Zaitsev's extension made official

[herman]

Brutal +/-.

https://twitter.com/mirtle/status/859465839216660482
www.twitter.com/mirtle/status/859465839216660482

Hit up the whole interview (in Google Chrome for the loose translation). Zaitsev is hilarious in a straight-man role, at the same time providing a bit of an outsider viewpoint to the group in the dressing room.

 

[Zee]

I agree with Don Cherry.  Brutal +/-.  Horrible defensively.  Invisible in the playoffs and on the ice for a whole bunch of goals against versus Washington.

Invisible? Came off a fresh concussion and tossed into the playoff fire. Completely off by his own admission, didn't feel himself until near the end, which were several 2-1 games. "Horrible", that's a big stretch. Plus/minus? Reilly -20, Zaitsev -22. Like Morgan, relied on heavily during this season to play against other team's best. Not an accurate stat I believe for a team that played bad team defense and got better as the season progressed. And apparently, Leaf management disagrees with you.

That's fine.  I was wrong about Andersen and I could be wrong again.  In fairness, Reimer had almost identical stats to Andersen this past season, so in a sense I was "right" about that.  The Leafs could have signed Reimer without sacrificing any draft picks.

Oh really?  Talk to me when Reimer puts up those "identical stats" after playing more than 50 games in a season....something he's never done in his career.  Andersen has played > 50 games in 2 different NHL seasons now and started over 60 this past season.  There's a huge difference.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Mirtle/The Athletic's piece on the contract (it's a free preview article so check it out non-subscribers):

https://theathletic.com/57670/2017/05/02/mirtle-why-did-the-maple-leafs-sign-a-25-year-old-rookie-defenceman-until-2024/

In it, Mirtle basically agrees that it's an overpayment, but defends the contract anyway. However, an anonymous "sharp hockey exec" that Mirtle spoke to disagreed:

?Why would the Leafs give a seven-year deal to a good but outside-the-core player just as they enter into an era when free agents will find Toronto very attractive, seemingly limiting their later options for no good reason?? they said. ?Zaitsev presumably would have accepted a shorter deal. There seems no logical/strategic/analytical basis for the deal.?

I bet it was Dubas talking.

 

[Kin]

I think it's a pretty big presumption to make that Zaitsev would have signed a shorter term deal for the same money.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I think it's a pretty big presumption to make that Zaitsev would have signed a shorter term deal for the same money.

If the Leafs put their foot down and said they wouldn't go more than 5 years I just have a hard time seeing what kind of argument/comparables Zaitsev's camp could have made to justify more than a $4.5mil cap hit. Zaitsev's still a RFA so even with arbitration rights next summer and UFA status being 2 years away Toronto still had more control here. Granted I'm not sure how they justified the deal as is so obviously I'm the wrong guy to talk to about that.

There are times where you HAVE to go 7 years to get a deal done. I don't think that was the case here. So it makes me think that the Leafs wanted a 7-year term just as much as Zaitsev did, which concerns me a little.

 

[Kin]

If the Leafs put their foot down and said they wouldn't go more than 5 years I just have a hard time seeing what kind of argument/comparables Zaitsev's camp could have made to justify more than a $4.5mil cap hit. Zaitsev's still a RFA so even with arbitration rights next summer and UFA status being 2 years away Toronto still had more control here.

Zaitsev also had the KHL in his back pocket, an especially attractive option now that it would also mean the Olympics as well.

Putting your foot down is only an option if you're really prepared to let it get that far. Are the Leafs willing to take a significant step backwards next year by losing Zaitsev without any particularly appealing options to replace him? Is the difference between Zaitsev at 7 years and at 5 years really worth wading into a terrible UFA market? Getting into a Shattenkirk bidding war you're not likely to win? Exploring a trade market that pegs Taylor Hall's value at Adam Larsson?

There's a hidden cost to the fast success the Leafs had and it's the pressure of wanting to keep a team together.

 

[herman]

Going longer term to suppress the AAV is less of a problem with Zaitsev and European free agents under this CBA because teams can just back out of the contracts at zero cap hit (pay out real money though). They can 'go home' more readily than a North American player could.

 

[Kin]

As for comparables that Zaitsev could use to his advantage, I think Jason Demers is an obvious one. If Zaitsev thought his UFA years were worth more than 4.5 each, it's hard to look at any comparable signing and say he's crazy.

 

[bustaheims]

As for comparables that Zaitsev could use to his advantage, I think Jason Demers is an obvious one. If Zaitsev thought his UFA years were worth more than 4.5 each, it's hard to look at any comparable signing and say he's crazy.

