On Thursday, the Chicago Blackhawks announced a relatively minor deal. Forward Joey Anderson inked a one-y🍨ear, two-way extension with the club with an $800,000 NHL cap hit🐓.
Not big money for a 25-year-old forward with 96 career regular-season games on his resume. No massive headlines. After all, he was thrown into the trade that sent Jake🔜 McCabe and Sam Lafferty to the Maple Leafs; fans were m🐭ore concerned with the draft assets.
This certainly isn’t what fans had in mind when they started making their wish lists to help the Blackhawks reach the cap floor — and surround Connor Bedard.
But I absolutely love this deal for both sides.
When the Blackhawks acquired Anderson, he was a relative unknown. A former third-round pick by the Devils, he became a father for the first time just before he was traded to Chicago. He described his game to me as “a straight forward game” without a lot of bells and whistles.
He’s… a lot like Lafferty.
According to , Anderson created 12 individual high-danger scoring chances in 268:52 of 5-on-5 ice time (24 games) after he joined the Blackhawks. For the sake of c🔜omparison, Lafferty created 27 iHDCF in 618:57 over 51 games with Chicago. He created as many rush attempts (5) as Tyler Johnson, who produced the same number in 739:30 of 5-on-5 ice tꦫime.
Anderson can skate. He’s got good size (6-0, 200) and is totally cool with accepting a role in a supporting spot on the roster even though he was one of the USA’s leading scorers at the 2018 World Junior Championship; he had seven points in seven games, the same total as Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson in that tournament.
If Anderson can become an adequate replacement for Lafferty — which I believe he can, though not playing as much center — this is a massive win for the Blackhawks. If Anderson can establish himself as an every night NHL player the way Lafferty did during his time in Chicago, Anderson’s next contract will be a lot more lucrative than this one.
