When I first saw the Thrashers' signing of Nik Antropov, I thought that four years at $4 million apiece for a two-time 20-goal scorer was a lot. The New York Rangers' signing on Thursday of Ales Kotalik, who received a three-year contract at $3 million per to replace Antropov on the Rangers' roster, essentially confirms that.
Let's take a look at the two players. NHL.com lists Antropov as a center, but for the last few years he's moved to right wing (where TSN.ca lists him). NHL.com lists Kotalik as a left winger/right winger. So, for all intents and purposes, if Atlanta was looking for a right winger to play with Ilya Kovalchuk, both players were available.
Antropov is 29 and was selected 10th overall in 1998. Kotalik was a sixth-rounder in the same draft year, which basically makes them the same age, although Kotalik is 30. Kotalik has played seven NHL seasons (only 13 games in his rookie season) and has scored 121 goals or an average of 17.3 per season. Throw out that one goal in his rookie season and he's averaging a round 20 goals per season and has hit that plateau four times.
On the other hand, Antropov has nine NHL seasons under his belt and 132 goals for an average of 14.7 per season.
That's a difference, conservatively, of eight goals over three seasons and, using Kotalik's higher average, of almost 16. Yet Antropov will make $1 million more per season and got an extra year.
Let's look at assists now. Kotalik has 130 in his career for an average of 18.6 per season while Antropov has 172 for 19.1, which makes them roughly a wash.
If Atlanta is counting on Antropov to produce at a higher level because he will play on the same line with Kovalchuk, consider that Antropov played with for several seasons in Toronto with one of the game's premier centers in Mats Sundin. In the second-most productive year of Antropov's career, he scored 26 goals when Sundin had 46 assists.
Kovalchuk has averaged 37 assists per season in his career and has never had more than 48, his total of 2008-09, so unless the Thrashers can find a center to channel 50 or 60 assists (Angelo Esposito, anyone?) they can basically expect Antropov to score somewhere between 17 and 25 goals.
Anything more than that and he'd clearly be producing beyond his historical levels.
One factor that Antropov does have on his side is size. At 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds, he's one of the game's biggest players, especially in terms of skilled forwards. Kotalik is 6-1, 227, which doesn't exactly make him a tiny.
But if Atlanta is hoping for durability out of that size, Kotalik again has the edge: He has averaged 63.6 games per season to Antropov's 58.6. (Remove that 13-game rookie season and Kotalik again rockets to an avearage of 74.2; Antropov, in his third season, played only 11 games and had a 34-game stint that season in the American Hockey League.)
One final comparison. Should Atlanta make the second playoff appearance in franchise history next season (which, in itself, would likely seal the Antropov deal as having been worth it), Antropov does not have the greatest postseason history. In 35 games, he has four goals and four assists for eight points. His best season was this past one when he truly was one of the Rangers' best players against Washington in the first round. He totaled two goals and one assist in seven games on a very low-scoring team.
Kotalik? How about 15 points in 34 games. So, Kotalik has seven more playoff points -- which are like gold -- in one less game. Again, in fairness, Kotalik's Buffalo teams were much better than any that Antropov played on but he nonetheless performed, posting back-to-back seasons of 8 points in 18 and 16 games, respectively. For that, he deserves credit.
I don't mean to sound overly negative about Antropov -- I wrote and I believe that he will be a good fit with Kovalchuk and overall I think he improves the team -- but I'm just looking at his value in terms of what Atlanta paid.
If they signed him in large part with the design of pleasing his pal Kovalchuk and hoping that Kovalchuk would re-sign beyond the coming season, their plan had best work. If not, they could be looking at three years of a disgruntled Nik Antropov who could struggle to perform at a $4-million level if history is any indicator.
Showing posts with label Toronto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toronto. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thoughts on Kubina Deal
If the Thrashers felt that they were too small of a team last season, they certainly would appear to have one of the biggest top fours in the NHL with the addition of 6-foot-4 Pavel Kubina. Kubina goes with 6-2 Zach Bogosian and 6-3 Ron Hainsey and 5-10 Tobias Enstrom.
