Ryan Murray - 3.495 mil, 19 pts, 0.32 ppg. 1st year of ELC
Hampus Lindholm - 1.745, 21 pts, 0.37 ppg. 1st year of ELC
Is it the players salary, or his cap hit? It makes a difference in most cases. Both players carry the same salary hit of $850,000.00 . But Lindholms "cap hit" is half that of Murray's. I like Lindholm in this comparison, personally. I think you'll see him outperform Murray over their careers, pure speculation obviously, I just like Lindholm in Anahiem over Murray in Columbus.
Kuznetsov "could" be a game changer once he comes over. If you have the cap space ( 950,000 max ELC salary/ 3-4,000,000 cap hit), and can afford to take him on with notion he could play this year, that might be a good gamble to secure him, very high risk/reward with Kuznetsov. His team in Russia is currently holding down the last playoff spot in their conference with a two point lead on the 9th place team with 2 games left to play in the season. If they make the playoffs, earliest he would be in the states is mid month, probably not playing until end of March.