NHL General Managers Money Spent Over Age 30 (2005-2020)

Which NHL General Managers have spent the most money on players over the age of 30 in the salary cap era? Before even starting the spreadsheet to investigate this interesting question, I was already reasonably certain that the answer would be Lou Lamoriello. This observation was originally made while writing my book “The Definitive Guide to Salary CapMismanagement”, ranking the 450 worst NHL contracts from 2005-2020. If anything, this whole investigation began to prove my hypothesis that no General Manager spends more money on older players than Lou. He ranked 3rd on the total money spent rankings over this span (adjusted for salary cap inflation), and if you are familiar with his history of spending mistakes, he loves rewarding his vets with term beyond their primes, especially those who have delivered him a championship (which hasn't happened in a while).

After completing the computations, my hypothesis was proven correct, nobody spends more on older players than Lou. Not only was Lou at the top of the list, he beat 2nd place by $123M. When you rank their “over 30” spending as % of all expenditures, then Lou does rank further down the list. The fact that Lamoriello has had a very long tenure helped elevate him to the top of the overall rankings. Seven of the top ten GMs in total tenure cracked the total oldie expenditure ranks. It’s also worth pointing out that $89M of Lou’s spending was Ilya Kovalchuk, who retired early. That took the Devils off the hook for the remaining balance, but it’s included here because he willingly made the commitment to spend that money on Ilya’s career twilight and was bailed out be the abrupt departure. Sure, Lou front loaded the deal and would not have been expecting Kovalchuk to play the full 15 years. Even if we deleted the Kovalchuk post-retirement seasons, Lou still finishes in first place.

The metric used here is “average adjusted cap hit” multiplied term above age 29. It does not use game logs to count actual games after the 30th birthday, but rather the age Sept 15 at the beginning of a season. Note that "Total spending" does not include entry level contracts.

 

 

Craig Patrick spent less than a year as GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins after the CBA was ratified in 2005 and most of the $98M he spent over the age of 30 went to Sergei Gonchar and Zigmund Palffy. As you may be aware, Ziggy unexpectedly retired in the first year of the treaty. John Ferguson spent 30 months in the salary cap era as GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs and made big commitments to Bryan McCabe, Jason Blake, Tomas Kaberle, and Pavel Kubina. Ferguson was eventually fired and has not been re-hired to run a team since leaving Toronto. 

Third place on “% spending” list is a guy many people probably forget ever held down an NHL GM job, and that’s Brian Lawton (thanks to the tickets signed by Vinny Lecavalier and Mattias Ohlund). Few managers in the last 15 years have spent more bad money than Glen Sather, but I’m convinced that Lawton could have approached his totals had he not been fired after only 18 months on the job. Give Brian the Rangers budget and 103 more months in office, and he could have been a contender for the all-time bad money crown.

Some of you may be wondering, where’s Chuck Fletcher? He committed $172M in over-30 dollars to Parise and Suter alone, and was a name that I was expecting to see higher up. Chuck finished just outside the top 10 of both lists, as he’s been much more responsible in the 8 years since the Parise-Suter bonanza, learning his lesson (aside from giving a risky amount of term to Kevin Hayes).

How have age-based spending patterns changed over the last 15 years? It's shrinking. Below is a chart that takes the total financial commitment (adjusted for salary cap inflation) of new contracts signed each year, and calculates what percentage of that money would be spent over the age of 30. This is NOT total amount of how much players over the age of 30 earned each season divided by total salary. If a player signed a 15-year contract in 2006, the entire sum counts in the year 2006, then we count how much of that money would be spent over age 30.

 

$2.24 Billion in future spending commitments were signed in 2005, and $1.3B of that would eventually go to players over the age of 30 (even if they have not yet turned 30). This is adjusted for cap inflation, so the actual money spent is less than half those amounts, but the relative rates are still the same. Ergo, 59% of the new money allotted in 2005 would be spent on 30-something athletes. That fell all the way down to 38% in 2020. Clearly General Managers are getting wiser and realizing the amount of liability they are potentially saddling their future selves with on aging (and likely deteriorating) assets. Of course, GMs that are under fire and maybe don’t expect to be employed when the burden hits full bloom are less concerned about the future consequences. Though it’s worth pointing out that most of the longest tenured GMs over the salary cap era have never been shy about handing out term over-30. In the case of Doug Wilson, that really only started with Brent Burns, but then the floodgates opened.

Not all of this decrease in over-30 spending is attributable to GMs getting smarter, some of it was forced upon them in the form of the 2013 CBA that capped contract length at 7-8 years, killing the mega-term back-dive that had become so trendy. The reduction wasn’t all by choice, some of it was thrust upon managers by Gary Bettman. There was still a big over-30 commitment from 2013-2014 after the limits were imposed, which is mostly due to large number of stars from the 2003 draft signing big tickets near their 30^th birthdays. By 2015, spending on aging players dropped substantially.