Anderson deal a gamble for Canadiens, but big winger could pay big dividends
Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin wasn't shy about weaponizing his available cap space during the off-season and he made big bets that the club we saw in the playoffs was ready to take the next step — provided he added the right ingredients.
Adding size on the blue line and allowing goalie Carey Price to get rest were clearly priorities. The general manager also seemed to sour on Max Domi and, when he saw an opportunity to add a very different player, he pounced on Josh Anderson.
The trade from the Columbus Blue Jackets raised eyebrows immediately because of Anderson's injury-plagued 2019-20 season, but the contract that followed had some serious sticker shock. Coming in at an annual cap hit of US$5.5 million per season for the next seven years, Anderson will be tied with Jonathan Drouin as the highest cap hit among the Canadiens forwards next season, until Brendan Gallagher's extension overtakes them in 2021.
At 6-3 and 222 pounds, Anderson adds some much-needed size and a very physical style of play to a Canadiens team that doesn't have a lot of it up front.
However, giving seven seasons to a player who struggled with injuries and had 1-3-4 totals in 26 games last season is a very big bet from Bergevin. But when you look at the data, it's easy to see why the GM has confidence in Anderson because last season was a drastic outlier after consistent positive progression.
Evolving-hockey.com has several models that attempt to measure the impact of a player on a team's success. Like baseball, there is the classic Wins Above Replacement ( WAR) that a player provides through on-ice performance and individual contributions like shot volume and shot quality. Slicing things in a slightly different way, you can also look at Goals Above Replacement (GAR), which is exactly what it sounds like; a player's impact on goal differential.
Attempting to move out some of the randomness inherent in the sport, you can switch both of those metrics to “expected” instead of “actual” results, which gives a better indicator of the value a player has added or subtracted from a team in a given year. We'll use those metrics to take a look at Josh Anderson's career.
The first two seasons of Anderson's career weren't really seasons
— he played six and 12 games, respectively, while struggling to break into the league — but, when he became a full- time NHLER, he rattled off three straight seasons of progressively better hockey as a positive contributor all around.
In 2018-19, only the New York
Rangers' Artemi Panarin (then on Columbus) and Pierre-luc Dubois exceeded Anderson's contribution to team goal differential among the Blue Jackets' forwards.
It's important to note that expected Goals Above Replacement (see chart) is on a per 60-minute rate, while expected Wins Above Replacement is a season-long total. Even in 15 fewer games played, Anderson managed to improve in 2017-18 over his previous season in wins contributed.
Looking at the trend of his career, last season is such an outlier that, as long as the injuries he dealt with aren't going to be chronic issues, it seems safe to toss aside those results.
During his three relatively healthy seasons, Evolving Hockey credited Anderson with 22.2 goals above replacement, and 93 per cent of that value comes from his even-strength offence. The bulk of that comes from his shooting, which has developed to the point that Anderson had the 11th-most shots on net per 60 minutes of all forwards in 2018-19 with 500 or more even-strength minutes. The top player in the NHL in that category is Gallagher.
Anderson also finished 34th in the league in 2018-19 in individual expected goals at even strength, which is in the same range as Tyler Seguin of the Dallas Stars and the Buffalo Sabres' Taylor Hall.
During his three healthy seasons, Anderson also showed he's a better than average penalty killer, can contribute on the power play and he draws more penalties than average.
But his overall impact is tempered by the fact that he's slightly worse than average defensively and he tends to take more penalties than he draws.
In trading Domi for Anderson, the Canadiens lost a bit of speed in transition and a fair bit of playmaking prowess, but Bergevin probably believes the lost playmaking can be replaced internally with young centres Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi.
In gaining Anderson, they're adding a power forward that they haven't had since Erik Cole, or back when Max Pacioretty was more physical during his early years in the NHL.
One of the most interesting questions is where will Anderson fit with the Canadiens this season? Will his size and physicality as a scoring option mesh well with, perhaps, Drouin? Drouin gets a lot more criticism than he deserves, and he is probably the Habs' best playmaking option.
There is potential for a big breakout season for both players.