everyone’s kind of dropped a little bit because they play on bad teams, that’s why they’re available at the deadline. van Riemsdyk’s the only exception but he’s never really been first-line calibre in terms of his scoring, at least not in the last several years.

So, Barbashev is actually the one that’s really interesting to me. He’s almost like the opposite to Meier in that he doesn’t take a lot of shots within the zone, it’s a lot of playmaking. He really relies on the playmaking. His shot percentage is actually very, very high, he just doesn’t take a lot of shots because he’s always looking for that extra pass and he doesn’t really touch the puck in the neutral zone or the defensive zone. So he’s really kind of that complementary winger that, if you have a good shooter, he might be able to increase that guy’s shooting percentage.

Check out the full episode here: