[Signing] Bruins sign Marchand to 8 year $49 mil extension

[transplant99]

In what world is he anything but a 1st line player?

Even if you ignore his intangibles like PK and being a pain in the ass to play against and all the fancy stats, and if you only go off his scoring stats....

He was the 7th highest scoring LW in the league last year.

Maybe at the tail end of this deal it wont look as good but for the next few years? Its a no-brainer for both sides.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by TheoFleury

I'd bet there will be more compliance buyouts in 2022. Dumb teams like the Wild have nothing to fear.

Maybe they aren't dumb and have already factored it in that they will get compliance buyouts in the future.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

? It's amazing how people can be shown to be mistaken with unequivocal and irrefutable data and stubbornly insist that they were right to begin with.

Lol.

You're funny. Here I'll give you a chance to actually unequivocally prove it... write down the name, team ranking for TOI, and salary of every 2nd liner in the league then we can average out the salary and see if 6.1M is "2nd line money".

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Look, whether you think a bunch of those guys are first line players or second line players, you have to admit that there are barely anyone on that list is better than Marchand. He clearly belongs in that company, regardless of what your definition of "first line player" may be. So the contract shouldn't be seen as an overpayment.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Look, whether you think a bunch of those guys are first line players or second line players, you have to admit that there are barely anyone on that list is better than Marchand. He clearly belongs in that company, regardless of what your definition of "first line player" may be. So the contract shouldn't be seen as an overpayment.

It's not. And I never said it was... for right now. It's probably going to be in 3ish years (at which point they'll still be 5/6 years left on it).

[Cleveland Steam Whistle]

Requesting that JohnathanGaudreauOvertime please give us his perspective on how this impacts the JG negotiations.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle

Requesting that JohnathanGaudreauOvertime please give us his perspective on how this impacts the JG negotiations.

Don't mention Gaudreau, I mentioned it once andIthinkIgotAwayWithIt

[Oling_Roachinen]

There's currently 83 forwards with a cap hit of 5M or more this season.

Factor in unsigned players like Gaudreau and Kucherov. Factor in entry level players like Eichel, McDavid, and Larkin factor in RFA bridge contract players like Huberdeau, Johnson, Jenner, players like Pacioretty, Turris and Johnson who broke out after their contracts started (and are soon to be paid a ton more). There's enough to say that 5M is the very bare minimum for a top line player, and that a lot of high quality second line players are making over 5M.

However, then you got to factor in the inflation. A lot of these contracts were signed with a 60M-65M cap ceiling. The cap ceiling is now 73M. A player making 5M in 2011 is taking up the same amount of the cap today.

Which is why we saw that all UFA players signed to 5-7M in the last 2 years are either high quality second line players or the third player on the top line, with the exception of Marchand really who is clearly a bonafide top liner. Is he going to regress faster than Lucic, who is making 6M and plays an aggressive game? What about Eriksson, who is 31 and has concussion issues and also making 6M. Backes is already 32 and he just signed for 6M until 37.

It's understandable to compare Marchand to yesteryear comparables and thinking of "second line players" still making 4M because a lot of them are. But the inflation for hockey has been huge and there's been a shift of filling up the ranks with top heavy contracts for the best core players and ELC or low contracts for the rest of the players. Even second line players entering UFA can hope for 6M, forget players of Marchand's calibre. We're in a world where Benn and Subban are making 9.5M. This isn't 2010 anymore.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Parallex

Lol.



You're funny. Here I'll give you a chance to actually unequivocally prove it... write down the name, team ranking for TOI, and salary of every 2nd liner in the league then we can average out the salary and see if 6.1M is "2nd line money".

You know how averages are calculated right?

Checking the average has zero value to discount 6.1M as second liner money.

Unless, of course, you're going to pretend that anyone who makes 100K above the average is paid like a first liner and whoever makes 100K below is paid line a third liner, which makes no sense.

"2nd line money" is a number that falls within a range, not an exact number. Seeing the average is irrelevant when you can clearly see the range.

[JerryUnderscore]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

You know how averages are calculated right?

Checking the average has zero value to discount 6.1M as second liner money.

Unless, of course, you're going to pretend that anyone who makes 100K above the average is paid like a first liner and whoever makes 100K below is paid line a third liner, which makes no sense.

"2nd line money" is a number that falls within a range, not an exact number. Seeing the average is irrelevant when you can clearly see the range.

I suppose the thing to do would be to look up ice time stats from last year for each team and take the two wingers with the third and fourth highest average ice time (or, since people aren't always playing positionally, it might be better to simply take the three forwards with the fourth, fifth and sixth highest ice time averages).

