I believe he’s probably capable of being worthy of more, but it’s easier said than done. Devils are looking good if Gusev works out

Gusev is one of the more interesting players to watch this season. Devils may be one of the most interesting teams actually, don’t remember a time when you could say that lol

This post was edited by Meatstick on Jul 29 2019 05:11pm

How good is Nikita Gusev?
It’s not easy to answer, as he’s never set foot in an NHL game and has played nearly all of his hockey on Olympic-sized sheets. The best way to project his NHL production is by using other KHL stars who made their way to the NHL.


The chart above, made by The Athletic’s analytics guru Dom Luszczyszyn, shows some of the best players to make the transition from the KHL to the NHL, and how their numbers translated.

Gusev is one of the most productive players in KHL history, scoring more points per game over his career than recent NHL breakout players Artemi Panarin and Dadonov. It’s not just this last MVP season either. Gusev has averaged 0.873 points per game over 458 KHL games, which keeps him in very good company career-wise.



Those seven players managed to translate on average 87.8 percent of their KHL scoring to the NHL, meaning they’ve scored 12.2 percent less than they did in the KHL, but that’s still an impressive rate. Looking at a much broader range of KHL-to-NHL players, players usually scored roughly 80 percent of the points they did in the KHL.

If Gusev saw a similar drop in the NHL he would be at 0.698 points per game, which translates to roughly 57 points (21 goals-36 assists) in an 82 game season. Those numbers would’ve been good enough for second place on the Golden Knights behind Jonathan Marchessault.

That’s just the average KHL-to-NHL player. If Gusev translates similarly to Dadanov (whose NHL scoring is 96 percent of his KHL scoring) Gusev’s 82 game stat line would be closer to 69 points (26 goals-43 assists). That would be 10 points above what any Golden Knight scored last season.

Gusev showed he could be a major difference maker in the NHL as the world championships in Slovakia this spring, dominating a talent pool full of NHL players. Gusev played alongside Hart Trophy-winner Nikita Kucherov and the two were unstoppable. The duo led Russia with 16 points apiece, tied for second in the tournament behind William Nylander.

Yes, it was on the larger ice, but the competition level was high with NHL stars like Mark Stone, Patrick Kane, Jack Eichel and Leon Draisaitl participating.

Vegas’ fans may be suffering from recency bias, because the biggest flop to come out of Russia in a long time (Shipachyov) played only three games for the Golden Knights before retiring to Russia after disagreements with Vegas’ front office. But it’s important to note most of the KHL’s top players have found success in the NHL. Shipachyov is the exception, not the rule.



This post was edited by Secksii on Jul 29 2019 05:22pm

Damn those are some nice names to be with, Gusev is worth 4.5M on a chance imo

Its not too bad for gusev considering where he lands. Im really intrigued by which teams in the east will do the playoffs next year. Im pretty damn sure that there is going to be a few surprises

Ottawa seems to me helping Tampa here

Condon for Callahan

Ottawa

Why are all these goddamn teams lining up to help out Tampa

Tampa got dirty pics the other teams don't want them to share

So what get for helping Tampa out of their cap jam is a 6th to a 5th and getting rid of condon is actually great

Kind of underwhelming but it doesn’t hurt us at all so whatever

This post was edited by Meatstick on Jul 30 2019 10:32am

Melnyk saves ~2M of real salary but our cap hit increase by 3.4M. So yeah, another money saving deal. At what point does the league steps in ? Someone needs to figure out how much actual salary the Sens are going to pay next year, this is ridiculous.