The Tarasenko Timeline

What a player could be vs. what he is

Vladimir Tarasenko was reportedly a Carolina Hurricane for 24 hours. That ended up not working out & he is having a tough time finding a deal that works for him. Teams know the warning signs of signing players in their 30’s to term & Tarasenko in particular is a tricky one. He scored 34 goals in a wonderful return-to-form season with the Blues before coming down to Earth last year with only 18 in 69 games. This still puts him at over 20+ goals over a full season, but you can see why figuring out a price tag for him can be difficult.

He has the reputation as an elite goal-scorer & has that great 2021-22 season to back it up. Then there’s last year, which puts him as a middle of the lineup player with a good-but-not-great shot and defensive concerns. If you can get him for a lower price, it’s the bargain of the off-season, but the player is obviously looking for more. Those “stars of the past” contracts are dangerous because you’re paying more for the name than what you’ll get from the player. This off-season is a little different with so many guys taking one-year deals in hopes of a better contract when the salary cap rises, but Tarasenko only has so many years left on the market & is already in his early 30’s.

Tarasenko is also someone I wanted on the Hurricanes forever because he scored a lot of goals & made them look easy. He was the type who could make difficult plays look easy & create space in the slot on his own.

Basically the one-shot scorer every team wishes they had. You can see that he scored goals in a variety of different ways. Creating space for himself off the wall, trailing the play, beating defenders wide & making the move to the net, etc. It’s a lot of things that are tough to do & he always made it look so easy when he was in his prime. There weren’t a lot of players who could score off individual efforts as often as he could. At least in the modern era. It’s what set him apart from most of the pack.

Eventually his body began to breakdown it’s tough to play that way when you get older & start to slow down. He’s always been more about power & burst than speed & it’s tough to play this way when you’ve got bad shoulders. His stats & limited availability from 2019-21 showed that. The strange part about his bad 2020-21 season is that it wasn’t that different from his prime years from a shot/chance creation standpoint.

Tarasenko was still getting shots off, getting to the middle of the ice and creating chances. He just wasn’t “the guy” anymore. He couldn’t carry the workload in the neutral zone like he once could and was deferring more instead of being the shoot-first player. He also had a career low shooting percentage in only 34 games, so his one calling card wasn’t there either. St. Louis couldn’t trade him and instead, changed the way they used him.

They took him away from his longtime center in Brayden Schenn, replacing him with Robert Thomas. Thomas hadn’t established himself a star yet, but he showed some skill as a passer and a puck-carrier, always looking for the extra play in the neutral zone. Tarasenko’s role became less about leading the play and more about supporting it. The Blues also approached offense differently this year, opting for a more controlled & deliberate approach where they could get the passing plays they want.

Going back to my SEAHAC goal-scoring project, St. Louis led the league in goals in what I tracked as “controlled breakouts” where they weren’t facing any pressure out of the defensive zone. Basically resetting in their own zone when they cleared the puck so they could attack how they wanted. The player who led the league in goals off controlled breakouts? Tarasenko. Granted, that’s only six goals, but this is the type of thing that adds up quickly. For example, Tarasenko was also in the top 15 in the league in Controlled Entries Leading to Goals with 14 (tied with Thomas and Kyrou oddly enough). Thomas & Tarasenko also generated four goals a piece on entries off controlled breakouts with linemate Pavel Buchnevich not far behind with three.

Most goals are scored off offensive zone retrievals with most rush goals coming off turnovers or counter-attacks. Being able to reset & attack effectively is a small part of the game, but it adds another layer to your team if you can do it effectively. The Blues figured this out last year & it was a big part of Tarasenko’s resurgence.

The first clip here really illustrates the dynamic Thomas & Tarasenko had this year. Those high-wire act entries where Thomas skates into a crowd & somehow manages to protect the puck are his specialty and it allows Tarasenko to get behind the defense off the entry. That extra step gives him just enough room to get a shot away or choke up on his stick to change the angle. It’s similar to Andrei Svechnikov where you don’t need to get him loose for one-timers to get the most out of him, but you want him with some space and someone else leading him into the zone.

Although, it is worth noting that the Blues were able to do plenty of that. Thomas & Tarasenko one of the best duos in the league at creating high-danger passing plays (which are passes that cross the slot line or come from behind the net).

There’s a lot of examples I can point to, but if you watch his highlight clip, you can see for yourself. This is the Vlad Tarasenko you can get if you have an elite setup man & a system that emphasizes passing over shot volume. The one downside is that this approach wasn’t sustainable, at least at the level of success the Blues had in 2021-22.

You can see that Thomas/Tarasenko still connected on plenty of these high-danger plays, but not at the level they did the previous year. This could be from a lot of things. Losing a Jenga piece in Perron is one, as you have to survive a defensive zone shift or create sustained pressure on a previous shift if your offense is based on controlled breakouts. Defenses keying in on the Blues tactics & not letting Tarasenko get behind them so easily could be another thing, but the boring answer is that it’s probably unrealistic to expect a team to connect on 5-6 high-danger plays in today’s NHL.

Still, there is something other teams could copy with this if they signed Tarasenko. Not every team has a Robert Thomas (or a coach that will allow him to play like that), but most teams have “a guy” who will try to extend shifts & carry the puck through traffic. Carolina has Aho & Necas. It’s also hard to execute something like that every game, but there’s always 2-3 opportunities every period where things slow down & you’re in a controlled breakout setting. Maybe this is where you try to attack instead of playing dump-and-chase? Something to think about.

As for what Tarasenko can do outside of this setting, he can still bring a few things the Hurricanes need. Most of his goals last year were of what I call the “loose change” variety. It’s the type where it’s not a rebound, but a loose puck off a broken play in a dangerous area.

I mentioned earlier that Tarasenko doesn’t need a ton of space to be effective, he just needs enough to raise his hands & create that launching pad type of effect with the puck. He’s older now & more savvy with getting to those sneaky areas where loose pucks usually are. The only drawback is he didn’t score as many goals through this strategy last year as he did when Thomas & Buchnevich were putting scoring chances on a tee for him. You could argue that how he played last year would fit how the Hurricanes want to play better, especially in the playoffs where it seemed like every loose puck got lost into the void or a defender’s shinpad.

This is also probably where the hangup is with teams looking to sign him. If they setup everything perfect for him, they might have a star. If they don’t, they have just a good player who slots into the middle of the lineup, which teams already have a lot of (especially Carolina).