Tkachuk signs bridge deal [3 years, $7mil AAV]

[Strangelove]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

[Coco-puffs]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

Its funny you say that because last season they would have been considered overpays.  Remember, Nylander got a similar cap hit for SIX years, not THREE.

[mr grieves]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

Its funny you say that because last season they would have been considered overpays.  Remember, Nylander got a similar cap hit for SIX years, not THREE.

The market was reset... long-term deals aren't quite as long and they're higher, bridges are longer and more expensive. I'd rather have Marner and an extra $4M for the next three seasons.

[princedpw]

Can you remind me what those contracts were?  Were any of them RFA wingers that signed for 6 years or less?

Sure. Konecny and Boeser are two. Kessel's another.

edit: But with that said, I think the scope of that question is kind of ridiculous. If Marner got a certain percentage of the cap and then a much less productive center got on the surface a much more lucrative deal should we shrug our shoulders and say that those things are just fundamental incomparable? Or a 6 year deal and an 8 year deal?

Broadly speaking, I agree with you -- using more comparables (provided they are gathered systematically) is going to lead to stronger analysis.  But at the same time, using more comparables complicates the discussion we are having right now because expanding the set of comparables expands the differences between players too and we seem to disagree on how to weigh such differences.  How important are goals vs assists?  Primary points vs overall points?  Center vs winger?  Linemates?  UFA vs RFA?  UFA years bought out for an RFA.  And then, how do you combine all those opposing components to generate a single number for a guy?  I think you said it earlier:  there's a lot of different ways to slice the data.  I think Rantanen's contract is going to be an interesting comparable; you think he has the advantage of playing with McKinnon; well, I think Marner has the advantage of playing with Tavares over Aho and Aho's a center and scored more goals and it goes on and on and on ...

Looking at a system like evolving wild's and then trying to account for why one's personal projections might differ from that system seems to make sense.  The evolving wild's model has done pretty well in the past, but it definitely could be wrong and in fact should be wrong if GMs, broadly speaking, are making different decisions about how to value RFAs like Marner.

I looked up the guys you mentioned:

Boeser:  5.76 predicted for a 3-year contract.  He got 5.87.

Konecny: 5.9 predicted for 6 years.  He got 5.5.

Marner: 8.8 predicted for 6 years.  He got 10.8.

(Kessel was a while ago.  I'm fine to include him, but I don't know how to find the data.  We should probably include all the guys with a similar profile and then look at the average contract to see if Marner lies above or below the average.)

If there was a shift in how GMs were valuing players, one would expect a model like evolving wild's to be systematically low for the current crop of players, but it doesn't seem to be. 

I agree that Point is an outlier on the low side (EW predicted 7.1 on a 3-year contract).  Marner seems to be an outlier on the high side. 

I understand why Dubas did what he did.  We'll never know whether waiting Marner out would have been a good idea or a catastrophic one.  It makes a fair amount of sense to hedge one's bets here and go the conservative route.  I'd definitely prefer having Marner at 10.8 over trading him for a bunch of overpaid midrange guys and/or prospects who are unlikely ever to be half as good as he is.  I don't think the Marner contract would bother me at all if it weren't for the fact that we currently have the best team in my lifetime by far and yet, thanks to Leaf luck, are saddled in a division with a historically great Tampa team that has a systematic advantage, a very fine Boston team, and have to deal with the ridiculous playoff format.

[Nik]

I think Rantanen's contract is going to be an interesting comparable; you think he has the advantage of playing with McKinnon; well, I think Marner has the advantage of playing with Tavares over Aho and Aho's a center and scored more goals and it goes on and on and on ...

Well, it may be a minor point but I'd say Rantanen's "advantage" isn't Mackinnon but rather Mackinnon and Landeskog over Tavares and Hyman.

And Aho and Marner's deal aren't wildly far apart in terms of the standards I'm using.

I looked up the guys you mentioned:

Boeser:  5.76 predicted for a 3-year contract.  He got 5.87.

Konecny: 5.9 predicted for 6 years.  He got 5.5.

Marner: 8.8 predicted for 6 years.  He got 10.8.

Thanks, but I'm not trying to measure these guys using that system and whether or not it was accurate(in part because, quite frankly, I'm not interested in arguing about whatever method they're using). I'm saying, just in terms of points per % of the cap they got, Marner's deal lines up with these guys pretty reasonably. If Marner had gotten 8.8 per he'd have gotten .112 of the cap for every point he scored last year. Konecny got .139 of the cap per point scored. Kessel got .158.

I just don't see how that lines up at all.
 

[princedpw]

I think Rantanen's contract is going to be an interesting comparable; you think he has the advantage of playing with McKinnon; well, I think Marner has the advantage of playing with Tavares over Aho and Aho's a center and scored more goals and it goes on and on and on ...

Well, it may be a minor point but I'd say Rantanen's "advantage" isn't Mackinnon but rather Mackinnon and Landeskog over Tavares and Hyman.

