Artemi Panarin's joking personality helps lead to line's offensive success

MINNEAPOLIS – Artemi Panarin stood at Artem Anisimov’s locker stall inside TCF Bank Stadium and showed some of his English skills.

Panarin borrowed a voice recorder from a nearby reporter and grilled Anisimov with hard-hitting questions.

“Kane have good difference?” he wondered.

“How you feel today?” he asked.

And finally, “You have power?”

Anisimov and the reporters in the area chuckled at the 24-year-old Panarin’s latest attempt to blend into North American culture off the ice. He doesn't know a lot of English, but enough to communicate with teammates beyond nods and gestures. He walked around the room that day with almost a constant prankster grin on his face.

“He has that smile and that sparkle in his eye,” Chicago general manager Stan Bowman said. “His English is improving, he still has the broken English, but he has a smile on his face. I think that was the thing for me. He’s got the personality.”

On the ice, his transition has been seamless especially playing with All-Star Patrick Kane who has enjoyed the finest professional season of his career. The two have been together since the first game of the year and turned into an electric duo based off their symbiotic skills.

“We certainly saw him as a top-six forward, offensive forward and whether he was going to play with Toews or Kane or Hossa, that was sort of something we were going to figure out in training camp,” Bowman said. “I wasn’t that focused on necessarily what line he was going to be on. Now that we’ve seen it play out over more than half a season, it seems like they were destined to play together.”

Bowman calls the pairing of the 5-foot-11, 170-pound Panarin and 5-foot-11, 177-pound Kane “random.”

According to Bowman, early in training camp, the team tried Kane with Teuvo Teravainen as Panarin pushed his way up the depth chart. Last postseason, Chicago signed Panarin from the KHL on a two-year contract – under the advice of player development director Barry Smith – to give them cheap offensive depth.

Up until the season started, they knew they had an offensively gifted, happy-go-lucky guy. They didn’t completely know what they had created as far as chemistry until they paired him with Kane for the first game of the season.

With Panarin on the other wing, Kane has been the best offensive player in the NHL this year, scoring 84 points in 62 games played – a total of 17 more points than second on the NHL’s scoring list.

Panarin’s 57 points in 60 games leads rookies and ranks second on the Blackhawks. He’s also drawn comparison to Hockey Hall of Famer Pavel Bure by Bure himself.

Panarin has somehow been able to coax even more offense out of Kane, whose highest points per-game in his career was 1.17. This season he’s at 1.35 points per-game, just 14 points shy of his career-high of 88 set in 2009-10.

“If you look the last two or three years, (Kane) has been trending up,” Bowman said. “He was Rookie of the Year and had a great start to his career, he’s really picked it up the last two or three years. His point production has gone up. Last year he was leading the league when he got hurt, so he would have been one or two in scoring last year. I’m not really surprised to see the way Patrick’s playing.”

Anisimov has acted as the glue with the trio, as well as translator at points with 18 goals and 33 points.

“It’s always nice to have that consistency and chemistry to know what to expect out of your linemates,” Kane said. “Really happy with my linemates right now. Wouldn’t want to change too much so hopefully we can continue where we’re at and keep trying to get better. “

The Blackhawks signed Panarin over the summer, not just because of his offense, but because he provided a solid value. The team was strapped for salary cap cash after their 2015 Stanley Cup run, and Panarin, who signed a bonus-laden deal with an initial $812,500 salary cap hit, was more cost efficient than Chicago’s other options.

Though his performance bonuses could push up his salary cap hit to $3.5 million for next year, this is still a bargain versus Patrick Sharp, who made a $5.9 million cap hit. Plus, even at that number Panarin’s contract is low versus the production he brings.

“He’s a similar type of player (to Kane) with his ability to see the plays before other players can and the way he handles the puck,” defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson said. “(The chemistry) didn’t surprise me.”

Last year, including the KHL playoffs, Panarin played 74 games in the league. The NHL has an 82-game schedule, and it’s entirely possible Panarin will play near 100 games this year, if not more if the Blackhawks hit their ultimate goal of another Stanley Cup.

There’s always a ‘wait-and-see’ feel if he’ll drop off based off the rigors of the NHL schedule.

“He certainly hasn’t played that many (games) in his life,” Bowman said. “I think we’re going to try to be smart about it, give him rest when we can and do our best to help him recover after games and stuff, but it’s just something he’s going to have to adjust to.”

So far that hasn’t happened. He has 11 points in his last eight games – including a hat trick the Wednesday before Chicago’s Sunday Stadium Series loss to the Minnesota Wild.

Said Bowman, “He’s totally changed his life and come to this foreign land and seemed to embrace the new situation and had fun with it.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper