We’re almost a week into Free Agency at this point and there is no way to declare who has won or lost, just like we should never declare the winner of the NHL draft two days after it’s happened.
That said, we can definitely evaluate the dollars spent at various positions and the deals that seem more or less efficient based on past performance as an indicator of future performance.
Methodology
In order to keep it clean and simple, I used GVT as my sole measure of the value for each player. However, I did use each player’s average GVT over the past three seasons to smooth out the effects of a career year or possibly a truly ugly season.
For those that are still new to the advanced stats used to measure NHL players, check out the explanations here.
I only included players that had an average GVT greater than 4.0, indicating a 3rd line forward, 3rd pairing defenseman or at least a serviceable backup goaltender. I’ve only included players signed since July 1st, as that’s when the free-for-all began.
Each player’s average GVT was then compared to the cap hit of his new contract, minus the league minimum, since we’re comparing to a replacement-level player. Obviously teams who get more value for their money (in terms of goals) will win more over the long term.
One downfall to this methodology is that we’re not considering the age of the player, which is an indicator of future performance. Another is that it doesn’t consider the length of the agreement, which in conjunction with age, gives another sense of the value. I’ll try to add in some commentary to address those issues when evaluating individual players.
As a side note, my goal for this post was not to dive into the specifics of each deal like I did for Backstrom or Plekanec, but to give people a macro view of the areas where GMs seem to have found value and where they have overspent.
Of the 36 players that qualified, here are the demographics.
It wasn’t incredibly surprising to see the 3-year GVT for each position be fairly close to the the average of all players, since we only included players over a GVT of 4. Also, there weren’t many players with immense GVT totals on the market.
The interesting thing to note, however, is the difference in value. NHL General Managers were much more willing to pay for defensemen (the red box) and may have overpaid given the low value per dollar spent.
On the other end of the spectrum, GM’s obviously watched the Blackhawks’ and Flyers’ playoff run with less-than-elite goaltenders. They were willing to spend less (the blue box) on goalies, getting some great deals in the process. This is actually in contradiction to the escalation of goalie salaries the last few years as described by Gabe at Behind The Net.
I’m not saying Gabe was wrong, but GMs are catching on to escalating goalie salaries (as he indicated) and the market for netminders is finally correcting itself.
Forwards
The best values by GVT per $M were clearly Dan Paille (9.57), Vinny Prospal (6.06) and Alex Tanguay (5.92). Prospal can be a very productive offensive player in the right situation, and at $2.1 M was a steal. Tanguay was another risk worth taking. For a much more in-depth look at Tanguay’s contract, read Jonathan Willis’ excellent article here.
Paille’s contract value is slightly inflated because he makes so close to the league minimum. In this case, it makes the value seem immense. That said, getting a solid 3rd-liner for close to the league minimum is a definite plus, but that depends on cap room from other positions.
The worst values for forwards were Alex Steen (2.34) and Colby Armstrong (2.36).
Steen is a solid 2nd line or borderline first-line forward. But at 26, he may have had his career year in 2009-10. Last season his GVT was 10.5, but the previous four seasons it was an average of 5.2. The Blues are paying as if there is more to come. We’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.
Armstrong may be overpaid for being a decent defensive forward. He is another player who has been slightly over-valued and at age 27 is unlikely to make a big leap forward in his production.
Defense
The best values by GVT per $M were Joe Corvo (5.31) and Brett Clark (4.60).
In Corvo’s case, his last season was terrible, likely leaving a bad taste in most GM’s mouths. This is why looking at 3-year averages can be helpful. Of course, there needs to be enough belief that a player’s “down year” was an aberration. In Corvo’s case, it had a lot to do with injuries.
The worst values were Alex Volchenkov (1.07) and Zbynek Michalek (1.57) despite both being hailed as good defensive defenseman. Hell, I spent all kinds of time telling my readers how intriguing Volchenkov was as a free agent.
The problem for this group was not the talent of the players, but GMs spending a lot for those specific talents.
Another issue could be that GVT sometimes penalizes defensive players on bad teams who play all the tough minutes, much like Volchenkov.
Goalies
This group is incredibly small (only 5 players), so the information could skew our perceptions a little. That said, if all 5 become starters, that’s 1/6 of the league’s starting goaltenders.
As I mentioned above, it seems like GMs were smart enough to get great value from this group. By far the best deal of the group was Martin Biron’s signing by the Rangers. He may be a backup in the Big Apple, but at only $875,000 against the cap, he was a steal. Given his 7.7 average GVT for the last 3 years, his rating was 20.5 GVT per $M. That was the best value of any player this signed this summer.
There really wasn’t a poor value in this group with Niittymaki (3.13) and Halak (3.42) both near the league average value and Dan Ellis (5.30) and Chris Mason (5.63) providing great value to Tampa Bay and Atlanta respectively.
Final Thoughts
GVT per $M seems to be a decent method of evaluating contracts at a macro level, especially by position. However, there is the ability to skew the ratio as a player’s salary gets quite close to the league minimum.
It appears that goalies could be acquired on the cheap this offseason, possibly due to the non-goalie-centric teams like the Blackhawks and Flyers making it to the Cup finals. Meanwhile, Evgeni Nabokov remains unsigned (or possibly in the KHL) due to his demands for big money and long-term deal (6 years).
Defenseman may be this year’s most overpaid group, possibly because they were a scarce resource, but more likely because team’s watched players like Kimmo Timonen, Chris Pronger, and Duncan Keith carry their teams deep into the play-offs. The talent was available on defense, but GMs overpaid.
All GVT data is from Tom Awad’s readily available All-Time GVT spreadsheet. The salary cap info is from CapGeek.com. As usual, the rest of the information like Corsi, Zone Starts, etc are from Gabe Desjardins fantastic BehindTheNet.ca. Any conventional stats were taken from NHL.com.
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