And Aho and Marner's deal aren't wildly far apart in terms of the standards I'm using.

I looked up the guys you mentioned:

Boeser:  5.76 predicted for a 3-year contract.  He got 5.87.

Konecny: 5.9 predicted for 6 years.  He got 5.5.

Marner: 8.8 predicted for 6 years.  He got 10.8.

Thanks, but I'm not trying to measure these guys using that system and whether or not it was accurate(in part because, quite frankly, I'm not interested in arguing about whatever method they're using). I'm saying, just in terms of points per % of the cap they got, Marner's deal lines up with these guys pretty reasonably. If Marner had gotten 8.8 per he'd have gotten .112 of the cap for every point he scored last year. Konecny got .139 of the cap per point scored. Kessel got .158.

I just don't see how that lines up at all.

Well, the model is probably saying that historically, there have been other factors that have gone into determining what a player gets paid.  Points aren't the only one.  My guess is that it is weighing goals more heavily than you are.

[Nik]

Well, the model is probably saying that historically, there have been other factors that have gone into determining what a player gets paid.  Points aren't the only one.  My guess is that it is weighing goals more heavily than you are.

I'm not saying points are the only one. I'm saying points are a pretty solid indicator of performance to consider and I think you'd have to come up with a pretty good explanation why Marner, who scored more goals than Konecny, would sign for much, much less of the cap per point than he did.

[mr grieves]

Well, the model is probably saying that historically, there have been other factors that have gone into determining what a player gets paid.  Points aren't the only one.  My guess is that it is weighing goals more heavily than you are.

I'm not saying points are the only one. I'm saying points are a pretty solid indicator of performance to consider and I think you'd have to come up with a pretty good explanation why Marner, who scored more goals than Konecny, would sign for much, much less of the cap per point than he did.

I would guess such an explanation would run something like: "because points aren't chits you accumulate and trade in when your contract's up for fractions of a percent of the cap? that's not how contract values are actually determined?"

[Andy]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

See, I'm not sure how the math works here because I definitely value Marner above Tkachuk. And if Marner had, like Tkachuk, signed for 3 years then his 10.9 AAV probably goes down to, what, 8? 8.5? Even at, say, 9 million, I still take Marner over Tkachuk at 7.

[Guilt Trip]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

See, I'm not sure how the math works here because I definitely value Marner above Tkachuk. And if Marner had, like Tkachuk, signed for 3 years then his 10.9 AAV probably goes down to, what, 8? 8.5? Even at, say, 9 million, I still take Marner over Tkachuk at 7.

Big difference signing a bridge and long term. The same contract for Tkachuk in T.O. is $384K less after tax.

[Nik]

I would guess such an explanation would run something like: "because points aren't chits you accumulate and trade in when your contract's up for fractions of a percent of the cap? that's not how contract values are actually determined?"

I admit I'm not an expert in these things but I would wager pretty heavily that in NHL history there is no other single objective measurement is as strongly correlated to salary as points are. Likewise things like all-star and MVP voting.

I get that in order to try and justify the idea that Marner got overpaid you guys have to start off by trying to make the case that the actual economic reality of what these players are worth is irrelevant which is basically hopping on one foot but to follow it up with "Oh, and also, points aren't really all that important when players get valued" just turns you into the Black Knight in the Monty Python movie.

[OldTimeHockey]

I seem to have a real hard time getting worked up about these contracts(including Marner's). I just don't get why people are so upset.
If I'm getting paid 200k and a guy down the road is getting paid 300k for the same job and performance..is it really that the 300k guy was greedy? Or was I just a poor negotiator?

[Strangelove]

Another RFA that wasn't overpaid by over $2 million per season. Good for Calgary.

See, I'm not sure how the math works here because I definitely value Marner above Tkachuk. And if Marner had, like Tkachuk, signed for 3 years then his 10.9 AAV probably goes down to, what, 8? 8.5? Even at, say, 9 million, I still take Marner over Tkachuk at 7.

Apparently Marner was asking for well over 8-8.5 on a bridge deal.

In any case, the issue isn't really whether we would take Marner over Tkachuk. The issue is whether Marner is significantly overpaid relative to comparable players, and whether that puts the Leafs at a relative disadvantage. Most people who know about these sorts of things seem to think the answer to the first question is yes.

[Nik]

I seem to have a real hard time getting worked up about these contracts(including Marner's).

It's because these days there's a significant number of fans who see the game in nothing but spreadsheets and fantasy sports and can't appreciate anything without seeing it through the lens of pretending they're a GM who would be, you know, really really good at negotiating.

See, Dubas didn't do the good negotiating. That was his mistake. He did bad negotiating. And these ten penny amateurs would have done less bad negotiating and more good negotiating. That's why they're smart.

[Strangelove]

I guess we're resorting to straw man arguments at this point?

Presumably many of us are capable of watching and appreciating the game while also assessing NHL contracts in a forum discussion regarding same. This isn't binary.