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Is Nazem Kadri a true comparable for the Arizona Coyotes’ Tobias Rieder?

Restricted free agent negotiations can often be a delicate situation and for versatile, utility forwards like Rieder, those negotiations are far from easy.

He is ineligible for arbitration rights, so he has three options — sign the deal the team offers him, sign an offer sheet from another club (which is contingent on another team actually presenting him with said offer sheet), or play overseas. In order to later return to North America, though, he would still have to pass through the Coyotes system in order to play.

Rieder’s agent, Dan Ferris, suggests his client wants to take option one: return to the Coyotes.

He’s claiming the two sides are at an impasse, though, due to reports that his client and the Coyotes ‘aren’t close’ on a deal yet.

Ferris believes that Rieder should fetch a deal similar to that currently signed by center Nazem Kadri and the Toronto Maple Leafs. That would earn Rieder, who finished his sophomore NHL season with 14 goals and 37 points, somewhere around $4.5 million per season.

For the Coyotes, that’s a lot of money to shell out per season when players like Max Domi, Anthony Duclair, Dylan Strome, and now Clayton Keller are also coming down the offensive pipeline.

Salary cap management and fair value for services rendered are two different conversations, though. Looking just at how Rieder plays, is Kadri a fair comparison?

The Similarities

Where Ferris and Rieder certainly have a point in arguing for a Kadri-esque salary is in utility and two-way play, particularly when it comes to the defensive game of both forwards.

Kadri, like Rieder, is in the top 25th percentile in terms of defensive play and possession game.

Both forwards offer solid shot suppression statistics for scoring forwards, putting up Corsi For percentages that were both above 50 percent (suggesting that the duo both help their clubs maintain possession of the puck) and were relatively stronger than the percentages being posted by their teammates.

Kadri’s Corsi For percentage was 53.7 percent for last year (which was 2.5 percent better than his team average), while Rieder’s was a 50.1 percent for last year (which was 4.1 percent better than his team average). It’s a rough metric, but generally suggests that both players keep the puck heading towards the opposition’s net more often per game than their own. In hockey, that’s really the bottom line.

Both forwards are also relatively strong supplementary scorers for the kind of defensive work they put up, as well, albeit with somewhat unlucky shooting percentages.

In the 2015-16 season, Rieder – who posted a career high 14 goals in all situations – scored on just 7.4 percent of all recorded shots on goal he took throughout the year. He was also one of the players who put the puck on the net with high frequency for Arizona, recording 189 shots on goal and making 348 shot attempts.

Only Oliver Ekman-Larsson shot the puck more than Rieder for the Pacific Division club; assuming Rieder can find more luck in the future, he could jump up to being a 20-goal scorer.

Similarly, Kadri put up just 17 goals on a whopping 260 shots on goal last year, converting on even fewer on-target shots than Rieder and attempting a mind-blowing 483 shots in total.

Like with Rieder, the assumption is that Kadri will be able to produce at an even higher level if he’s able to elevate from his somewhat abysmal 6.5 percent shooting percentage from last year. Where some players run the risk of seeing abnormally high shooting percentages prime them for drastic decline, both Rieder and Kadri are in a position where they can really only go up from here.

The Differences

Both Rieder and Kadri certainly displayed some similar characteristics last season, and for Rieder, who is two-and-a-half years younger than Kadri, there’s the chance that he’s still got room to grow.

Despite those similarities, though, there are a few stark contrasts between the two players that make them less than ideal comparisons.

To start, Rieder is certainly a versatile player; he’s capable of playing down the middle when needed, and he’s a competent wing on both the left and right sides. Like Kadri, he’s got both power play and penalty killing ability, and tends to make his teammates better whether he’s playing in offensive or defensive situations.

Unlike Kadri, though, Rieder’s primary position is still the wing. Kadri is both a natural center and a strong one. While Rieder is simply capable of playing the pivot, Kadri thrives in that role.

There’s also historical precedent to consider.

True, Kadri is older than Rieder, and his status as a former seventh-overall pick certainly gave him more opportunity to succeed as a top-six forward than Rieder’s own fourth round selection. Nonetheless, he has put up three seasons with over 15 goals, one with 20 goals, and he’s hit the 50-point mark before.

Rieder has yet to hit 15 goals, period, and his highest points total was just shy of the 40-point mark. That’s the difference between a middle-six player and a top-six player.

Add in the perceived weight that the center position gives, and the comparison becomes a bit of a stretch.

This isn’t, of course, to argue that Rieder will never be a Nazem Kadri.

For years, Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand – another defensive scoring forward selected in the middle rounds of his own entry draft – was considered to be nothing more than a supplementary piece for Boston. His own $4.5 million per year deal was considered just right, despite two years of 20-plus goal performances at the time he signed his current deal.

The result? What many consider to be a drastic underpayment by the Bruins for a player who put up 37 goals last year, has led the league in shorthanded tallies, and consistently proves he’s one of the most important pieces on his roster.

That could very well be what ends up happening if the Coyotes insist that Rieder is worth no more than $3 million, which is a reasonable estimate given suggestions that the team is far from his reported $4.5 million asking price.

For $3 million, Rieder would be a steal if he even managed to improve his game incrementally next year. He’s already strong with possession and a proven contributor, both defensively and offensively, when playing a man down.

If he managed to even hit the 15-20 goal and 40-45 point range while playing on a $3 million per year deal, it’s possible to argue that he’d be underpaid.

Rieder has yet to prove, though, that he’ll ever be a player capable of producing at a higher shooting percentage than he does right now. He’s coming off of a knee injury this summer (sustained at the World Championships in May), and he hasn’t produced a 40-point season.

He could in the future, but he hasn’t yet – and as a winger, that’s likely a huge sticking point for a team hesitant to budge in the direction of a bigger deal.

Fellow defensive forward Marcus Kruger inked a deal worth $3.475 million per season this spring, and his offensive production is certainly subpar in relation to Rieder’s, but again, he has the weight of experience on his side.

For a contract that would make him the highest-paid active forward on the Coyotes roster, though, a comparison to Nazem Kadri needs to be rock solid in order to truly hold up against the sniff test.

At the moment, that’s just not quite the case.

Column: Does Tobias Rieder have a case to make ‘Kadri money’?