Voodoo Child
Registered User
- Jun 16, 2009
- 6,409
- 2,487
Value of: Kotkaniemi extension
- Thread starter CupInSIX
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GIN ANTONIC
Registered User
He wasn’t very good early in the season. He was bounced around a ton (still is) and was trying to find chemistry. He was working hard in limited minutes but not producing much.
That was the first 15 games. The last 15 he has been playing more C, more minutes, even some time on the PP and he’s been doing really well.
41 hits is like 5th amongst forwards and he’s obviously had limited minutes compared to others who have been here longer with more established roles.
You seem to have a real issue with understanding stats and their context.
And lol at ‘team makes up for his errors defensively’… go pull up some clips if you think he’s such a liability there.
I understand stats and context thank you. If you want to go into specific we might be able to have a decent conversation. If you prefer throwing jabs because we have a different opinion that's something else.
You disagree that KK has skating issue?
That he's lagging on the play?
GIN ANTONIC
Registered User
He skates weird, yes, and speed is clearly not an asset of his. He hasn’t been lagging behind the play. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, he’s actually really strong on the forecheck and often the first Cane in the zone for puck retrievals.
He is far from a perfect player but he’s doing a lot of good things and considering he’s bounced around the line up in a number of different roles, he’s done well with that.
I've watched every single game, not just 10 or so. So looking at it more from a whole season perspective so far not just a sampling.
Stylistically, if I was GM or coach, I want a little heavier game with pace. Harlem Globetrottering is well and good but when the situations tighten up, having an entire team made up of tiny speedster will lend itself to those players pushed to the outside and scoring drying up. So I'm naturally more inclined to like the style of game KK is providing for us so far. But biases aside, he has been good for our team in a number of ways.
The Canes with KK in the lineup have a few things now they were missing in prior years save for a couple players....
1) roster depth
2) more net front presence
3) more physical play overall
In previous years when we lost a key player, it completely changed our makeup and we weren't able to easily replace the injured player and depth scoring.
This season when we had players go down or have to sit out with covid protocol we have still gotten wins and similar scoring levels because we had the depth that a KK offers. He got more minutes and could slide into that elevated minutes slot on a higher line and we still pull out the win.
If everyone is healthy, having him center a 4th line and get some 2nd pp unit time makes us even more dangerous and more apt to spread the scoring around and not pressure any one player on the top lines to have to carry the team.
We just came back from being down 4-0 to Columbus to win 7-4 with 7 unanswered goals and Aho didn't factor in on any of the 7 goals..
We didn't wait until the trade deadline to add a depth player where it takes the rest of the season and into the playoffs itself to figure out how to integrate them... we paid the draft picks up front and get an entire season to figure out how to best utilize that player and an entire year to get them up to speed on how we play in all areas... we did our trade deadline acquisition early and still have another shot to tweak more if we need to do it..
At the time the offer sheet was done there was absolutely nothing else out there trade wise or UFA wise for us to spend the rest of our cap on... there hasn't been a single deal since then that made more sense for us than the KK one. We had extra cap money left over because our free agency period roster construction moves didn't go the way we planned and instead of paying g dougie to stay we replaced him with TDA at only $1m for the year and had an extra $8m saved in cap money for this year to do extra moves to make our roster depth even better and plan for the future... KK seems really happy here with us with other Finns on the team with him, he seems to like playing g for Rod (everyone seems to love playing g for Rod and his style of play that he wants from the players), and he has a year to learn and doesn't have to be the guy or savior on a deeper team. No pressure and we can try him out in all kinds of spots... you can bet that he is going to have some homework next off-season to work on skating skills as that is about the only glaring thing that stands out as a need for him... we are all happy with the way he plays a heavier game like Nino or like JStaal does as we need that compared to our more speedy and smaller skill players.. even when he wasn't playing his best when thrown in the deep end at the start of the year and he wasn't showing up on the score sheet he still was contributing in other ways and wasn't negatively impacting the team or being a drain on the team...
We signed a lot of short term deals that give us ultimate roster flexibility in this flat cap Era so that we can use too much cap money to force the situation with the offer sheet. As everyone should know deep down,, that was the only way we could have forced him out of MTl for the compensation that was given.. they wouldn't trade him unsigned for what we offered.. so we used the less than ideal cap situation of MTl because of their contract decisions with others to pry him away...
