Thursday, November 3, 2022

Best NHL Contracts 2022

Welcome to my 2022 NHL Best Contracts list. There won’t be any surprises here for those of you who follow me on Twitter and participated in my best contract Twitter poll tournament. You already know who won. These rankings were determined democratically by my Twitter followers, starting with a preliminary round, then a round of 32 contracts, 16 advance, then 8 advance, then 4 compete for the championship. Everyone on this list qualified for the “Sweet 16”. I have been posting annual best and worst contract lists on this blog for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until 2020 that it was opened up to democracy. If you’d like to hop in a time machine and take a tour down memory lane, my old lists can be found here:

The original permutation of this was the “best bargains”, which has always excluded the highest paid players. Past iterations have had a lower cap on the maximum allowable salary to qualify as a “bargain”, but in 2020 the cap was set at $10M. There’s a strong argument to be made that Connor McDavid has the best contract in the league, despite being the highest paid player (at least until MacKinnon’s new contract begins). When I put it to a poll, a majority voted in favor of keeping the cap at $10M, but a significant number wanted it even lower. My plan is to leave it at $10M for a few years while the cap grows. Keep in mind, McDavid’s cap hit is $12.5M, but the maximum allowed is $16.5M. There’s no doubt somebody would offer him that if he went UFA tomorrow, so you could argue McDavid is a bargain in the truest sense of the word.

One thing you won’t find here are expiring or entry-level contracts. Some ELCs are bargains, but they are cookie cutter deals that don’t require the same skill of negotiation. The price is generally pre-determined, so it’s not a matter of a GM negotiating a “sweet deal”. Sure we could give them credit for drafting or acquiring the player, but this list is supposed to be more about GMs scoring big wins at the negotiating table, not in the draft room. Another thing you won’t find here are any deals with 1 year remaining (same goes for my worst contracts list). Sure, had Nathan MacKinnon 1-year $6.3M been included in the Twitter poll, he may very well have qualified for the “sweet 16”. Nate won the whole thing in 2021 with only 2 years left on the deal, so it’s probable some people would have voted for his expiring contract. From a GM’s point of view, a pending free agents can be a headache. 

I'm also excited to announce the release of my new hockey betting book. It's a comprehensive commentary on the last 3 years of hockey betting, broken down by team, by category, by strategy, by season. There is plenty of useful information for bettors of all skill levels. It covers pre-pandemic, peak-pandemic, post-pandemic. What worked, what failed. Lessons learned, market trends, team-by-team analysis. What impact did the pandemic have on hockey betting? The market differences between these 3 seasons are discussed at length, and there's a lot to talk about. To read more, visit the Amazon store.

To view my Worst NHL Contract list, click here. 

Back to the lecture at hand. The results of the championship Twitter poll were:

 

 

Since Connor McDavid was excluded from the tournament for making too much money, I decided to quickly double check…


 

1) Cale Makar, Colorado:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 23
    Remaining Term: 5 years
    Cap Hit: $9M
    Signing GM: Joe Sakic, July 24, 2021

There was a moment when I considered not holding a best contract Twitter poll series, and just declaring Cale Makar the champion. It felt like a slam dunk, such that he received a bye to the final 8 (the first bye to the semis in my 3 years of doing this). Since the top 2 from each poll tended to advance (depending on vote share), it felt unfair to run anyone in a poll against Makar, even in the quarter finals. 

In his first poll, I was expecting him to get 90% or more of the votes. It was a bigger surprise to see how many people voted for Jack Hughes. Both advanced to the final, where once again Hughes got a lot of votes. That led to a Twitter rant thread that you should probably read in lieu of a summary about this bargain. Cale Makar isn’t just “generational” there have been 2 or 3 generations pass through the NHL since we saw a defenseman this good, maybe never.


