We Finally Landed One

I keep thinking about how many swings we took at a guy like this before it worked.

Guentzel. Rantanen. Years of chasing a real scorer, getting close, and watching it not stick. It turned into a whole thing about this franchise. We could develop, we could defend, we could out-work anybody, but we could not land the big forward and keep him.

Then on July 3rd last year we signed Nikolaj Ehlers. Six years, 51 million. Tulsky called him the top free agent on the market and nobody argued.

A year later he's got a ring.

And then I saw this chart going around this week, ranking the NHL's most efficient finishers over the last ten seasons, and there he is at nine. Two hundred and thirty-six goals on a hundred and ninety expected. Twenty-four percent above what the math says he should have scored. That is Draisaitl and Kucherov and Kaprizov and Panarin company. He's ahead of Brayden Point on that list.

Ten seasons of that in Winnipeg and I don't think most of the league noticed.

We noticed. And then he went out and had a career year here at 30 years old, 71 points, 26 and 45, in a system that is supposed to be the place offense goes to get simplified. Twelve go-ahead goals, second on the team behind Jarvis.

But the playoffs are the part I'll remember.

Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final in Montreal, series tied at nothing and we're about to be in real trouble. He scores twice, and the second one is the overtime winner, and it comes off the hardest shot he took the entire postseason. Both of them off the rush, which is the whole reason we signed him.

Then Game 1 of the Final. First shot of the game, twenty-five seconds in, he beats Carter Hart and Lenovo comes apart. That's the third-fastest goal to open a Cup Final in the history of the league and the fastest since 1976. He got another one at 12:08 on a breakaway. We lost that game, which people forget, but he set the tone for the whole series in the first minute of it.

He also put up back-to-back three point games in the Final, which since 1990 only McDavid and Lemieux have done. That's an insane sentence to type about a guy we signed off the open market.

And then Game 6. Empty netter to close it out. His eighth of the playoffs. Eighteen points in eighteen games.

Brind'Amour said after Game 1 that he might have been the most dynamic player on the ice, and that he'd been like that all playoffs and all year. Coming from Rod that's about as effusive as it gets.

We spent years being the team that couldn't land the finisher. We finally did, he was better than advertised, and he was one of the biggest reasons that banner is going up in September.

Best signing this franchise has made in a long time. Maybe ever.

Go Canes.