Agreed. Looking at the guys who have cap hits within $500K of Zaitsev, other than a couple guys who hit their stride after signing their current deals and a couple sweetheart contracts, it's mostly guys who I would consider to be of a similar calibre to Zaitsev.

 

[sickbeast]

I agree with Don Cherry.  Brutal +/-.  Horrible defensively.  Invisible in the playoffs and on the ice for a whole bunch of goals against versus Washington.

Invisible? Came off a fresh concussion and tossed into the playoff fire. Completely off by his own admission, didn't feel himself until near the end, which were several 2-1 games. "Horrible", that's a big stretch. Plus/minus? Reilly -20, Zaitsev -22. Like Morgan, relied on heavily during this season to play against other team's best. Not an accurate stat I believe for a team that played bad team defense and got better as the season progressed. And apparently, Leaf management disagrees with you.

That's fine.  I was wrong about Andersen and I could be wrong again.  In fairness, Reimer had almost identical stats to Andersen this past season, so in a sense I was "right" about that.  The Leafs could have signed Reimer without sacrificing any draft picks.

Oh really?  Talk to me when Reimer puts up those "identical stats" after playing more than 50 games in a season....something he's never done in his career.  Andersen has played > 50 games in 2 different NHL seasons now and started over 60 this past season.  There's a huge difference.

I could also argue that those sacrificed draft picks could have been the difference between the Leafs making it past Washington or not.  One of them could have turned out to be a legitimate player.  I remember the first round pick they sacrificed was projected to turn out to be quite a good forward.

 

[bustaheims]

I could also argue that those sacrificed draft picks could have been the difference between the Leafs making it past Washington or not.  One of them could have turned out to be a legitimate player.  I remember the first round pick they sacrificed was projected to turn out to be quite a good forward.

That would be an incredibly weak argument. The odds that the 30th overall pick from this past draft would be a good enough player to provide more than the players the Leafs had in the lineup are exceptionally slim. Only 1 player drafted outside the top 10 even played in the NHL this season, and none outside the top 16. That "quite good" forward you're thinking of - that was someone they passed on to trade down in 2015, not to trade for Andersen. He also put up 28 points in 70 games for the Flyers this season. He may not have even made the Leafs' roster this season.

 

[Kin]

That would be an incredibly weak argument. The odds that the 30th overall pick from this past draft would be a good enough player to provide more than the players the Leafs had in the lineup are exceptionally slim. Only 1 player drafted outside the top 10 even played in the NHL this season, and none outside the top 16. That "quite good" forward you're thinking of - that was someone they passed on to trade down in 2015, not to trade for Andersen. He also put up 28 points in 70 games for the Flyers this season. He may not have even made the Leafs' roster this season.

I think he's referring to Steel, not Konecny. Although there's really no chance Steel would have made the roster.

 

[bustaheims]

I think he's referring to Steel, not Konecny. Although there's really no chance Steel would have made the roster.

Possibly. Either way, the argument that the player the Leafs may have chosen with the #30 pick in the 2016 draft contributing enough to push the Leafs past the Caps is an extremely thin one.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

A pretty comprehensive article here looking at a number of ways that Zaitsev struggled from an analytical perspective:

https://theleafsnation.com/2017/05/04/the-nikita-zaitsev-contract-is-bad-and-the-leafs-will-probably-regret-signing-it/

Basically: Zaitsev was bad at preventing players from crossing the blue line, was bad at getting the puck out of the defensive zone, iced the puck the a lot, was just ok at carrying the puck over the opposing blue line, and doesn't seem to individually create that much in the offensive zone.

 

[crazyperfectdevil]

http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2017/5/3/15521138/toronto-maple-leafs-nikita-zaitsev-contract-term-cap-hit-aav-lou-lamoriello and the flipside

 

[herman]

A pretty comprehensive article here looking at a number of ways that Zaitsev struggled from an analytical perspective:

https://theleafsnation.com/2017/05/04/the-nikita-zaitsev-contract-is-bad-and-the-leafs-will-probably-regret-signing-it/

Basically: Zaitsev was bad at preventing players from crossing the blue line, was bad at getting the puck out of the defensive zone, iced the puck the a lot, was just ok at carrying the puck over the opposing blue line, and doesn't seem to individually create that much in the offensive zone.

PPP's Con take on the extension.
http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2017/5/3/15523688/toronto-maple-leafs-nikita-zaitsev-player-analysis-salary-cap-roster-contracts-nhl-khl

Honestly, the numbers don't look great.