 

2) Jack Hughes, New Jersey:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 21
    Remaining Term: 8 years
    Cap Hit: $8M
    Signing GM: Tom Fitzgerald, Nov 30, 2021

Some of you would rather have 8 years of Jack Hughes at $8M than 5 years of Makar at $9M. I disagree, but this was a democratic process. In a season cut short by injury, Hughes did breakout to a higher level, scoring at a 94-point pace (more than doubling his output from the previous season). If you average his stat line over 82 GP, then my expected free agent salary algorithm prices it at $10.4M. He’s 21 years old and should be a few years away from touching his ceiling. 

The one big concern is that he has missed significant time with injuries in 2 of 3 NHL seasons. The Devils signed him to this extension on November 30th, when he had only played 2 games scoring 3 PTS. If anything, perhaps those early injury issues made Jack more receptive to an 8-year pact when the salary cap is expected to rise significantly in the next few years. Also, the points breakout hadn’t officially begun. He caught fire in late December, so had the Devils waited to see the breakout before offering the contract, the price might have gone up.


 

3) Igor Shesterkin, Rangers:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 26
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $5.7M
    Signing GM: Chris Drury, Aug 9, 2021

Planet Earth would make more sense if Sergei Bobrovsky and Igor Shesterkin switched contracts. If both goalies had become UFAs this summer, Igor would probably get close to $10M as the Vezina trophy winner and Bob might get 3 years $5M. Yeah Bob has 2 Vezinas, but it’s been a while since he’s performed at that level. Shesterkin advanced to the championship of my best contract Twitter poll series, but one year earlier I polled my same Twitter followers on which new goalie contract was better, and Igor did not get a single vote (and I have Ranger fans among my followers). You should all be ashamed of yourselves, except that Shesterkin wasn’t near the best goalie in the league in 2021. I also voted in that poll where he received zero votes, so I shouldn’t be shaming you. 

When my Rangers 15 best contracts of the salary era list comes out later in the season, this one will be high. If he suffers a fall from grace, I’ll look bad, but at least ya’ll agreed with me that this is a wicked awesome deal.

 

 

4) Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton:

    2021 Rank: 2
    Age: 27
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $8.5M
    Signing GM: Peter Chiarelli, Aug 16, 2017

In the big picture, this contract will go down in history as one of the better deals of the salary cap era…but time is slowly running out. Leon ranked #2 last season, but the window is closing. Some of you might recall, when this deal was signed, nobody was publicly declaring it to be one of the best contracts in the last decade. It was actually a slight over-payment relative to his stat line the previous season, so you could be forgiven if you weren’t expecting him to transform from a 77-point player to a 100+ point scorer. 

There were early reservations about how much his production was a product of playing with McDavid, but he continued to put up big numbers 5v5 when the two were separated. Still, he and Connor still team up on the power play, which is deadly. He’ll be able to get damned near whatever he wants when this ends at age 29, we’ll just have to wait and see if he wants to stay in Edmonton.

 

5) Kyle Connor, Winnipeg:

    2021 Rank: 15
    Age: 25
    Remaining Term: 4 years
    Cap Hit: $7.14M
    Signing GM: Kevin Cheveldayoff, Sept 28, 2019

Disclaimer: I was on the Kyle Connor “this is an awesome contract” bandwagon very early in its tenure. It was featured in my 2020 book on the best 450 contracts in the salary cap era (all the chapters are being updated and released for free on this site during the 2022/23 season). The analytics community was a little bit slower to embrace Connor’s awesomeness. His devaluing by “goals above replacement” made me a skeptic of that stat’s validity. Well now his worth is undeniable, scoring 93 points in year three, which should be worth north of $10M. 

He could have been unrestricted in July 2023 had this been 4 years, instead he won’t hit the open market until age 29. Not the best way to maximize career earnings, but he’ll also have $55M in career income by July 2026, so I think he’s going to be okay. Later this season I’ll be posting an updated list of the Jets best contracts in the cap era, and Kyle will be #2. There’s an argument that by the end, this could/should be better than the Scheifele contract.


