NHL: UFA Price per Win in 2010 and Hometown Discounts

by Hawerchuk on Jun 25, 2010 2:23 PM EDT

We've had 23 UFA signings so far, with an average price of $1.86M per projected 2010-11 win. (Projected wins are calculated using a dead simple model: a 3-2-1 weighting of a player's last three years worth of GVT.) Last year, this figure was $2.23M for the free agent class as a whole.

I expect the UFA price of a win to rise slightly this off-season, but what we've seen here is the "hometown discount". I'm not being totally consistent with my math so this is a coarse estimate, but basically, when a player re-signs with his original team before July 1, he gives them something like a 20% discount on his performance. An RFA - who almost necessarily signs with his original team - gives them a 40% discount. So the actual RFA discount versus a UFA who wants to stay with his team may not be quite as large as we suspected.

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Makes sense to me, although I still have trouble seeing the Marleau and Plekanec contracts as huge discounts (I’m not disputing that they would have gotten more on July 1st – Plekanec would have at least matched, Marleau would have done better). Though I don’t think there’s a mathematical way to tell, I wonder if the difference is due to hometown discount or simply absence of stupidities: basically, when a player re-signs with his home team, you rarely/never see the Scott Gomez / Mike Komisarek type of inflated contract. It takes a bidding war or Glen Sather to create those.

by Tom Awad on Jun 25, 2010 11:26 PM EDT reply actions