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 Antropov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Antropov. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thoughts from Maine; Quick Note on Antropov
I've been here for less than 24 hours and I'm being struck in a number of subtle ways about the quirky differences between Maine and other states, including New England ones.
A few of them come from the grocery store. Shopping in the dairy aisle right next to the french onion dip is clam dip. I asked my mom how to eat clam dip and she didn't seem to be too sure if it went on crackers or potato chips.
The best thing about grocery stores in Maine is that you can buy hard liquor there. Hmmm, cereal, soup... whiskey. Nice! That's good old-fashioned libertarianism, the kind of conservative politics that could come back in vogue, if anyone would ever choose to practice them.
There's also the bottle bill redemption. One of my first jobs was working at Star Market and my favorite thing to do was redeem bottles. It was sort of like a carnival game, trying to get the right bottle in the right bin as fast as you could, they needed to be sorted by size. (Although in the summer sometimes people tried to get money for bottles they had collected in the woods or on the streets and they were filled with things that were growing in them and smelled. Disgusting.)
But long ago Massachusetts, along with, I thought, almost every other state, jettisoned the bottle redemption concept. Not Maine, set in its ways.
And then there's the beach. The sun actually has come out today, after we left, of course. But it was probably about 70 degrees and cloudy. Almost no one at the beach stripped down to their bathing suits.
Beachgoing in Maine, to me, seems confinded to sitting in chairs and watching children make sand castles, as their ankles freeze in a few inches of ocean water.
* * *
The Thrashers got the right player in 6-foot-6 Nik Antropov, but seems to me that they way overpaid and did it in a somewhat desperate effort to retain Ilya Kovalchuk beyond this season.
Antropov was long an enigma to fans in Toronto. With his tremendous size, much more was expected of him than hitting the 20-goal plateau only twice in nine seasons.
However, he seems like he could be one of the few forwards capable of meshing with Kovalchuk in the rare way that singular talents like Dany Heatley and Marc Savard have in the past.
Compare Antropov's pay to another Thrashers winger, Slava Kozlov. Kozlov, who has recorded 71 points or more in three of the last four seasons, will make $3.85 million this coming season.
Antropov, who signed a four-year, $16-million deal, is coming off a career (contract) year in which he recorded highs in points (59) and goals (28). Only two other times in his career has Antropov hit 45 points or more.
Antropov will be 30 in February, Kozlov 37 in May, so that accounts for a large part of the pay disparity.
Still, it's a lot of money for a two-time 20-goal scorer. Take a look at how fast salaries have escalated. Savard signed a four-year, $20 million deal after 2005-06 and last season he ranked among NHL centers in points. That contract came after Savard finished in the top 10 in the NHL in points.
Seems to me that Atlanta overpaid for Antropov as much for being able to entice fellow ethnic Russian and pal Kovalchuk to re-sign in Atlanta beyond the coming season as much as they did for what he can do on the ice.
A few of them come from the grocery store. Shopping in the dairy aisle right next to the french onion dip is clam dip. I asked my mom how to eat clam dip and she didn't seem to be too sure if it went on crackers or potato chips.
The best thing about grocery stores in Maine is that you can buy hard liquor there. Hmmm, cereal, soup... whiskey. Nice! That's good old-fashioned libertarianism, the kind of conservative politics that could come back in vogue, if anyone would ever choose to practice them.
There's also the bottle bill redemption. One of my first jobs was working at Star Market and my favorite thing to do was redeem bottles. It was sort of like a carnival game, trying to get the right bottle in the right bin as fast as you could, they needed to be sorted by size. (Although in the summer sometimes people tried to get money for bottles they had collected in the woods or on the streets and they were filled with things that were growing in them and smelled. Disgusting.)
But long ago Massachusetts, along with, I thought, almost every other state, jettisoned the bottle redemption concept. Not Maine, set in its ways.
And then there's the beach. The sun actually has come out today, after we left, of course. But it was probably about 70 degrees and cloudy. Almost no one at the beach stripped down to their bathing suits.
Beachgoing in Maine, to me, seems confinded to sitting in chairs and watching children make sand castles, as their ankles freeze in a few inches of ocean water.
* * *
The Thrashers got the right player in 6-foot-6 Nik Antropov, but seems to me that they way overpaid and did it in a somewhat desperate effort to retain Ilya Kovalchuk beyond this season.
Antropov was long an enigma to fans in Toronto. With his tremendous size, much more was expected of him than hitting the 20-goal plateau only twice in nine seasons.
However, he seems like he could be one of the few forwards capable of meshing with Kovalchuk in the rare way that singular talents like Dany Heatley and Marc Savard have in the past.
Compare Antropov's pay to another Thrashers winger, Slava Kozlov. Kozlov, who has recorded 71 points or more in three of the last four seasons, will make $3.85 million this coming season.
Antropov, who signed a four-year, $16-million deal, is coming off a career (contract) year in which he recorded highs in points (59) and goals (28). Only two other times in his career has Antropov hit 45 points or more.
Antropov will be 30 in February, Kozlov 37 in May, so that accounts for a large part of the pay disparity.
Still, it's a lot of money for a two-time 20-goal scorer. Take a look at how fast salaries have escalated. Savard signed a four-year, $20 million deal after 2005-06 and last season he ranked among NHL centers in points. That contract came after Savard finished in the top 10 in the NHL in points.
Seems to me that Atlanta overpaid for Antropov as much for being able to entice fellow ethnic Russian and pal Kovalchuk to re-sign in Atlanta beyond the coming season as much as they did for what he can do on the ice.
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