Blues overpay for Jaroslav, but not by much
by Hawerchuk on Jul 6, 2010 5:21 PM EDT
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PrintJaroslav Halak just signed a 4-year, $15M contract that sells his three remaining RFA years along with his first UFA year. Halak's established talent level is a 925 even-strength save percentage, compared to a 909 replacement level, which, if he plays as much as Evgeni Nabokov or Marty Turco did over the last five years, will be worth approximately 80 goals above replacement, or 13.4 wins. Thus St. Louis is paying at least $1.1M per win - more if Halak gets seriously injured or becomes ineffective.
From the first day of free agency, it appears that the current price for UFA wins is $780k. So Halak is being overpaid, but not by all that much. But remember that he's an RFA, and RFAs typically leave 40% on the table, so his contract is equivalent to St. Louis giving a UFA $5M-$5.5M per season. His performance isn't significantly better than Evgeni Nabokov (925 for Halak vs 922 for Nabokov) and it seems like Nabokov might have trouble getting much more than $3M on the UFA market.
Overall, St. Louis limited their downside: they didn't significantly overpay for Halak, either in years or salary, and all they gave up was Lars Eller, who is even-odds to produce zero for Montreal over the course of his career. If we go through the median numbers:
Halak contract: $15M
Halak's current market value over four seasons:$10.45M
Median value of Lars Eller: 0 (average value is $2M-$3M)
At present, St. Louis is costing themselves about $4.5M with this deal - but Halak's contract could become a better value as the goaltender market recovers. There were some very bad possible outcomes here and the Blues largely avoided them.
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Two questions:
- Is it relevant to talk about goaltender wins/$ and skater wins/$ as two different variables? After all, the wins are the same and tyhe $ are the same.
- Should Montreal now regret dealing Halak? I’m pretty sure they thought he’d be more expensive than 3.75M.
But Nabokov’s 922 save percentage is an aberration, right? He had pretty bad save percentage numbers up until last season if I remember correctly.
Since the dollars have to be the same, I suspect the wins look different because the value in goals differ. And I suspect that reflects a difference in zero points. Zero for a goalie seems to be set higher than zero for a skater.
by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Jul 6, 2010 8:07 PM EDT reply actions
Actually, I think DMBH is correct. Zero is by definition “freely available talent”, which for goaltending in the summer of 2010 is pretty high. There are a lot of Mason / Ellis / Turco / Theodore / Auld / Leighton / etc. guys fighting for not a lot of spots, so they lose. It’s like Stephen Levitt’s marriage market: if you have 20 women and 19 men, the men get ALL the benefits.
halak only had 2 more years of RFA
halak was born may 13, 1985, which would make him UFA on july 1, 2012.
Can I ask how you got a median value of nada for Eller? Is that based on draft posish? Or does it take into account the fact that he’s (allegedly) been pretty baller in the A so far?
I looked at guys who were 20 years old, in the AHL, and put up PPG in his range (67/82). Most guys don’t have careers that are that valuable to their teams.
I don't understand
I looked at guys who were 20 years old, in the AHL, and put up PPG in his range (67/82). Most guys don’t have careers that are that valuable to their teams.’
I just read an article that said this about Mikko Koivu
So is Koivu worth almost $7M per year, which makes him one of the 20-highest-paid players in the NHL?
If anyone is, Koivu is.
Koivu at 21 put up 48 pts in 67 games in the AHL. Eller at 21 put up 57 in 70 games.
Do you have Corsi stats for AHL players? Do you know what type of minutes Eller played in the A? I am confused how you can determine that he will likely offer little value and Mikko Koivu is a $7M player.
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