Battle of the Wingers: Frolov vs. Ponikarovsky

As all of you who have been on the website in the last three days know, the Rangers signed forward Alexander Frolov yesterday to a three million dollar contract with a term of one year. The Kings immediately followed that up by signing former Maple Leaf Alexei Ponikarovsky, who played for the Penguins last season after being traded there from the Leafs at the trade deadline. Since both teams signed these players that will play the same positions on their respective teams, (Ponikarovsky replacing Frolov’s spot on the Kings), and since both teams signed these players to the same exact contract, it begs the question, which team came out better?

Firstly, let’s discuss Frolov. Although he had what was considered an off -year by many, he still managed to score 51 points last season, which is better than Ponikarovsky’s 50 point season, which was the second best of Ponikarovsky’s career. Frolov has a great scoring touch. In fact, in every year since his rookie season with the Kings in 2002/2003 he has been top 5 on the team in scoring, and 3 times has led the team in goals. He has had two 30 goal seasons, including his best year in 2006/2007 when he had 35 goals and 71 points. The downside to Frolov is that in the past three his point total has consistently dropped, going from 71 in 2006/2007 to 51 this past season.

Alexei Ponikarovsky, on the other hand, hasn’t nearly scored as many points as Frolov has, but has had his best two seasons the last two seasons. He has played for Toronto every year of his career except part of last year when he was traded to the Penguins for 16 games. His numbers have been all over the place, but he is consistently a low 20s high teens goal scorer, with his career high being 23. Besides his career year in 2008-2009 when he scored 61 points, second on the Leafs, the highest he’s been on the team’s scoring list is 5th.

To me, I think it’s clear that Frolov is a better player than Ponikarovsky. He has scored more points than him every year except 2008/2009 when Ponikarovsky had the best year of his career. He is a more potent goal scorer than Ponikarovsky is, and is infinitely more exciting to watch. Nevertheless, many would argue that Ponikarovsky is playing the best hockey of his career, while Frolov has recently declined, and thus The Pony Express is a safer investment. Regardless, even with the poor season he had last year, as I pointed out earlier, Frolov still had a better season than Ponikarovsky’s career average. Another thing to take into consideration when looking at which team came out with the upper hand, are the roles each of these players were to fill. The Kings first goal this off-season was to sign Ilya Kovalchuk. Obviously, they failed at doing that. Frolov was their second choice, and they failed to sign him too. Therefore they had to settle for Panikarovsky, who is less of a player than either of those two. Though Frolov isn’t a superstar, he was exactly what the Rangers were looking for: a legitimate winger to aid superstar Marion Gaborik on the first line. His style of play is crease-oriented, and he protects the puck very effectively with his 6-2 204 pound frame- both of which are things that the Blueshirts desperately lacked last season. Yes, he takes a potential roster spot away from a prospect looking to crack the big club, however, he also adds a willingness to get to the dirty areas and use the body to score goals, and there’s something to be said for that. Thus, it would seem that the Rangers got the better deal between these two players, but as all Ranger fans know, when Sather is involved, literally anything can happen (cough, Scott Gomez, Chris Drury, Wade Redden, Michal Rozsival, Ales Kotalik, etc.)