New Atlanta associate general manager Rick Dudley's fingerprints have to be all over this deal, as Dudley was general manager in Tampa Bay for several seasons while Kubina was on the team.
Kubina brings a big shot and his 17 goals in 2003-04 for Tampa (during its Stanley Cup season) tied for the league lead among all defensemen.
Over the last two seasons, Kubina posted back-to-back 40-point totals and was a plus-player in his first two seasons with the Leafs on bad teams -- both positive signs for Atlanta. The biggest challenge in using Kubina for Atlanta will be how coach John Anderson manages ice time between Kubina, 32, and defenseman Tobias Enstrom, 24, who represents the future.
The Thrashers now have something that they have never had in their history: some huge minute-munchers on the back line. To me, the most telling statistic for a defenseman, and truly players in general, is time on ice because it shows which player or players the coach has the most confidence in. If a guy is on the ice the most, there's a reason.
Last season Enstrom led the Thrashers in ice time at 23:31 and Hainsey ranked second at 22:22. Bogosian averaged 18:06, impressive for a rookie, especially considering the length of time he missed with injury. Expect his ice time to rocket upwards in Season Two.
Last season for Toronto, Kubina ranked third in average time on ice at 22:03 behind Tomas Kaberle and Ian White. Rookie Luke Schenn ranked only 31 seconds behind Kubina, which is probably what made Kubina expendable, along with his $5 million salary. Schenn is the future while Kubina represents the past as Leafs general manager Brian Burke cleans house to build his type of team.
In that sense, Garnet Exelby, once known as one of the game's premier hitters, is right up Burke's alley. The big challenge for Exelby, especially playing in Toronto under that huge microscope, will be re-establishing that reputation.
I know there had been feeling around some in the Thrashers organization for years that Exelby's physical side had slipped because of his concussion history and that he was not nearly the fearsome presence on the ice that he once was. (Leafs fans surely will talk over and over about the hit that Exelby put on Mats Sundin a few years back.)
Exelby, one of my favorite players when I covered the team, is a strong character guy and was stepping into his own as a team leader, even with his ice time ranking him as the team's No. 4 defenseman. From the comments that I read after games, he was willing to speak up, take responsibility and say when performances were not up to snuff.
But back to Enstrom. For much of the first two thirds of last season, he regressed from his strong rookie year after the team acquired Mathieu Schneider and Schneider received more minutes and more power play time. Once Schneider was traded to Montreal, however, Enstrom flourished.
Will Kubina's acquisition represent a repeat for Enstrom: High-salaried, offensively skilled defenseman reduces Enstrom's time and, as a consequence, his productivity?
Certainly, Enstrom is an enormous part of the Thrashers' future and impeding his development would not help the franchise. The biggest challenge for coach John Anderson will be managing the ice time between Kubina and Enstrom so that both produce.
There's one other possible caution for Atlanta in the deal. Could Kubina represent a replay of the signing of Jaroslav Modry? Like Kubina, Modry was a big, Czech defenseman with offensive upside who could play big minutes.
Unfortunately, what the Thrashers learned in the 2005-06 season, to their surprise, was that defensively Modry was one of those defenders who made his way in the pre-lockout NHL as an obstructionist.
When the new rules came into effect, Modry was a step (or two) too slow and often had to resort to hooking or holding which landed him far too often in the penalty box. As a result, Atlanta could not play him against other teams top offensive lines since he was too much of a liability and Modry became mostly a power play specialist, where he succeeded with 38 points. The next year, he was shipped to Dallas.
Modry was 34 when he played his first season for Atlanta. Kubina is 32. In all likelihood, Kubina is a far better skater than Modry was, has that benefit of being two years younger than Modry was, and there's no new rules to skew any analysis of his game.
But for Atlanta to be a playoff team, they'll need Kubina to return to being a plus player, which he has been three of the last five seasons but which he never was for the first six of his NHL career.
Those were mostly bad teams (although the 2002-03 Lightning were a playoff team), but they were not all that different from Atlanta has been for the last two.
How this trade works out should define the Thrashers' season.