Personally, based on the way he looked on the ice and what I saw from him with Team Russia and on YouTube, he was playing a different game here and missing a good deal of confidence in his decisions. So putting up rookie-esque numbers is not really all that surprising to me.

I know I'm repeating myself, but a lot of Zaitsev's issues are very fixable and come down to more experience with the country, the league, the language, the media, the system. Ugh, intangibles: he took a huge pay cut to come here, transplanted his very young family (now expecting a second child) into a new culture, and was the only defenseman on the team to have never played Babcock's system before. Hitting middle ground on most of the stats with all of that in mind is not really a downside to me.

 

[bustaheims]

Personally, based on the way he looked on the ice and what I saw from him with Team Russia and on YouTube, he was playing a different game here and missing a good deal of confidence in his decisions. So putting up rookie-esque numbers is not really all that surprising to me.

I know I'm repeating myself, but a lot of Zaitsev's issues are very fixable and come down to more experience with the country, the league, the language, the media, the system. Ugh, intangibles: he took a huge pay cut to come here, transplanted his very young family (now expecting a second child) into a new culture, and was the only defenseman on the team to have never played Babcock's system before. Hitting middle ground on most of the stats with all of that in mind is not really a downside to me.

Agreed. There's a learning curve to playing in the NHL, even for experienced international players. The quality of competition is higher, the ice is smaller, the strategies and systems are different, etc. While he definitely looked like he struggled at times, there's enough there to be encouraged about his potential to improve, and to at least perform on par with his comparables at $4.5M per.

 

[herman]

Agreed. There's a learning curve to playing in the NHL, even for experienced international players. The quality of competition is higher, the ice is smaller, the strategies and systems are different, etc. While he definitely looked like he struggled at times, there's enough there to be encouraged about his potential to improve, and to at least perform on par with his comparables at $4.5M per.

And he got saddled with the highest competition the Leafs faced on a regular basis, played all situations, and made it the full season as a hard hitter. I can only imagine how our season would have turned out if he was actually sheltered and Polak absorbed more minutes...

For what it's worth, Zaitsev's Goals Above Replacement numbers actually look pretty good in DTMAboutHeart's model, with no negatives in the contributing factors. I don't know enough about the minutae of this aggregate stat to say one way or the other, but looking at the component scores (at least on the Leafs, and at the top of the table), it matches my general sense for the most part. Because of his smaller sample size of historical information, he might have received a friendly skewing.

Player	OVERALL
JAKE.GARDINER	7.4
NIKITA.ZAITSEV	5.8
MORGAN.RIELLY	4.5
MATT.HUNWICK	2.5
CONNOR.CARRICK	2
MARTIN.MARINCIN	1.3
ROMAN.POLAK	-1

 

[sickbeast]

I guess my biggest issue with this deal is the length of the contract.  Why not give him a "show me" deal like what they did with Kadri?  That way they could cut bait in two years if things don't pan out.  In two years the Leafs are going to have to start paying some of their young players good money and things will be tight with the cap.  I'm just concerned that this contract could really come back to haunt them.  Like I said, Zaitsev could wind up on Robidas Island.

As for Andersen, you guys make some valid arguments.  He is clearly more durable than Reimer.  That hit to the head that Andersen took in the playoffs probably would have knocked Reimer out completely for a period of time.  I just really didn't like sacrificing two high draft picks just to sign a free agent.  It didn't sit well with me, and to a large extent it still doesn't now even though Andersen panned out quite nicely.

 

[Bender]

I agree with Don Cherry.  Brutal +/-.  Horrible defensively.  Invisible in the playoffs and on the ice for a whole bunch of goals against versus Washington.

Invisible? Came off a fresh concussion and tossed into the playoff fire. Completely off by his own admission, didn't feel himself until near the end, which were several 2-1 games. "Horrible", that's a big stretch. Plus/minus? Reilly -20, Zaitsev -22. Like Morgan, relied on heavily during this season to play against other team's best. Not an accurate stat I believe for a team that played bad team defense and got better as the season progressed. And apparently, Leaf management disagrees with you.

That's fine.  I was wrong about Andersen and I could be wrong again.  In fairness, Reimer had almost identical stats to Andersen this past season, so in a sense I was "right" about that.  The Leafs could have signed Reimer without sacrificing any draft picks.

I will say that Zeitsev is very slick with the puck and he is a great passer.  I'm not saying he's a bad player.  I'm saying he by no means deserves a 7 year contract at $4+ million per season.  It could turn out to be a real albatross and he might wind up as a resident of Robidas Island.

He can be sent packing to KHL  with no cap hit when he outlives his usefulness

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