With the trade deadline coming up at the end of February, most of the focus has been on the players with either expiring contracts (Teddy Purcell,Eric Gryba) and players that have struggled to adjust to Todd McLellan’s system (Justin Schultz, Mark Fayne). One player that I’m surprised hasn’t really been considered as an expendable asset at this point is 29 year old Lauri Korpikoski. The winger is currently in the third year of a 4-year, $10 million contract he signed with Arizona.

A few weeks ago, I dug into Korpikoski’s numbers a little more, mainly because he had played a lot of time with Anton Lander, who has been in an awful funk all season. It was all part of exploring what effects Lander was having on his teammates and vice versa, and if what I was seeing on the ice matched what the numbers were telling me. When I took a longer look at Korpikoski’s history, I came away with one key finding: Korpikoski is not a good player.