Who is this forward they have in the system?

Bob Verdi calling him a finished product? Top 6 forward?

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He actually wasn't in the system at all! His name is Artem (or Artemi, or Artemy? Russian names are an odyssey) Panarin (pron. pah-NAH-rin, but expect to hear panna-rinn. again, Russian names) and he'd been playing for St. Petersburg of the KHL. He signed here as an unrestricted free agent on an entry-level contract, the same way college graduates do, figuring that a winning organization in a town full of Slavs was as good a place as any to start an NHL career.

He's been a leading scorer in the KHL, and while the KHL is not quite the NHL, it's still a top league. I suppose the best comparison would be a baseball team signing a star from the Japanese leagues, except there are no posting fees or anything like that, and the mandatory entry-level contract makes it a very cost-effective signing for the organization. As with Japanese imports, there's always that chance that he can't live up to the hype or the higher level of competition, but the experts seem to agree that he should be a solid top-six scorer here. If he doesn't pan out, he'll be allowed to re-defect to the KHL with no real loss to the Blackhawks, but let's hope it doesn't come to that. Best comparison I've seen is a second Teuvo Teravainen.

Here is a video of him hat-tricking. You'll notice the presence of erstwhile superstar and salary-cap-ruiner Ilya Kovalchuk, who ran back home rather than continue to play in Jersey despite fucking the whole league with his stupid contract.

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I find it interesting the KHL nameplates aren't in Cyrillic. I guess it probably has to do with attempting to market KHL to non-Slavic nations.

Yeah, I was thinking that too because of how they've expanded into Finland and I-think-don't-quote-me-Slovakia? Maybe it's an IIHF regulation. Japanese baseball is the same way, come to think of it.

Point of order, though, lots of Slavic languages use the Latin alphabet: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, maybe some others.

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What was the reasoning behind the contract from the Devils' perspective?

They had to know there was going to be issues with the deal, and from what I've been reading, they had an idea he would be retiring early. So what's the deal here? Ineptitude or some super secret ahead of the curve type plan?

I think they saw the frontloaded contracts going around and wanted to push it to its natural conclusion because there was nothing in writing about what proportion of the top the bottom had to be. The NHL fucked it up, as they fuck up everything, by rejecting the first iteration of the contract out of hand, then accepting a second iteration and then punishing it even though both contracts were technically legal under the CBA. I don't think the Devils should have been punished. They got their first-round pick back anyway because ownership changed hands and there was no sense in punishing the new guy for saving the organization from some dangerous financial problems.

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Thanks CH

No kidding. CH knows his shit. Better than anybody else in Chicago media. Certainly the Score guys. He teaches and informs better than anybody about the blackhawks.

Roughly half the teams in the NHL expressed interest in Panarin, with 6 teams really serious. The Hawks won the bidding war.

Panarin has been given an unusual contract by the Hawks that allows him to leave the organization later this year if he doesn't make the NHL roster.

Artemi is an undersized winger at 5'11" 170...then again Patrick Kane is 5'10" 181.

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There's been a lot of talk about this clause, but I don't think it's a unique clause (the NHL is very particular about the notion of a Standard Player Contract -- for instance, performance bonuses are only for the very young and very old) so much as an open acknowledgment of the fact that if he fails to report to the team, his cap hit will disappear and/or they will mutually agree to a contract termination, both of which are boilerplate in any SPC but never discussed to this extent, probably because no one signs, like, Bryan Bickell or some other hoser with the nagging fear that he'll get frustrated and bugger off back to Russia. I wish Bickell would now, though.

Scott "Special Nieds" Niedermayer did something like this in 2007-08, where he had some nagging injuries or something but the Ducks couldn't start the season with his contract on the books, so they suspended him for "failure to report" until his cap hit was prorated enough for him to come back. It was suspicious because Niedermayer was the captain of the Ducks at the time, and sitting out of work is not a very captainly act. Sure enough, he got the C back from Pronger when he did come back.

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While I usually value skill over size, is there any worry that 3 of your projected top 6 forwards are on the small size in Kane, Teuvo and Panarin?

No question, especially looking at Winnipeg's top six featuring Ladd, Wheeler, Lowry, and Schiefele, not to mention Trouba and Byfuglien in back, all of whom are happy to knock you flat on your ass. Granted, we have Saad (God willing. Saad willing?), Toews, and Hossa up front, who are very hard to take off the puck. I would guess that Panarin will begin with the same line-sheltering that Teuvo benefited from.

I know I'll get shit for this on the heels of the Blackhawks beating the Lightning for the championship, but I really think the league is heading toward heavily favoring the way the Ducks, Jets, and Kings play, with heavy north-south movement and unpunished physicality. The question is whether it's on the Hawks to adapt to the new normal or to conquer it -- perhaps they already have.

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Reading your description painted a picture of Nintendo ice hockey. It's like we have all skinny and a few average sized players but no fat ones. It frustrates me at times and I think we need a few bigger players but they've managed to do well.

While looking for a picture, I found a Jets message board that was mad at Byfuglien for being fat and lazy in 2013.

Jets fans are good people. Probably one of the only fanbases rooting for the Hawks in this series: warm-weather fans always stick together, no love from our rivals, and fans of Eastern Conference teams have been getting uber-salty about the notion of Western Conference supremacy and needed to see the team that beat them win it all.

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