Chris Tanev contract breakdown
Chris Tanev
How Did This Contract Come To Be?
Chris Tanev signed a 4 year 4.5M$ contract that carries a M-NTC through all 4 years of the contract. This is a 50k$ raise from the 5 year 4.45M$ contract that just came to term that he received from the team he played his entire career for, the Vancouver Canucks. Tanev has never been known for having a fantastic offensive game but was a very solid top 4 defender for Vancouver when he was healthy, Emphasis on when he was healthy. Injuries have plagued Tanevs career for the last bunch of years. Since his first injury in 2015 Tanev hasn't been able to stay healthy for an entire season with his season high is 70 games in a season. But when Tanev was healthy he was a good defensive defender. Tanev had very impressive Metrics when he came into the league as a full timer in 2015 but since then his stats haven't been able to reach that plateau again. The image on the right is his heatmaps from 2014-2015 and on the left is from 2019-20. Every year in between is very fluctuant from a decent year to a subpar year. But 2019-2020 his defensive metrics were very weak. Just heat maps alone show 2 possibilities either Tanev is painfully inconsistent or he is already showing regression as he just turned 30.
Calgary’s Needs
The Flames defense was left with a rather large hole on the right side after Brodie took his talents to Toronto in free agency signing there for 5M. By rather large hole I mean Rasmus Andersson was the only right handed defender still on the team. So yes the Flames needed to sign a Top 4 defender in a bad way, but did they make the right choice? Everyone knows that right shot defenders are a commodity in the NHL and usually tend to fish a little more value from teams as the market demand is typically higher. And with Tanev being one of the only right hand defenders on the open market this offseason with Top 4 experience sharing this stature with only the likes of Travis Hamonic, TJ Brodie, Sami Vatanen, Kevin Shattenkirk, Justin Schultz, Alex Pietrangelo and finally, Erik Gustafsson. And 3 of the 7 players listed actually left from Calgary to test the open market. So lets say that Hamonic, Brodie and Gustafsson were off the table. And Calgary didn't have the open cap to sign Pietro without moving somebody so he can be counted off the list as well. So we are left with 4 options for possible top 4 quality RHD including Tanev. I will go more in depth comparing these 4 players later on but it's important to note that the options for this role going into free agency were very limited and after watching 3 NHL quality RHD leave for free agency Calgary is desperate. And as far as trade targets go currently no big RHD have been moved so let's say theoretically there wasn't an easily inquireable RHD being shopped around. So in long and the short of it Tanev does fill the need in the roster but I believe there were better options available.
Contract Comparison
Chris Tanev is currently sitting at the Third highest paid RHD who signed in this offseason so far, behind the likes of Peitro and Brodie. As I mentioned before there were 4 targets for Calgary and they needed to ink one no matter what. These 4 players were Chris Tanev, Sami Vatanen, Kevin Shattenkirk and Justin Schultz. Let's do a quick dive on each of these players to get a better understanding on what Calgary was looking at. To begin, the most recent Carolina Hurricane Sami Vatanen. Vatanen started his career with Anaheim where he made a name for himself as a solid 2 way defender having skill to create chances while being serviceable, but not fantastic in the defensive zone. Where Vatanen lacks size he makes up for it with skating, he is a good skater and uses it offensively to create chances. He spent the 2019-2020 season with the Devils before being moved to Carolina who was wanting to make a deep playoff push. Vatanen wasn't able to put up the same numbers with NJD that he did with the Ducks but he still held the quality of a top 4 defender for them. The 29 year old played a decent amount of both PP and PK time with them as well, he currently does not yet have a contract but he is coming off of a 4 year deal making 4.875 annually. Next up is Kevin Shattenkirk, This one is interesting as he has been very up and down in his career and is a bit of a risky pick up because you don't really know what you're going to get until you see it;. Most recently the X-first rounder played for Tampa Bay after the New York Rangers bought out his massive contract signed in the offseason of 2017. This contract paid Shattenkirk 6.65M for 4 years, carried a NMC through all 4 years with a M-NTC in the last 3 years. The rangers didn't like the value they were getting back from him so after just 2 years of the contract they called it quits and this gave the most recent stanley cup champs the chance to take a chance on Shattenkirk. That chance was worth every penny. Shattenkirk bounced right back with the Lightning with an immediate bump to point totals and advanced metrics across the board. Creating chances while being good defensively. And all while NYR sat back and paid his buy-out while he won a cup making just 1M from the Lightning over the 2019-2020 season. The 31 year old was signed by the Anaheim Ducks for 3 years making 3.9M with a M-NTC (12 team no trade list) on October 9th, the same day that Tanev was signed. And to round it out we have Justin Schultz. The 6.2” 30 year old has been very inconsistent over his career, Similarly to some of the other players mentioned he struggled with injury off and on through-out his career. Justin Schultz has been a solid offensively minded defender throughout his career with a massive year in the 2016-17 season where he put up 51 points in 78 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins that ended up landing him a 3 year deal making 5.5M annually but would never come close to that point total again. The following season saw him drop to just 4 goals 27 points in 63 games in the regular season while still sporting a cool 11.7GAR, a drop off from 17.8GAR in the season previous but still good and a nice showing in the playoffs with 8 points in 12 games. The 2018-2019 season he showed signs of being back and put up a very nice 15 points in 29 games but found himself being placed on the IR on October 15 then to the LTIR on the 17th and didn’t become activated until February 15. Schultz struggled in the 2019-2020 season only amassing 12 points in 46 games while seeing a significant drop off in all advanced metrics this season as well. But nonetheless the Washington Capitals on October 9th signed him to a 2 year deal making 4M each year. Out of these 4 players who were all signed to similar enough contracts, at similar enough ages and excluding Vatanen standing and weighing a similar amount did Calgary make the best choice?
In Conclusion
Chris Tanev will be able to go into the line-up and play minutes for the Flames no doubt, but I can't help to think that there might have been a better player for less or equal money. Especially because his direct comparison T.J Brodie signed for just 500k more in Toronto. All 4 of the options all had flaws mainly in inconsistency and injury issues but I can’t help but think that they made the wrong choice in Tanev and paid him simply too much money. With Tanevs advanced statistics and even his simple statistics are not great for the role that he will be put in not to mention for the contract price and length. I would have rather them take a flyer on a Shattenkirk, even if he doesn't continue his very strong play his contract is worth less and has less term. But ideally I think Vatanen would have been a good fit for this team, they could probably get Vatanen on a similarly weighted contract to Tanevs. This contract is NOT AmatureAnalyst approved and I think we will see this year and for more years to come that they made the wrong choice in pursuing Tanev and signed him for too much and too long.
This Article is an Opinion piece backed up by facts written and researched by Zack Kelly A.K.A Amature Analyst.
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