You would then need to filter out any players on ELC's. The remaining group is your "second line winger" group.

From there you could take a look at each players AAV and what percent of the cap that was the year they signed it. This would give us the average percentage value of second line winger's AAV.

However, instead of just looking at the average (as you pointed out), it would also be a good idea to create a bar graph with AAV ranges as the x axis and the number of contracts in that range as the y axis. This might do a better job of showing us what the "typical" range is for second line wingers.

It's a bit of work, but I also kind of love using spreadsheets, so if I get a chance to work on this later I'll see what I can come up with.

Also, if anyone has a better way to categorically define "second line winger" I'm all ears.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by JerryUnderscore

I suppose the thing to do would be to look up ice time stats from last year for each team and take the two wingers with the third and fourth highest average ice time (or, since people aren't always playing positionally, it might be better to simply take the three forwards with the fourth, fifth and sixth highest ice time averages).

You would then need to filter out any players on ELC's. The remaining group is your "second line winger" group.

From there you could take a look at each players AAV and what percent of the cap that was the year they signed it. This would give us the average percentage value of second line winger's AAV.

That's pretty good criteria.

If I were to make one supplemental suggestion it'd be that you also want to look at the ice-time based on the prior year they signed. If they were signed on the premise that they were a "1st line player" and given salary consummate to that designation but later skill diminishment led to a drop in ice-time then they weren't given "2nd line money" they were given 1st line money that they just later failed to live up to.

[Oling_Roachinen]

It's a pretty pointless exercise. You'll run into teams like the Panthers where Huberdeau, Trochek and Jagr were there second line forwards based on ice-time. Huberdeau is an RFA on a bridge deal worth 4M, Trochek just signed his second contract skipping the bridge deal. He's making 4.75M nearly entirely as an RFA. And Jagr is making 4M in salary and a potentially an extra 1.5M+ in bonuses.

None of them are at all remotely comparable to a UFA contract of a 29 year old.

You have the Canucks from last year. Janik Hansen, Bo Horvat and Radim Vrbata. Janik Hansen signed his contract after a 20 point season, Bo Horvat is on an ELC, and Vrbata went from 5M last year to 1M this year.

Eberle, Draisaitl and Purcell. Eberle signed 6M as an RFA when he was looking like a bonafide top liner. Draisaitl's on his ELC, and Purcell went from 4.5M to 1.6M between seasons.

Boedker, Soderberg, and Comeau. Boedker just signed for 4M as a UFA. Soderberg signed the year before for 4.75M as a UFA and Comeau is making 2.4M. The Avalanche's looks promising, two second liners recently signed between 4-4.75M...until you look at their forward with the 8th most TOI. Iginla, by the TOI criteria, is a third liner making 5.3M. So how do you deal with Comeau, making 2.4M, and Iginla making more than double that?

The only way you're going to get any form of remotely usable information is comparing recent second line UFA signings. Anything else is near pointless. In that case you can find players like the Boedkers and Soderbergs making 4M. You can also find the Keslers and Backes making 6M+. That's pretty much the range...

[GioforPM]

Averaging just won't work. Look at Calgary's (maybe) 1st and (maybe) 2nd lines. If Chaisson plays with Johnny and Mony and gets commensurate minutes, he'd be a first line player (on minutes, or who he plays with) and bring down the average salary big time. And on a few versions of the 2nd line I've see, you might have two ELCs (if you call Bennet's line the 2nd).

[JerryUnderscore]

Originally Posted by Parallex

That's pretty good criteria.

If I were to make one supplemental suggestion it'd be that you also want to look at the ice-time based on the prior year they signed. If they were signed on the premise that they were a "1st line player" and given salary consummate to that designation but later skill diminishment led to a drop in ice-time then they weren't given "2nd line money" they were given 1st line money that they just later failed to live up to.

I like that idea. The only problem I see though is, how do you come up with that list in the first place?

By taking last year's ice time, I can at least start with something to whittle down from. Whereas if I'm instead using the ice time of the year before each player signed their current deal, I'd have to go through literally every recent signing, look at their ice time from the year before and compare that to the team around them. It's a little more tedious.

But I understand where you're coming from. Sometimes people are playing second line minutes but getting paid for different expectations, whether those are first or third line expectations.

This is the inherent problem with salary negotiations. In a league so small (assume each team used all 50 contracts, there would be a maximum of 1500 players with NHL contracts in any given year), you're hard pressed to find legitimate comparables when it comes to ice time, production, role, etc. in order to establish a standard price. At best you usually get one or two people (Gaudreau and Tarasenko, Monahan and McKinnon/Barkov, etc.) but every team is different in terms of cap availability, team make up, etc.