 

6) Kirill Kaprizov, Minnesota:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 25
    Remaining Term: 4 years
    Cap Hit: $9M
    Signing GM: Bill Guerin, Sep 21, 2021

My algorithm priced Kaprizov’s 2021 stat line at $8M, so at the time it felt like a slight overpayment, but one any GM would gladly pay. There were reports in the media that he was considering a return to Russia, which may have been nothing more than bargaining leverage (from the Kuznetsov playbook). The dispute was never about the dollars, but more about the term, with speculation that Kirill wanted a faster track to the open market, and Minnesota wanted term. 

Billy called the bluff and got a 5-year commitment. Kaprizov climbed from a 76-point pace up to 109. My algorithm tells me that’s worth $11M. The problem for Guerin is the massive cap recapture penalty that forced him to jettison Kevin Fiala, handicapping their roster building until 2025. Luckily they have one of the most dynamic offensive players to help them remain a contender. We’ll see how far this dynamo can carry them on his back.


 

7) Jakob Chychrun, Arizona:

    2021 Rank: 8
    Age: 24
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $4.6M
    Signing GM: John Chayka, Nov 13, 2018

Jakob Chychrun had a slow start to the season, after losing power play time to Gostisbehere. He had a 60-point per 82 GP breakout in 2021 in year two of this contract, which should be worth close to $8.5M on the open market. He regressed to a 37-point pace in 2021/22, yet still managed to finish higher in my Twitter poll standings than the previous season (with a year less remaining on the deal). I’ll agree on the upside, but I didn’t vote for Chychrun in the rounds of polling that landed him at #7. Ya’ll voted him higher despite a 23-point drop per 82 GP. 

There’s no way this is now better than a year ago, when he was a 60-point player producing at nearly double his price tag. I could drop him a few spots, I have the power, but I’m going to respect democracy. The fact that the team sucked and should continue to suck for several years will diminish the awesomeness of this contract, below the heights it could have reached. Chychrun wants out of town, but the team is in no rush to move him. When Jake does hit the open market in 3 years, he should have no problem hitting a big home run.

 

8) Devon Toews, Colorado:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 28
    Remaining Term: 2 years
    Cap Hit: $4.1M
    Signing GM: Joe Sakic, Oct 27, 2020

I’m not entirely sure why Devon Toews agreed to a 4-year contract at a discounted price that would end after his 30th birthday. He passed up the opportunity to hit UFA status in his prime earnings window. How’d that work out for John Klingberg? Whatever the logic, this proved to be a spectacular bargain for Colorado that helped produce a Stanley Cup championship. Okay, perhaps some of his statistics are inflated by playing with Cale Makar, but that duo is among the most dominant defensive pairings in a long time (just checking who was Bobby Orr’s D partner). 

In his last Islanders season, Toews scored 28 PTS in 68 GP (34 PTS per 82 GP). That scoring rate increased in Colorado to 48 in 2021 and 71 in 2022. This will rank high on my list of Colorado best contracts, with the potential to climb even higher if the Avs win more Cups. What happened to John Klingberg this summer could happen to Toews when he does reach the open market, but also the cap might jump significantly before that happens. He should still be able to get paid at age 30, but Colorado will have difficulty matching his market value.

 

9) Juuse Saros, Nashville:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 27
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $5M
    Signing GM: David Poile, Aug 16, 2021

Juuse Saros had big pads to fill in Nashville with the retirement of Pekka Rinne, and Poile made a smart gamble getting him on this ticket. He was nominated for the Vezina trophy in year one and Nashville has him locked down for 3 years of his prime at a cheap price tag for what he provides. This is where my obligatory “failed to maximize career earnings” speech should go, but the goalie aging curve is not the same as skaters. Still, Saros had just finished 6th in Vezina voting and was less than a year away from unrestricted free agency. Why sign a 4-year term?

