Zherdev is Back… in the NHL

Nikolai Zherdev is back in the National Hockey League, but this time he’ll be in a new uniform.

The Philadelphia Flyers doing more to build up their team signed Zherdev yesterday late afternoon to a one year deal worth $2 million. He’ll definitely have to re-build his reputation after the year he had with the Rangers and even his year off in the KHL putting up mediocre numbers (52GP – 13 G – 39 P). His stats on the Rangers were not terrible (82GP – 23G – 58P) and weren’t a major drop off from his Blue Jacket years, but fans and the team wanted more out of him, especially out of his defensive play. Even though he put up good numbers and scored over 20 Goals, he seemed to not care about the team, he played for himself, and was utterly useless once the playoffs came. Then, kind of what like Illya Kovalchuk is doing now, priced himself out of the league by asking for an exorbitant amount of money which he did not deserve.

Must be a Russian thing.

Now after a year out of the NHL, he’s been forced to take a drastic pay cut from his previous desired salary and even from the one he was actually getting. Only he can redeem himself, and at still only 25 years old, he has plenty of time. It’d be nice to see him resurrect his career. He’s a fun player to watch when he’s on his game and wants to play (rare).

This move also appears to be the final shove in “Pushing Simon Gagne Out Game”. Zherdev’s $2 mil hit on the Flyers cap puts them over by $1.5 mil and Gagne’s hefty $5.25 million brick of a contract is just holding the team down. Look for him to be dealt sometime this offseason.
Now to make this really fun, Gagne has a no-trade clause so this good get ugly if he doesn’t want to leave.

Boy, who wouldn’t love the Flyers to implode on each other? Cat fight!