Well, he's no Alex Tanguay, but Ales Kotalik is now a New York Ranger. He comes fresh off a 43-point season (in 75 games), but he scored 11 in 19 after being sent to Edmonton from Buffalo. In fact, he's had 2 43-point seasons in a row and has only cracked 60 once, in 2005-06, where he had 25 goals. That was the only season of his career where he's had a full docket of 82 games also.
So another injured player for the Rangers, another 3rd liner for John Tortorella's "system," but I do like him. It's an upgrade over Aaron Voros, Donald Brashear, and Mark Bell.
The term is suspect though - 3 years, $9M. Are 43 points really worth $3M per year? (His Cap hit was $2.333M last season.) I hope this doesn't screw the team at the trade deadine, when they'll need to get a scorer on the market to make a push for the playoffs. I'm afraid they won't have any cap room to get a player they need, because they also need to make atleast one more medium-sized signing this offseason (a center or a defenseman, I would guess). To be honest, I was hoping for a 2 year, $4M contract (or maybe $5M for a Cap hit of $2.5M per).
He is 30, will be 31 in December, but he's a fast player and he's big. He's 6'1", 230 pounds. He also plays the power play - of his 43 points last year, 23 were on the power play. (For comparison, Scott Gomez had 17 of his 58 on the power play, and he played nearly every power play.)
I'm not upset about this at all. Nik Zherdev will be gone, a right winger who can pot 20-25 can be a positive move. Hey, there were worse options out there, right? And while he had a -5 on the 2006-07 Sabres, his +/- was better in 05-06 than Chris Drury's on the same team.
But now, the real rivalry begins. Who will wear #21, Kotalik or Chris Higgins?
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