Kadri & Wilson: From Goons to Good
If you told me in 2016 that Nazem Kadri would be fifth in the league in points or Tom Wilson would be a first-line winger, I probably would have laughed. Those guys were goons, hard-hitting fourth-liners with poor decision making. There was no way at that time either one would make NHL headlines for anything but suspensions.
What a change six years can make.
Tom Wilson
Early Career
By the end of 2016, Wilson’s career high point total was only 23 points during the 2015-16 season. His PIMs, on the other hand, were in the triple digits. 151 in his rookie season, then 172, then 163 by 2015-16. There were already several questionable hits, including one that got him a suspension, though he didn’t really start wracking up suspensions until the start of the 2017-18 preseason. And no one has forgotten the hit on Oskar Sundqvist that landed him a 20 game suspension (though it was later negotiated down to 14 games).
But it seems like that suspension is what got through Wilson’s apparently very thick skull. That 2018-19 was his last season of triple digit PIMs (granted, that was the last 82 game season, too). That year was also his first season getting 40 points. He smashed his previous personal best 14 goals with 22 goals. This was the start of a new Tom Wilson.
2019-2021
During the 2019-20 season, Wilson was on pace for a 50 point season. He was playing with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Oshie, and Kuznetsov between the top two lines, rather than the third he used to find himself on. His average time on ice went from 15 minutes to 18 minutes. He was on the power play as well as the penalty kill. Tom didn’t have a single match penalty, let alone suspension from December 2018 to March 2021.
March-May 2021
The end of last year was a hiccup in his progress. He had a tough hit on Carlo that sent the Bruin to the hospital; Wilson got a seven game suspension for that. I like Wilson, but even I won’t defend him for that stupidity.
Two months later was the infamous pigpile at MSG against the Rangers. Did Wilson crosscheck Buchnevich while he was already on the ice? Yes. Did Wilson punch him in the head while he was down, too? No. He punched Buchnevich on the shoulder. With his gloves still on, I might add. As far as Panarin goes, if you jump on anyone’s back like that, you’re liable to get your ass kicked, forget just Tom Wilson. This whole sequence was out of control. It was stupid for Wilson to hit Buchnevich like he did, obviously, but things escalated too much too fast.
2021-Present
After the monkey business of last spring, Wilson has once again kept his nose clean and worked on racking up points rather than PIMs. This season he has 29 points in 38 games, almost beating last year’s point total 10 games ahead. He’s shuffled around the line up a little bit more, but so has everyone else thanks to half of the Capitals being sick or injured for most of this season. He’s averaging over 19 minutes per game and only has 56 PIMs so far. For context, in 47 games last year, he had 96 PIMs.
It seems like time and age have done wonders for Wilson. He has matured both physically and mentally. Yes, there have been lapses in judgement and his wires have crossed more than once. But overall, you can tell he is clearly working hard to change his game to be more akin to TJ Oshie than Ryan Reaves.
Nazem Kadri
Toronto
Almost from the jump, Kadri has been a player people loved to hate. Even Leafs fans, to an extent. Consistency has never quite been his gig. Points-wise, he stayed over 40 points, for the most part. But when it came to hits and PIMs, you never really knew which Kadri would show up from season to season. One year, he would be under 30 PIMs in a season. The next, he’d easily double that. And his hits were often questionable.
Kadri’s first suspension came in 2013 for an elbow to the head of Niklas Backstrom (the goalie, not the center); he got three games. The next year, he got suspended for another three games for showing up late to practice, then four games a week later for elbowing Matt Fraser in the head. In 2016, he was suspended for four games for cross-checking Luke Glendening in the head, plus a $200k fine.
Toronto Playoffs
Maybe the most infamous Kadri suspension came during the 2018 playoffs. He received a three-game suspension for boarding Tommy Wingels of the Bruins. It was a dangerous hip-to-head hit that had the potential to be devastating. Thus began the tradition of Kadri suspensions during playoffs.
The next year, again against the Bruins, Kadri was suspended. This time, he cross-checked Jake DeBrusk in Game 2 and was ousted for the remainder of the series, which ended up being five total games.
Colorado
After being traded to the Avalanche, Kadri had a bit of a point slump. He didn’t break 40 points his first or second year. That first year, he also wracked up 97 PIMs, a career high. From an outside perspective, it was clear he was struggling to find where he fit in on this high-skill team. Last year, history repeated itself when Kadri was once again suspended during the playoffs. He got eight games for a hit to the head of Justin Faulk.
So far this year, it seems that something may have clicked for Nazem. With 51 points in 36 games, he can easily pass his previous best (61 points) in the next month. His PIMs are higher than last year, but not alarmingly so. Kadri is averaging more time on ice than ever before at almost 19 minutes per game. And he’s spending a good amount of time on the powerplay. I can only guess that the reason for him sharing so much ice with Landeskog, Rantanen, and MacKinnon is that coaching staff has seen growth in him. Fans must have seen it too, as he was just named to the 2022 NHL All-Star Games.
Final Thoughts
Even if they’re not on your favorite team, there’s something satisfying about watching a player grow in maturity. Okay, maybe not everyone will appreciate it in these two players, but I do. When there’s clearly so much potential in a player and they keep making stupid mistakes, it makes you want to tear your hair out.
There’s something to be said for second chances. I admit that up until this year, I had written Kadri off as nothing more than a goon. Points didn’t matter when he kept pulling the same crap year after year. But he’s shown there’s more to him than his mistakes, as had Wilson.
Only time will tell if the changes in Kadri and Wilson will stick. There may be hiccups, as Wilson had, but does that change the positive trajectory they’re on? I guess that’s subjective. But as for me, I look forward to seeing the only the numbers of points and salaries go up for these two.
Image courtesy of Getty Images.
-Heidi Thomas (@DamselOnDrums)
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