Habster:

When the Canadiens and Trevor Timmins in particular, decided to draft Andrei Kostitsyn 10th overall in the 2003 NHL draft, there was a lot debate within the scouting community whether the organization had wasted their first round selection.

There was no questioning Andrei’s skill set and hockey instincts as they were off the chart. What had the scouting community concerned was his diagnosis of epilepsy which made other organizations balk at selecting the talented Russian winger. He was considered a top 3 selection before the epilepsy was discovered prior to the 2003 draft.

The Canadiens organization made the decision to perform further tests (through team physician, Dr. David Mulder) on Andrei before the 2003 draft and the results indicated that his form of epilepsy was very treatable/controllable with the proper medications which weren’t readily available in Belarus. (see Russian Hockey NHL Prospects No issue with Kostitsyn’s Health …).

Though it took Andrei a little longer than his younger brother, Sergei to adapt to the North American game, Trevor Timmins and the Canadiens organization are certainly glad they took the extra steps to draft this very talented 23 year old Belorussian.

Andrei Kostitsyn is well on his way to NHL stardom and there will be even more expected from him next season playing on the electrifying KPK line with Tomas Plekanec and Alex Kovalev.

AK-46 had a great sophomore season and displayed his great puck handling skill with some downright crazy highlight reel type goals throughout the season. Don Lever also did some great work cultivating Andrei’s strong defensive game (he was a +15) which was very apparent throughout the season when he was back checking on a regular basis.

Needless to say, one of Bob Gainey’s top priorities this off season will be to re-sign Andrei to a long term contract extension before the Kevin Lowe’s of the NHL world make a crazy RFA contract offer. Gainey should avoid the temptation of going to arbitration unless Andrei’s agent asks for a crazily extravagant amount. He should try to sign him to a solid contract extension which is within the current NHL market for a 26 goal/53 point player.

To make a comparison of players/contract offers, Zach Parise signed a four-year, $12.5-million contract (cap hit averages $ 3.125 million) with the New Jersey Devil prior to the 2007-08 season. Lou Lamoriello is laughing all the way to the arena after Praise had a career year (GP-81 G-33 A-33 Pt-66 +13).

Zach Parise has better statistics over his last two seasons than Andrei Kostitsyn but I’m sure Andrei’s agent will be trying to make similar comparisons between the two players.

The reason I’m throwing out Parise’s contract numbers is because Gainey will have to make a similar offer which could be slightly less in regards to the monetary amount yet in the same ballpark figures. Even if Gainey gave Andrei Kostitsyn similar money to the Parise contract, it would be money well spend especially when you consider the RSL or the newly formed European league could throw tons of money at him.

Hopefully, it can get done without any problems with the end result being a happy Andrei Kostitsyn continuing to make Habs fans jump out of their seats with his highlight reel goals for many years to come.