Steve Yzerman awarded Andrew Copp the fifth largest contract of unrestricted free agency last summer, tied with fellow center Vincent Trochek for the fifth highest average annual value. Trochek, for $5.625 million, gave the Rangers 22 goals and 64 points in 82 games this season. Copp, at the same cost in the same number of games, gave the Red Wings nine goals and 42 points.
This is not a one-to-one comparison. Trochek was playing on a deeper team with more talented linemates than Copp. His offensive numbers were bound to be better. (Copp's were better than Trochek's last season when he played with the Rangers.) Trochek also would have come with a higher cap hit had the Rangers not given him seven years of term. New York will ultimately pay him nearly $40 million, through his age-35 season. Detroit will pay Copp $28 million, through his age-32 season.
The comparison is a reminder of outside expectations, and how they can color the perception of a player on a new team. In Yzerman's view, which is the only one that matters here, Copp had a "very good" debut season in Detroit.
"We signed him to a five-year contract, you know what his AAV is. With that comes expectations, at least production-wise. You can debate whether he met those expectations, at least in your eyes, or not. But he’s a very, very good two-way hockey player, he does a lot of little things extremely well. In fairness to him, he got off to a little bit of a slow start, he had surgery in the offseason, which delayed his ability to train and to skate," Yzerman said last Friday as he wrapped up his fourth season as Red Wings GM.
Copp had core muscle surgery in the offseason, stemming from an injury he played through last season while helping the Rangers come within a game of the Cup Finals. He jumped into action on Opening Night after missing training camp and admitted Monday, "especially in the beginning of the season, I don’t think I was playing my best." He said he got too "pass-happy," in part because he wasn't "able to drive and skate with the puck as well as I would have liked" as he got his body back in shape.
After scoring a career-high 21 goals last season, including eight in 16 games with the Rangers (while playing frequently with one of the best passers in the world in Artemi Panarin), Copp had one goal in his first 19 games with the Red Wings, three in his first 41. He wound up having goal droughts of nine games (three times), 10 games and 17 games. From a raw production standpoint, even Yzerman would admit this was not the player he signed last summer. And Copp would agree.
"(Last year) I scored 27 goals in regular season and postseason play, so nine this year, to me, was a bit of a letdown," said Copp. "Like I said, I think it was a little bit of a factor of the injury and I got pass-happy and that’s on me, first and foremost."
Said Yzerman, "He only ended up with nine goals. That would be the one statistic that we would all look at and say, ‘Jeez, he needs to score more.’ Ultimately, I didn’t necessarily sign him for his scoring ability. I signed him for his all-around play, his flexibility, so I’m pleased with the year that he had."
From an "all-around" standpoint, Copp did do a lot for the Red Wings. He was second on the team among forwards in ice time (18:19) and often took on the opposition's top line. As Yzerman noted, Copp was one of the Wings' only plus-players -- plus-two, on a team with a negative 39 goal differential -- "and he played a lot of hard minutes." He also led Detroit forwards in shorthanded ice time on a penalty kill that made significant strides from last season. And it speaks to Derek Lalonde's trust in Copp that only Dylan Larkin, Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond logged more minutes in overtime.
"I really like his hockey sense, I like his durability, I like his flexibility as far as being able to play all three forward positions," said Yzerman. "As the year went on, I thought he had a bigger and bigger impact. He was very good on our penalty kill, a very good defensive player."
Still, the Wings need more than that from Copp moving forward, if he's indeed their No. 2 center. (Marco Kasper will have a say in this eventually.) So back to the offense. Without counting his scoring binge with the Rangers, Copp had scored at a 19-goal pace over the prior three seasons with the Jets. His output cratered this season along with his shooting percentage, to a career-low 7.5 percent. Some regression to the mean next season will help. So will better production on the power play, where Copp had just one goal and five points playing primarily on Detroit's second unit.
"If I’m penciling guys in for X number of goals next year, I’ll pencil him in for more than the nine that he had. Is it 12, 15, 20, I’m not really sure," said Yzerman. "But overall, I think Andrew had a very good season for us and contributed in a lot of subtle ways that maybe don’t necessarily wow you."
Yzerman also called Copp "a very good playmaking centermen." He did put up a career-high 33 assists this season, good for third on the team, and he was second on the team in even-strength points. Problem is, this was on a team that struggled to produce even-strength offense all year. And without many high-upside forwards in the pipeline, the Red Wings will need Copp to create more offense in the years ahead. That is, to live up to the standard of his contract.
Again, Copp knows it. He said the "whole goal this summer," after letting his body decompress, is getting "my power and more scoring confidence back." And his goal going into next season is proving -- or reproving -- "that I'm a top-six player." If you're only as good as your numbers, Copp has some work to do. The Rangers got 22 goals from their second-line center this season and finished fifth in the East. The Red Wings got nine from theirs and finished 12th.
"It’s continuing to prove that I belong in the top six for a team that can win," said Copp. "I felt like my time in New York kind of solidified that, but as soon as you get comfortable or complacent, I guess, is when someone’s coming for your job. So for me, it’s proving that I can play in every situation, be relied upon to play 18 to 20 minutes a night and be a top-six player on a winning team."
More than a goal-scorer or a penalty-killer or even a clear-cut No. 2 center, that's the player Yzerman signed. And it's the player Lalonde and the Red Wings need. Copp said he found a better in-game "rhythm" with his new head coach as the season went on, "what he’s looking for, how he’s going to utilize me, what his thought process is." The product, over time, was a better player.
An Ann Arbor native and University of Michigan product, Copp always had a vision of playing for the Red Wings. Even during his time in Winnipeg, he said "Detroit was always somewhere I felt like I would want to come back to." It all worked out last summer, a payday for Copp, a second-line center for the Red Wings. Now it's on both sides to make it work moving forward.
"I feel like I have even more to give," said Copp, and Yzerman has 22.5 more million reasons to believe him.
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