2020 Best NHL Contract Bracket Challenge

Every season for the last decade I have been posting an annual Best NHL Contracts list that ranks who I feel are the biggest non-entry level bargains, multiplied by years remaining. In past seasons I’ve partially defined “bargain” as players earning less than 10% of the salary cap. This exercise is not simply about ranking the best players in the league, it’s about who has the most “value remaining”. Would you rather have 3 more years of player X at $6M or 5 more years of player Y at $4M. Perhaps my self-imposed definition of bargain is flawed. Connor McDavid has the highest cap hit in the league at $12.5M, but should arguably be getting paid the league maximum of $16.3M, thus is nearly $4M underpaid for 6 more years. Ergo has a “bargain remaining” of $24M. Leon Draisaitl was excluded from my bargains list last season because he made over 10% of the salary cap, yet if he hit the open market tomorrow could command north of $14M per season as a Hart Trophy candidate. You can argue Draisaitl has a $27M “bargain remaining”.

I’m going to change my definition of a bargain from those earning under 10% of the cap to those earning under $10M AAV. While in theory the best players could potentially land max contracts as UFAs if they wanted to just accept the highest offer, the bottom line is that $12.5M is currently the upper limit on annual cap hit. I refuse to describe the highest paid players as bargains. Another rule I’m imposing this year is no players over the age of 30 (sorry Sid). Ekholm did make my list last year, but it’s hard to judge the “value remaining” on players over-30 who are at greater risk of decline. Victor Hedman is the oldest player eligible at age 29.

Another thing I’ll be doing differently this year is letting Twitter help me decide the proper order to rank the league’s best bargains in a series of Twitter polls. It will be slightly different than my Worst Contract Bracket Challenge. There are 32 nominees, but 8 are going to get a bye past the first round. There will be 6 polls in the first round, with the winner of each poll advancing to the sweet 16. The final two spots will be the highest 2^nd place finishers by % of the vote. 

Here's the list:

BYES

Leon Draisaitl

Nathan MacKinnon

David Pastrnak

Mark Scheifele

Mika Zibanejad

Jonathan Huberdeau

Sean Couturier

Aleksander Barkov

THE REST (in no particular order)

Name	Term Left	Cap Hit
Shea Theodore	5	5.2
Jaccob Slavin	5	5.3
Jake Guentzel	4	6.0
Dylan Larkin	3	6.1
Sebastian Aho	4	8.5
Seth Jones	2	5.4
Travis Konecny	5	5.5
Zach Werenski	2	5.0
Charlie McAvoy	2	4.9
Brayden Point	2	6.8
Morgan Rielly	2	5.0
Nikita Kucherov	7	9.5
Kyle Connor	6	7.1
J.T. Miller	3	5.3
Teuvo Teravainen	4	5.4
John Klingberg	2	4.3
Victor Hedman	5	7.9
Matthew Tkachuk	2	7.0
Elias Lindholm	4	4.9
Bo Horvat	3	5.5
Brock Boeser	2	5.9
William Nylander	4	7.0
Johnny Gaudreau	2	6.8

Connor Hellebuyck

4

6.2