We have a ton of prospects that weren't ready to make the jump to the NHL this year (or at least it looked that way at the time before Jarvis and Drury actually played more games for us) and we had tons of cap flexibility for this season. We added depth for this year that has made us even better overall this year while protecting us in case we lose some of our key guys to UFA stupid long term high dollar contracts next offseason... a little bit of insurance using cap money this year we weren't going to use anywhere else given the timing of when we did the deals and what was available to us in trade or remaining UFA dregs at the time... So I expect that unless his agent is unrealistic, KK will be with us next year and at a lower cap number than his offer sheet forcing current cap hit... if his agent pushes too hard and KK wants to go that route, we will let him walk and he will get whatever he can get as a UFA... we still got a full year trade deadline style deal for someone to help us this year and we have the prospect pool to whether the loss of the draft picks to take the chance on KK...
About the only thing I could have seen us potentially doing differently would have been if we were able to get Tank out of STL for a deal that would work for us... and it sounds like STL wouldn't work to make his cap hit manageable for us next season or the other compensation was just too high... and there was a lot of risk with that move given Tanks health situation versus KK youth and lack of severe injury history... im fine with the gamble they took to give us even more of an embarrassment of C depth riches..
We used the tools available to get a player we wanted. He has been good for us in the roles we have asked him to play. I think he fits our systems and style of player well and is the right kind of player for us compared to the rest of the guys on the team now and what we expect the team to look like the next couple years... the money this year doesn't matter and was likely never going to match his output given it wasn't just salary but part of the deal needed to force the move out of MTL... but on a team that has had secondary scoring issues at times over the past few years, his 5v5 scoring in recent games has been just what we needed to keep winning in the crazy competitive Eastern conference and Metro division...
Stylistically, if I was GM or coach, I want a little heavier game with pace. Harlem Globetrottering is well and good but when the situations tighten up, having an entire team made up of tiny speedster will lend itself to those players pushed to the outside and scoring drying up. So I'm naturally more inclined to like the style of game KK is providing for us so far. But biases aside, he has been good for our team in a number of ways.
The Canes with KK in the lineup have a few things now they were missing in prior years save for a couple players....
1) roster depth
2) more net front presence
3) more physical play overall
In previous years when we lost a key player, it completely changed our makeup and we weren't able to easily replace the injured player and depth scoring.
This season when we had players go down or have to sit out with covid protocol we have still gotten wins and similar scoring levels because we had the depth that a KK offers. He got more minutes and could slide into that elevated minutes slot on a higher line and we still pull out the win.
If everyone is healthy, having him center a 4th line and get some 2nd pp unit time makes us even more dangerous and more apt to spread the scoring around and not pressure any one player on the top lines to have to carry the team.
We just came back from being down 4-0 to Columbus to win 7-4 with 7 unanswered goals and Aho didn't factor in on any of the 7 goals..
We didn't wait until the trade deadline to add a depth player where it takes the rest of the season and into the playoffs itself to figure out how to integrate them... we paid the draft picks up front and get an entire season to figure out how to best utilize that player and an entire year to get them up to speed on how we play in all areas... we did our trade deadline acquisition early and still have another shot to tweak more if we need to do it..
At the time the offer sheet was done there was absolutely nothing else out there trade wise or UFA wise for us to spend the rest of our cap on... there hasn't been a single deal since then that made more sense for us than the KK one. We had extra cap money left over because our free agency period roster construction moves didn't go the way we planned and instead of paying g dougie to stay we replaced him with TDA at only $1m for the year and had an extra $8m saved in cap money for this year to do extra moves to make our roster depth even better and plan for the future... KK seems really happy here with us with other Finns on the team with him, he seems to like playing g for Rod (everyone seems to love playing g for Rod and his style of play that he wants from the players), and he has a year to learn and doesn't have to be the guy or savior on a deeper team. No pressure and we can try him out in all kinds of spots... you can bet that he is going to have some homework next off-season to work on skating skills as that is about the only glaring thing that stands out as a need for him... we are all happy with the way he plays a heavier game like Nino or like JStaal does as we need that compared to our more speedy and smaller skill players.. even when he wasn't playing his best when thrown in the deep end at the start of the year and he wasn't showing up on the score sheet he still was contributing in other ways and wasn't negatively impacting the team or being a drain on the team...
We signed a lot of short term deals that give us ultimate roster flexibility in this flat cap Era so that we can use too much cap money to force the situation with the offer sheet. As everyone should know deep down,, that was the only way we could have forced him out of MTl for the compensation that was given.. they wouldn't trade him unsigned for what we offered.. so we used the less than ideal cap situation of MTl because of their contract decisions with others to pry him away...
