Looking at the fantasy hockey implications of Chris Tanev’s new contract.

On Tuesday, the Vancouver Canucks locked up a key piece of their future by re-signing Chris Tanev to a new five-year, $22.25M contract, at an annual cap hit of $4.45M. The contract will break down like this; Tanev will receive $3.5M for the first two years; $5M in years three and four; and $5.25M in the final year. There is also a limited no-trade clause for all five years of the new deal. His current deal is about to expire, which sees him making $2M.

To say Tanev took the long way to this point would be a bit of an understatement. He couldn't make Triple-A teams in his area so he played high school hockey. A growth spurt during his time playing for the Ontario provincial junior league caught the eye of recruiters for an US College, the Rochester Institute of Technology so he went there to play hockey. Dave Gagner, who was actually his roller-blade hockey coach earlier in life, and the Canucks Director of Player Development, followed Tanev's career while he was at R.I.T and always thought Tanev had a very high hockey IQ. Tanev would go undrafted by the NHL so Gagner, and the Canucks, ended up signing the free agent.

In his first pro season, he played 39 games for the Manitoba Moose and 29 games for the Canucks. He also got into 14 playoff games for the Moose that year and five for the Canucks. 

The next couple seasons, he would bounce back and forth between the AHL and NHL until last year when he finally stuck around with the Canucks. He would play 64 games in his first full NHL season, scoring six goals and adding 11 helpers.

Tanev has never been known as an offensive force on the blue line. Since turning pro back in 2010/11, his career high in goals was last year when he sniped six goals. This year, his goals have dropped to two so far but he has tied a career high in assists with 14. 

Using the Frozen Pool tool, let's take a look at Tanev's career numbers.

As we can see, his TOI numbers have increased with each season. We can also see that he's a career plus player. In fact, with the exception of his rookie season, he was a plus player every year, and an even player in his rookie season. Considering he's mainly used as a shutdown type defenseman, that's an impressive stat in itself. He has also improved his blocks every year as well. 

Let's take a look and see where Tanev, and his new cap hit square off against five other NHL defensemen who are making a similar cap hit. Right now, this is what their numbers all look like:

Both Stralman and Johnson are obviously a more offensively gifted type of defenseman, but Johnson also offers lots of other peripherals. Tanev is certainly a block machine compared to all of these guys and fairs pretty well on the plus/minus as well. 

In regards to fantasy hockey, usingFantasy Hockey Geek, let's take a look at how these same players shake out for rankings in my fantasy league, the UHL.  For those that don't know, the UHL is a 24-team, Salary Cap Dynasty League that is populated by many regulars here on Dobber Hockey.  The league uses the following stat categories for scoring for skater; G, A, Plus/Minus, PIM, SOG, GWG, PPP, SHP, Hits, Blocks and FOW.  Each team rosters a total 23 skaters and we use the same salary cap number as the NHL.