Buyer Beware When It Comes To Anthony Mantha

Forward Anthony Mantha has all the tools to be an NHL star. He has size, can skate, and has good hands and vision. But for much of his career, he has been maligned for never playing with a ton of heart and for disappearing when games matter most. He did nothing to dispel that notion this past year, as he had an incredible regular season with the Penguins, posting 33 goals and 31 assists in 81 games, but completely disappeared in the playoffs, posting just a single assist in six games and being at fault for the overtime goal that knocked the Penguins out of the playoffs. Now, the 31-year-old is set to enter one of the weakest free agent markets in recent history and could sign one of the riskiest free agent contracts in recent memory. That is, if you are the team signing the checks.

Teams are about to line up in a bidding war for Mantha, as he is one of the top available wingers and is projected by AFP Analytics to receive a four-year deal worth $6.35MM per season. That type of contract likely means teams will focus more on his career-high goal totals this past season than on his overall body of work. That sort of tunnel vision is almost certain to lead to buyer’s remorse when it comes to Mantha, but the question is how soon a team feels the pain of his contract and for how long they will have to deal with it.

Plenty of players sign crazy contracts on July 1st every year. But Mantha is a unique case, as teams have long known what he is and have twice resisted the urge to pay him big money long term. Couple that with the typical decline that happens to bigger forwards, and it is easy to see that whoever gives Mantha his big-money deal is likely to feel the sting at some point during the deal.

Mantha isn’t the only contract that could age like milk, but he does exemplify GM’s tendency to fall into the trap of recency bias when handing out big money on July 1st. It’s a tale as old as the league. A player gets hot for one season or a short period, and teams line up to pay them big money long term, only to see their investment turn into a pumpkin when midnight hits. Think Ville Leino or Fernando Pisani. Those men got paid big money for short runs, but in Mantha’s case, he’s had a lengthy career as an average scorer, and this season will likely not be the norm, especially given how power forwards age into their 30s.

Prior to this season, Mantha had topped 40 points on three separate occasions and was a three-time 20-goal scorer. However, only one of those high-end seasons had come in the last six years, and Mantha had dressed for three different teams in the previous five years. That kind of instability had become par for the course for Mantha before the Penguins signed him to a low-risk one-year deal last July. Mantha proved to be a good soldier for Pittsburgh during the regular season, but his inability to step up when the games got hard showed in the playoffs, when the Penguins were dropped by the Philadelphia Flyers.

All of that is unlikely to sway NHL general managers from opening their chequebooks and writing Mantha a contract offer they will regret in a few years’ time, if they are still employed by the team that signs him. Mantha will be 32 by the time the season starts, meaning the team that signs him to a projected four-year deal will be paying him into his age-36 season.

At this point, Mantha’s consistency issues have persisted since he was scouted as a junior player in 2013. At the time, the belief was that if he added grit and aggressiveness to his game, he could become a solid top-six NHL forward. While he has done that at times, there are also long lapses when Mantha seems either disengaged or overwhelmed by the moment, leading to him becoming a ghost in those games.

The Flyers series in the first round of this year’s playoffs was a perfect example. PHR wrote in the spring that Mantha’s performance in those six games could have hurt his playoff stock, but we will only know for sure once free agency opens on July 1st. In 20 career NHL playoff games, Mantha has yet to score a goal, though he has seven assists. Some teams might view this as a case of bad luck, with Mantha shooting 0% in the playoffs instead of the 13.8% he shoots in the regular season.

But if that is a metric GMs are using, there is perhaps one more they should consider, namely the 21.7% Mantha shot last season with the Penguins. It’s unlikely he reaches that number again, and even if he does, it will not be sustainable over the full term of a four-year contract.