It took a little while for the details of Kaleta's contract to come out, but it's $1.82M over two years. If we assume a 40% RFA discount, then Kaleta signed for the UFA equivalent of $1.5M a year. That's pretty amazing when you think about it – Kaleta played 9.5 minutes per game at 5v5 last season, and missed more than 25 games. Here's how he compared to the other 70 players who had between 8.42 and 10.42 minutes per game last season and played more than 20 games:
| GP | TOI | Corsi QoC | Ozone% | Corsi | Adj Corsi | |
| Average | 56 | 9.56 | -0.167 | 49.8 | -3.11 | -3.37 |
| Kaleta | 55 | 9.42 | -0.298 | 48.2 | -5.33 | -5.05 |
Overall, though his low-minute compatriots rarely drew tough matchups, he faced even slightly weaker competition, though he did take more defensive-zone draws. His Corsi, whether we adjust for competition and faceoffs, or not, is not very good.
Of course, Kaleta famously drew 28 more penalties than he took. Let's look at his overall value, first in goals above replacement, then in wins and finally in dollars:
| Goals | Wins | $Value | $Salary | |
| Average | 0.73 | 0.12 | 0.78 | 0.83 |
| Kaleta | 5.35 | 0.89 | 2.55 | 0.52 |
Figuring out win values is hand-wavy at best, but Kaleta’s salary is still vastly less than his value to his team. Of the 70 low-minute players in our sample, only Rod Brind’Amour made more than $2.55M last season, and that’s just the bad tail end of a contract running its course. There’s no doubt about it – while Patrick Kaleta is not an All-Star, he’s the most-efficient fourth-liner in the NHL.
