Gabe Desjardins has a fine WOWY analysis up at Puck Prospectus, looking at Saku Koivu’s fifteen years with the Habs (en francais, mes amis Albertan). Gabe concludes that Koivu was worth about 2.5 wins/82 games for the Habs during that time and (if I still know how to read French), mentions that Koivu was worth about five wins annually prior to his cancer.
The size of the impact is interesting to me - five wins above replacement is a pretty huge impact; in today’s NHL, a player like that would be worth about $9.5MM if the amount of money that a player earned was calculated on the basis of marginal standings points/total marginal standings points in NHL*player’s share of revenues. Given that there is only one guy in the league making that kind of money (Ovechkin) and that he’s likely a much bigger difference maker than Koivu, I’m reasonably confident that a lot of the really high-end guys are underpaid.
H/T: Tom Tango.
Which naturally means a lot of the low-end guys are overpaid. I wonder if there’s a way to exploit this type of market - perhaps collect a group of star players (if we are to believe this study then we could pay such players what they ask for and still be getting bargains) and fill out the rest of the roster with RFAs (on their first or second contracts) or projects (whose paychecks are limited either by the CBA or the fact that no one wants them).
Is this an approach that a winning team is taking right now? It doesn’t really fit Detroit, maybe Pittsburgh but the parallels aren’t perfect.
RO:
I’m not saying they picked the right guys (Phaneuf, Jokinen, Kiprusoff aren’t exactly elite difference makers….), but that seems to be the plan down highway 2.
It seems to me to be the approach that Calgary is taking and, but for Kipper, it’s hard to criticize there.
I would think that Gillis is heading that way too.
Calgary is probably close to a good example, but a few of their long-term bets have gone wrong (Kipper, Phaneuf). Seems like they have the mostly right idea, but the bets aren’t landing at the moment.
Am I the only one that thinks teams sometime make mistakes with these long-term contracts for young guys? Phaneuf may be worth $6.5M in a few years… but if you’re running out the clock on the Iginla era, wouldn’t you rather lock up Phanuef for three years at $4-5M, add a $2.5M piece, and hope you win a cup? You might be risking a huge cap jump and maybe having to pay Phanuef $10M a season for his prime… but it seems like this is their time to win.
It’s a small example of a team trying to cover the future and win in the present, and maybe it’s hamstringing their playoff chances. Edmonton has been making the similar mistake but all up and down the roster. You sign guys like Souray and Horcoff while trading for a guy like Visnovsky… and then support them with three layers of crap. You need to make a decision on when you want to win, if Gagner and Cogliano are your future either leave them in junior or send away the old hands and bring in some vets who can lose, but in a violent way (this year’s Toronto).
It just seems to me that being a GM isn’t nearly as hard as a lot of guys make it.
So a 20 cent effect on the game line. .20 goal difference in a game … without checking, that feels about right for Koivu and those Habs teams.
You can’t overpay for the genuine difference makers in this league, the CBA doesn’t allow it.
The other bargains are coming from bottom six types, so long as you pick the right guys. At $1.2M for Glencross, esp. knowing how terrible the Flames forward depth was before he arrived … theat’s a bet that was nearly impossible for Sutter to lose. If he was paying $2M+ … well then not so much, and it would set an ugly benchmark for the other Flames depth forwards.
Rene Bourque the same. There’s a guy who had solid underlying numbers and a crappy EV shooting% … yet somehow managed to be right in amongst the league leaders in goalposts hit, right there with Jagr, Iginla, Staal, Ovechkin.
Last summer the Oilers were talking about a pay structure based on “1st liners paid in X salary range”, “2nd liners paid in Y salary range”, “3rd liners …. etc.
It’s the wrong way of thinking to my mind. The bargains amonst forwards are at the top and the bottom of the salary scale.
And the Oilers are in a situation now where they’ve been paying Cogliano and Gagner very little, but more than about 50 players that they could have gooten to do a better jib, in terms of helping the team win.
I suppose that they had to sell ‘hope for tomorrow!’ once they’d decided to cut salary after the cup run. Cogliano, Gagner and Nilsson were the poster boys. Then the fracturing of the EIG and involvement of Katz, 11th hour $10M bump in budget … sent the whole thing spinning sideways.
What a mess.
Quain:
Winning is a crapshoot. Only one team can win. The goal has to be not only to win, but also to compete at as high a level as possible for as long as possible so that you can try to go for the bucket when the confluence of random crap goes your way for once.
As for being a GM being easy… well, probably no more or less difficult than running any medium sized entertainment or other business that has to deal with somewhat larger-than-life personalities. Easier than managing Britney Spears, harder than managing the local 7-11 with Jay and Silent Bob working the night shift.
So… does that mean Heatly shouldn’t be considered overpaid at 7.5? I mean, i know the oilers aren’t interested anymore, but a lot of the concern people had was that he wasn’t worth 7.5… does a guy at his level (top three winger in the league over the last 5-6 seasons) achieve that distinction?
@Julian - I wasn’t really worried about Heatley’s price. I figure he’s enough of a difference maker.
the reason why it can’t be pursued as a strategy is that there’s only been 1 or 2 of these extremely high-level players available in free agency every year. you have to draft these sorts of players.
It’s probably good to differentiate between what players would make in an “efficient market” and what makes sense for teams to pay in the real world. If everyone’s salary were in accordance to their relative ability, more players would likely make Ovechkin money. However, there are enough bargains available in the mid and low salary range that there are probably better ways to use that capspace.
Just looking at the free agents still available and the sort of contracts they will likely have to settle for, a team could easily put together two quality forward lines for 9.5 mil.
The problem is that if you sign a bunch of really high-end guys at really high-end money, with the salary cap you couldn’t fill up the rest of your roster and you’d end up with the 2007 Ottawa Senators.
In short, WAR? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
The 2007 Senators who went to the Cup Finals?
MC79: Yup.
Hopefully the league stay away from such model and do it the Red Wings way instead.
Wait…
Winning is a crapshoot.
Winning the Stanley Cup certainly is a crapshoot. Winning enough hockey games in a season to qualify for the playoffs is maybe subject to the whims of injuries and bad years, but you can certainly increase the odds by making good decisions rather than tanking seasons by backing up Shawn Horcoffs with 18 year olds.
Well, I was thinking the 2007-08 Ottawa Senators and just forgot to do some typing or something.
The 2007-08 Senators’ problem was not Heatley, Spezza, and Alfredsson, it was everyone else.
Exactly my point, Triumph. If they didn’t spend so much damned money on Heatley, Spezza, and Alfredsson (three impact players by any measure) and Redden (who didn’t outperform his contract but was good at hockey) they’d have been able to get some other decent players.
In 07-08? They were paying their top three something like $13.5M. It seems like they had the money to pick up some decent players and failed to do so.
On the plus side, if you’re right, the Oilers are doomed considering we’re paying our top three forwards $14M or so.
I never said the Oilers weren’t doomed.
But that’s simply incorrect. The bad contracts on that Ottawa team were Ray Emery and Wade Redden, and 52 more penalty kills than power plays cannot have helped either.
http://www.nhlnumbers.com/overview.php?team=OTT&season=0708
You’re basically saying, ‘If the Senators didn’t have so many great players they could’ve gone out and gotten some great players’.
You’re right, actually. Seeing the contract list for the first time, the Senators really were an awful example for that season.
I retract it completely and utterly.