New Atlanta associate general manager Rick Dudley's fingerprints have to be all over this deal, as Dudley was general manager in Tampa Bay for several seasons while Kubina was on the team.
Kubina brings a big shot and his 17 goals in 2003-04 for Tampa (during its Stanley Cup season) tied for the league lead among all defensemen.
Over the last two seasons, Kubina posted back-to-back 40-point totals and was a plus-player in his first two seasons with the Leafs on bad teams -- both positive signs for Atlanta. The biggest challenge in using Kubina for Atlanta will be how coach John Anderson manages ice time between Kubina, 32, and defenseman Tobias Enstrom, 24, who represents the future.
The Thrashers now have something that they have never had in their history: some huge minute-munchers on the back line. To me, the most telling statistic for a defenseman, and truly players in general, is time on ice because it shows which player or players the coach has the most confidence in. If a guy is on the ice the most, there's a reason.
Last season Enstrom led the Thrashers in ice time at 23:31 and Hainsey ranked second at 22:22. Bogosian averaged 18:06, impressive for a rookie, especially considering the length of time he missed with injury. Expect his ice time to rocket upwards in Season Two.
Last season for Toronto, Kubina ranked third in average time on ice at 22:03 behind Tomas Kaberle and Ian White. Rookie Luke Schenn ranked only 31 seconds behind Kubina, which is probably what made Kubina expendable, along with his $5 million salary. Schenn is the future while Kubina represents the past as Leafs general manager Brian Burke cleans house to build his type of team.
In that sense, Garnet Exelby, once known as one of the game's premier hitters, is right up Burke's alley. The big challenge for Exelby, especially playing in Toronto under that huge microscope, will be re-establishing that reputation.
I know there had been feeling around some in the Thrashers organization for years that Exelby's physical side had slipped because of his concussion history and that he was not nearly the fearsome presence on the ice that he once was. (Leafs fans surely will talk over and over about the hit that Exelby put on Mats Sundin a few years back.)
Exelby, one of my favorite players when I covered the team, is a strong character guy and was stepping into his own as a team leader, even with his ice time ranking him as the team's No. 4 defenseman. From the comments that I read after games, he was willing to speak up, take responsibility and say when performances were not up to snuff.
But back to Enstrom. For much of the first two thirds of last season, he regressed from his strong rookie year after the team acquired Mathieu Schneider and Schneider received more minutes and more power play time. Once Schneider was traded to Montreal, however, Enstrom flourished.
Will Kubina's acquisition represent a repeat for Enstrom: High-salaried, offensively skilled defenseman reduces Enstrom's time and, as a consequence, his productivity?
Certainly, Enstrom is an enormous part of the Thrashers' future and impeding his development would not help the franchise. The biggest challenge for coach John Anderson will be managing the ice time between Kubina and Enstrom so that both produce.
There's one other possible caution for Atlanta in the deal. Could Kubina represent a replay of the signing of Jaroslav Modry? Like Kubina, Modry was a big, Czech defenseman with offensive upside who could play big minutes.
Unfortunately, what the Thrashers learned in the 2005-06 season, to their surprise, was that defensively Modry was one of those defenders who made his way in the pre-lockout NHL as an obstructionist.
When the new rules came into effect, Modry was a step (or two) too slow and often had to resort to hooking or holding which landed him far too often in the penalty box. As a result, Atlanta could not play him against other teams top offensive lines since he was too much of a liability and Modry became mostly a power play specialist, where he succeeded with 38 points. The next year, he was shipped to Dallas.
Modry was 34 when he played his first season for Atlanta. Kubina is 32. In all likelihood, Kubina is a far better skater than Modry was, has that benefit of being two years younger than Modry was, and there's no new rules to skew any analysis of his game.
But for Atlanta to be a playoff team, they'll need Kubina to return to being a plus player, which he has been three of the last five seasons but which he never was for the first six of his NHL career.
Those were mostly bad teams (although the 2002-03 Lightning were a playoff team), but they were not all that different from Atlanta has been for the last two.
How this trade works out should define the Thrashers' season.
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