Joined: Mar. 2017
Posts: 24,128
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I like Kapanen, but $4.9M over 6 years?? That's one hell of a bet.
Don't forget much of Kapanen's success is due to playing with Auston Matthews, and as much as I like RNH he isn't in the same class. Check out Kapanen's scoring rates over the past 3 years with and without Matthews:
Overall: 1.69 P/60
w/ AM: 2.47 P/60
w/o AM: 1.18 P/60
Yikes! For context, his scoring without Matthews puts him at about 415th best forward in the league, in the range of such illustrious names as Milan Lucic, Nick Shore and Blake Comeau. Even if you take his overall scoring rate of 1.69 that's more like 170th in the league - guys like Radim Vrbata, Sonny Milano and Mattieu Perreault are in this range.
Kapapen has had just one good year so far, so lets look at that instead:
Overall: 1.90 P/60
w/ AM: 2.33
w/o AM: 1.34
Kapanen's 1.90 P/60 overall is good for about 130th in the league. Without Matthews Kapanen is scoring at a 4th line rate, about 290th in the NHL. And if you think he'll be just fine with RNH, consider this: Kapanen spent 322 minutes with Nazem Kadri this past season and scored 1.12 P/60. That's AHL level offense.
CAVEAT EMPTOR