We have a ton of prospects that weren't ready to make the jump to the NHL this year (or at least it looked that way at the time before Jarvis and Drury actually played more games for us) and we had tons of cap flexibility for this season. We added depth for this year that has made us even better overall this year while protecting us in case we lose some of our key guys to UFA stupid long term high dollar contracts next offseason... a little bit of insurance using cap money this year we weren't going to use anywhere else given the timing of when we did the deals and what was available to us in trade or remaining UFA dregs at the time... So I expect that unless his agent is unrealistic, KK will be with us next year and at a lower cap number than his offer sheet forcing current cap hit... if his agent pushes too hard and KK wants to go that route, we will let him walk and he will get whatever he can get as a UFA... we still got a full year trade deadline style deal for someone to help us this year and we have the prospect pool to whether the loss of the draft picks to take the chance on KK...
About the only thing I could have seen us potentially doing differently would have been if we were able to get Tank out of STL for a deal that would work for us... and it sounds like STL wouldn't work to make his cap hit manageable for us next season or the other compensation was just too high... and there was a lot of risk with that move given Tanks health situation versus KK youth and lack of severe injury history... im fine with the gamble they took to give us even more of an embarrassment of C depth riches..
We used the tools available to get a player we wanted. He has been good for us in the roles we have asked him to play. I think he fits our systems and style of player well and is the right kind of player for us compared to the rest of the guys on the team now and what we expect the team to look like the next couple years... the money this year doesn't matter and was likely never going to match his output given it wasn't just salary but part of the deal needed to force the move out of MTL... but on a team that has had secondary scoring issues at times over the past few years, his 5v5 scoring in recent games has been just what we needed to keep winning in the crazy competitive Eastern conference and Metro division...
Last edited:
CupInSIX
My cap runneth over
He's on a 6 game point streak now (8pts). If he keeps this up, he might be worth the 6m they initially signed him for.
BB88
Registered User
- Jan 19, 2015
- 41,360
- 21,668
Player x is one of the best players on the team and saying player x is playing like one of their best player at the moment are different things.
The Gr8 Dane
L'harceleur
He's always been a decent third line checker , I don't get why habs fans roast him dude is doing the same he did here and he was important in the playoff push. For a league that's soft it's nice to have a few big forwards that can lay some body
GIN ANTONIC
Registered User
He’s terrible and should be killed.
mill say this though… even when he does fall down, he does it in style and is setting sweet sweet goals…
mill say this though… even when he does fall down, he does it in style and is setting sweet sweet goals…
He averages 12.40 mins a game. Obviously the coach does not trust him. The GM went public and said good things about KK to encourage him but it was reported it was to give home more time. $6.1 mil cap space the Canes could use to pickup a significant additional help at the deadline. Anyhow we wait and see.
a Tomas Hertl could give the Canes a Cup.
a Tomas Hertl could give the Canes a Cup.
You got some good points here. KK doesn’t have to take less. If he keeps up his points, his agent will go the arbitration route.
He again played wing on the Staal line last night. That's the definition of coach's trust.
Exactly this. If Brindy didn't trust him to play, he'd be up in the press box watching the game and eating nachos.
f***s sake, what an asinine comment.
Doc5
Registered User
- Aug 8, 2012
- 2,709
- 3,623
So I'll preface by saying I am huge fan of Kotkaniemi, but what exactly is that video supposed to prove? That he fell and is able to make a pass that any NHLer can make?
LakeLivin
Armchair Quarterback
Only time will tell if this pays off for the Canes. But hey, you keep twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to make the case that it was a bad move, lol.
Canes are content with how things are progressing to this point; it was always about more than the first few games. But I guess that concept is hard for some to comprehend.
GIN ANTONIC
Registered User
Yes. Exactly. He’s terrible. We are hating his 6 game point streak he’s on.
But for real I just thought it was funny because that’s what Habs fans always say about him… ‘Aren’t you sick of his Bambi on ice skating and falling down all the time?!?!?’
The answer to that is no, not really.
GIN ANTONIC
Registered User
I really hope he doesn’t eat Marty Nachos but that would be an insane amount of protein if he’s trying to bulk up.
Mandalorian
Screw the tank, just WIN BABY!
GermanSpitfire
EU Video Scout for McKeen’s | Rest Easy #13
But when Montreal gets the 33rd overall pick for finishing last, you’re going to be saying “We basically have two firsts!!!”
That was a meme started on the Habs forum mostly by Danault fans who really hated KK because they thought he'd push Danault out. He does fall down because he's still a bit gangly, but it was to the point that if he'd fall, the KK discussion would get 3+ pages in an hour.
GermanSpitfire
EU Video Scout for McKeen’s | Rest Easy #13
Cap hit only matters when a team is spending to the cap, both aren’t so its null.
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