I'll give my review as a Jackets fan. Even at that cap hit, Panarin is a great pick up for the Rangers. He's more valuable than his 80-some points would tell you. You might find it interesting that fans on the Jackets boards were evenly split on whether to keep Duchene at $8.5m, but when the Jackets were mounting their quixotic last minute bid to keep Panarin, it was nearly unanimous in favor of signing him. And this is when we thought it was $13m x 8!
As someone who lost a bunch of weight and is now trying to gain muscle I was struck by how skinny he was. Do you guys think it's just his body type or is it by design to keep his speed and agility?
He's in incredible shape. His core strength in particular is off the charts for his body weight. That helps him tremendously in maintaining balance and puck control. His battle level with multiple opponents on him is something to watch.
This team is still far-off from being a competitor. And in 2/3 years, we will need to start paying many of these kids on ELCs. If/when we start losing some players you really like, and even more so if Panarin begins to age sooner than later, you will see why many of us had concerns with signing him in the first place.
We have done a pretty good job so far at accelerating the rebuild, but as I've said in other places, we seem to have put the cart before the horse in signing Panarin. I would have waited to pursue a position of need once we had, you know, actually made the playoffs.
In my opinion, we are just as close to being Toronto as we are to properly rebuilding. But only time will tell.
I'd ordinarily agree, you wait until the team is in the right moment. But this is a franchise player. You don't get an opportunity to get someone like him for many years on end. And I would expect Artemi to age well. He has a lean build and rarely ever gets hit. And his mind for the game is worth a fortune alone.
I mean, not that I'm rooting for this. But there's a pretty damn good possibility we don't make the playoffs next year AND Panarin scores less than 30 goals.
This thread is pretty unbearable now because of all the insane optimism, but it will be completely unbearable then when people are destroying him for putting up his career averages.
He could put up 25-50-75 next year and you'll still love him. I'd expect closer to 95 pts if the powerplay is decent.
Considering he's never played with his potential linemates before, yeah, I'm going to err on the side of caution as well. But like others have said, what's done is done, and I'm still excited.
He's one of those players that makes a line. Dubois is a talent and will be a great player in his own right some day, but he's been an extremely raw kid with weak passing skills. Atkinson is a tunnel vision finisher. It didn't matter who was out there with Artemi, they scored. You could put him with Namestnikov and one of the rookie RWs and they'll be a dangerous scoring line. It might be more overall scoring if you don't put him with Zibby.
I'm a Hawks fan but I watched Panarin play allot in Columbus. The guy should of easily had 100 pts last year even with all the turmoil of trade talk , his coach pissing him off and linemates not giving him the biscuit. He should of had 75 assists or more last year. He draws double coverage almost every shift and feeds the most awesome passes to wide open guys who can't finish. Atkinson was one who did well and was the primary beneficiary of Panarin setting him up all season long. The same goes for Seth Jones.
If the Rangers have guys who can light the lamp Panarin will give them all the chances they'll ever want to score. I wish he would shoot more as he could easily be a 35-40 goal scorer but he's a playmaker first and one of the best in the league. You guys are going to like him allot.
Columbus had plenty of good finishers, the bigger issue, which you mentioned, is that there was little interplay with the puck going back to Panarin. The most common thing was Panarin smoothly took care of the zone exit and entry, drew a couple defenders out of position and then fed Atkinson or Dubois with a perfect set up. And those guys didn't miss much. Atkinson scored 35 with Dubinsky and Jenner, so it's not like he needs hundreds of sick feeds to score. The issues were that if Panarin had better passers to play with he could have scored another 5 or so goals, and if the PP was average, probably another 10 points.