My goalie E[FA$] algorithm priced his 2021 stat line above $7M. He had played 155 NHL games with a .920 career SV%. What was the David Poile Jedi mind trick to get him to sign 4x5? That’s not betting on yourself. That’s getting excited to be offered $20M. That being said, given the volatility of goaltending performance, it might have been the smart move. Take the sure thing, because if he had a bad year, that offer wouldn’t be on the table anymore. Goalies can still hit big pay days in their 30s (maybe not max term), but the aging curve is different.


 

10) Shea Theodore, Vegas:

    2021 Rank: 7
    Age: 27
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $5.2M
    Signing GM: George McPhee, Sep 25, 2018 

My initial reaction when Shea Theodore signed this contract back in 2018 was “he did not bet on himself”. The team offered him about $1.5M more than what he was expecting to get in a 7-year commitment, and he took the bait. Two years later, he was outperforming his contract by $2M. Had Vegas not brought in Alex Pietrangelo to compete for power play time, Shea would surely be producing at an even higher rate, and be an even bigger bargain. 

His PTS per 82 GP over the first 4 years was 38, 53, 65, 55. In the right situation with max PP time, he could easily top 70 PTS in a season. He could have been UFA at the end of this upcoming season, where he could have easily solicited $9M. He’ll be turning 30 in the summer that this expires, so he could find himself in a Klingberg situation. If the team offers a reasonably priced 8-year extension, take it, don’t get greedy.


 

11) Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay:

    2021 Rank: 6
    Age: 29
    Remaining Term: 5 years
    Cap Hit: $9.5M
    Signing GM: Steve Yzerman, July 10, 2018

Nikita Kucherov solicited much better polling numbers when he was parading around the world drunk with the Stanley Cup. Sure, there are reasons to be concerned about how his body is holding up, be it repeating injury problems or being concerned about his general health. Age 29 with 5 years left isn’t ideal, but there aren’t many players in the NHL I’d rather have on my team when he’s on. He can be one of the most terrifying players to face in fantasy hockey. 

It does feel like he has the type of skill set that ages well, the trick will simply be staying on the ice. His scoring pace has been over 100 PTS in each of the last 4 regular seasons that he’s played in, and has notched nearly 100 playoff PTS in the first 3 seasons of this contract. His fantasy hockey stock has dipped slightly on injury concerns, but he’s a machine when healthy. I don’t think this roster is winning another Stanley Cup, but they’re still good enough to make noise in the playoffs.

 

12) Thatcher Demko, Vancouver:

    2021 Rank: unranked
    Age: 26
    Remaining Term: 4 years
    Cap Hit: $5M
    Signing GM: Jim Benning, Mar 31, 2021

Thatcher Demko is near the elite tier of NHL goaltending. Yes, he is occasionally prone to cold streaks where the Canucks can’t keep the puck out of their own net, but when he’s on, he steals games. In terms of the goalie career path trajectory, his peak performance should still be yet to come. Since the pandemic began, Demko has saved 23 goals above an average goalie, which is very good. That includes some brutal cold streaks earlier in each schedule, which had more to do with porous team defense in front of him. 

He officially arrived on the scene as an injury replacement to Markstrom in the Covid bubble, when he almost defeated the Vegas Golden Knights by himself, which would have improbably advanced the Canucks to the conference final. His .915 SV% in the 2 seasons that followed was well above average. That gave management the confidence to let Markstrom walk and make Thatcher the future of the franchise.


 

13) Jake Guentzel, Pittsburgh:


    2021 Rank: 14
    Age: 28
    Remaining Term: 2 years
    Cap Hit: $6M
    Signing GM: Jim Rutherford, Dec 27, 2018

This deal has been on my best contracts radar for most of its duration, but a part of me always wondered how much of his impressive production was just a biproduct of the players around him. Since October 2018, he has played by far more minutes with Sidney Crosby than any other teammate. If you go to Natural Stat Trick, his expected GF% 5v5 with Sid is 55%, without Sid it's 35%. Jake substantially outproduced his salary, but how much of that was the product of playing with one of the greatest players of all-time? 

