Continuing along in my "situation" trilogy, I feel an examination of Andrei Kostitsyn's value to the Canadiens is in order.

Kostitsyn will be a restricted free agent on July 1 with arbitration rights, and there are many in this town who would love nothing more than to see him leave town.

Except that departure would be a complicated one, assuming Pierre Gauthier agrees that the team would be better off without Kostitsyn, or rather by using his money on someone more productive.

As a restricted free agent making more than $1 million, Kostitsyn is entitled to a one-year qualifying offer equal to his current $3.25 million salary. If he doesn't like that offer, he can take the club to arbitration.

It would be an interesting case should Kostitsyn and his agent Don Meehan choose to go the arbitration route.

The best comparable I can find for Kostitsyn is Kris Versteeg, who had 21 goals and 25 assists at a salary of just under $3.1 million. Kostitsyn had 20 goals and 25 assists. Dustin Brown is in the same salary range at $3.175 million and produced 28 goals and 29 assists, while Alex Frolov was paid $3 million and produced just 16 points in 43 games.

But really, I doubt Kostitsyn would choose arbitration if the Canadiens were to qualify him, because having another year to prove himself at that salary number would probably be pretty appealing to him with unrestricted free agency awaiting him in the summer of 2012.

So the question is do the Canadiens give Kostitsyn a qualifying offer for $3.25 million, or do they let him walk as an unrestricted free agent this summer for nothing?

Streaks become him 

The biggest knock against Kostitsyn has been his inconsistency, and over the course of a single season he does have a tendency to disappear for long stretches. This season, for instance, Kostitsyn went six games without a point from Oct. 29-Nov. 9, he went eight games without a point from Dec. 28-Jan 12, and he went nine games without a point from Feb 2-20. That represents 23 of his 81 games played.

But in the other 58 games, Kostitsyn had 45 points.

One remark about Kostitsyn that really jumped out at me this year came after he scored the winner late in a 4-3 win over Carolina on Feb. 26, a game where he also had an assist while in the midst of a seven-game points streak.

I asked Mike Cammalleri a question that resembled something like, "When you see him play like that, don't you wish he could play like that more often?

"We've all seen him play really well and we know what he's capable of. To be quite frank, I've heard the same question from you guys since I got here, so when he plays a great game I think I hear that question every single time," Cammalleri responded. "We want everybody in this room to play to their potential every game, one of the levels you try to get to as a pro athlete is your consistency. You're not going to play 82 great games, but you're going to get your section of great games, and if you can keep your good game percentage up and your bad game percentage down you'll be more productive. We're all trying to strive to that, but none of us are perfect."

Except Cammalleri – as disappointing a season as he had production wise – never went more than three games without a point this season. Tomas Plekanec had a single four-game pointless streak. Brian Gionta had two stretches of five games and two of four games without a point, and that's more than even Scott Gomez, who had one eight-game and one four-game pointless stretch this season.

Consistency comes in defferent forms

But if you look past the ups and downs of a single season, you'll find that over a long period you know exactly what you're getting with Kostitsyn.

Over the past three seasons Kostitsyn has produced 0.55, 0.56 and 0.56 points per game. If that's not consistent, I'm not quite sure what is.

But is it worth $3.25 million? That's another story.

I decided to take a look at the players hovering around that point per game average around the league this season, and these are the players I came up with:

0.57 points per game

Daniel Alfredsson - $4.875 million

Joffrey Lupul - $4.25 million

Ryan Smyth - $6.25 million

Antoine Vermette - $3.75 million

James Neal - $2.875 million

Devin Setoguchi - $1.8 million

0.56 points per game

Tyler Kennedy - $725,000

Steve Downie - $1.85 million

Andrew Brunette - $2.33 million

Matt D'Agostini - $550,000

Andrei Kostitsyn - $3.25 million

Brian Gionta - $5 million

Mason Raymond - $2.55 million

Todd Bertuzzi - $1.94 million

Dustin Penner - $4.25 million

0.55 points per game

Valteri Filppula - $3 million

Derek Stepan - $712,500

Kostitsyn is the seventh highest paid player in that group, and the average salary is just under $2.75 million, or $500,000 less than Kostitsyn makes.

To me, that's not a massive disparity.

In addition to that, consider that Kostitsyn finished second to only Plekanec on the Canadiens with 34 even strength points, and he was fifth on the team in even strength points per 60 minutes of ice time.

Expectations will never be met

I honestly think that most people's opinion of Kostitsyn is shaped by the fact he was taken 10th overall in the best draft class in recent memory, if not all of NHL history, and that Jeff Carter was taken one pick after him. Were he a second round pick, the perception would surely be much different, I would imagine.

While it's fair to rue the past and the possibilities of having the benefit of hindsight, it doesn't change the present. And the present situation is that Kostitsyn is a reasonably productive player who has size and is able to play with some physical edge. If it weren't for him in the playoffs, I don't think Zdeno Chara would have felt a single bodycheck of import throughout the seven-game series.

Sometimes Kostitsyn is unable to manage his intensity when he has an inkling to turn his physical game up a notch, leading to silly offensive zone penalties, but on a team that clearly lacks size up front he remains an asset because he's learning to use his effectively.

So I would endorse a re-signing of Kostitsyn on a one-year deal at the same salary for all the reasons I listed above, plus one more.

It's possible – not likely, but possible – that this is the year where all that incredible talent we see in flashes comes together and produces the player that everyone expects him to be.

But even if that doesn't happen, Kostitsyn is not the waste of money many people feel he is.