Before we give Crosby all the credit, Guentzel is an elite finisher with uncanny instincts around the net. Even if he got a boost from the guy feeding him passes, there aren’t many who could have filled that role better. For the first 3 years of this pact, Guentzel has scored 90, 83, 91 PTS per 82 GP, potting 40 goals in 2021/22. Spoiler alert; that’s really good. If Jason Zucker had played all those minutes with Sid, it’s highly unlikely he’d be anywhere near that production.

 

14) Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay:

    2021 Rank: 4
    Age: 31
    Remaining Term: 3 years
    Cap Hit: $7.9M
    Signing GM: Steve Yzerman, July 1st, 2016

Previously I had a rule of “no players over 30 years old” on my best contracts list, but that was eventually scrapped for Victor Hedman. He ranked much higher last year following a Stanley Cup championship (not unlike Kucherov and Vasilevskiy), so losing to Colorado in the 2022 final seems to have diminished how we feel about these Tampa deals. Though time is running out on this one, so it’s unlikely you’ll see him here next year. 

This contract and the 2 Cups it produced is among the top 50 in the salary cap era (and trust me, I’ve got a database with all them). Steve Yzerman was able to get Hedman’s signature on this deal two days after Steven Stamkos declined an opportunity to test unrestricted free agency. Both players took a discount to give this team a better shot at a championship, and now they have 4 Stanley Cup rings between them. Victor’s point paces for the first 5 years of this contract were 67, 63, 68, 68, 85. He’s not showing any signs of slowing down.


15) Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa:

    2021 Rank: 3
    Age: 28
    Remaining Term: 6 years
    Cap Hit: $9.5M
    Signing GM: Julien Brisebois, July 29, 2019

Technically if we simply followed the results of my Twitter polls to the letter, this spot would be filled by Quinn Hughes. In this case I executed my right to manual override. Andrei Vasilevskiy finished third in voting last summer, and while he was not quite as good in the 2022 regular season, he still carried Tampa to another Stanley Cup final. I’m not entirely sure why we all fell out of love with Vasilevskiy. In the first 2 years of this deal, he won 30 playoff games with a .929 post-season SV% and a Conn Smythe trophy. 

Maybe it was the emergence of Igor Shesterkin winning the Vezina that took some of the shine off Vasy, but not to me. Okay, I did consider him to be a candidate for my 2023 fantasy hockey bust list, but ultimately common sense prevailed. That thought experiment happened, mostly because I didn’t draft him in a single mock. But if I were the General Manager of a team legitimately contending for a Stanley Cup, there is nobody I’d rather have protecting my net in June.


 
Honorable Mentions: 
 
(ranked by Twitter poll vote share)
 
· Quinn Hughes, VAN, 5 yrs at $17M:
· Nikolaj Ehlers, WPG, 3 yrs at $6M:
· Ilya Sorokin, NYI, 2 yrs at $4M:
· Brad Marchand, BOS, 3 yrs at $6.1M:
· Adam Fox, NYR, 7 yrs at $9.5M:
· Jaccob Slavin, CAR, 3 yrs at $5.3M:
· Miro Heiskanen, DAL, 7 yrs at $8.5M:
· Chandler Stephenson, VEG, 2 yrs $2.75M:
· Sidney Crosby, PIT, 3 yrs at $8.7M:
· Nick Suzuki, MTL, 8 yrs at $7.9M:
· Alex Tuch, VEG, 4 yrs at $4.75M:
· Thomas Chabot, OTT, 6 yrs at $8M:
· Ryan Hartman, MIN, 2 yrs at $1.7M:
· Mark Scheifele, WPG, 2 yrs at $6.1M:

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