Upcoming Playoff Series Summary

Ok, so it's a little early, but I got to make sure my code is working for the playoffs before they start. And it's fun to anticipate the post-season.



And the other 7 series. If you go to the web page you will see all 7 series as if they have already been determined, however there is still a lot of variability in the possible match-ups and it wont be until the regular season we will know for sure, but these current match-ups are the current best guesses.

I made these last year, they have information many other sites don't share or know. The primary interesting numbers on the right (record, GF, GA) come only from games in which both teams made the playoffs. So games against non-playoff teams are excluded. It should also be noted that shoot-out win goals and empty nets are not counted. The F,D,G numbers are just a score out of 10 that I give to different parts of the game: Forwards (F), Defense (D) and Goaltending (G). So Vancouver I gave a perfect 10 to goaltending and consider the defense and offense a bit above average. San Jose has excellent forwards and defense and a bit above average goaltending. The current F,D,G numbers are preliminary estimates and are probably not very good. If someone wants to suggest F,D,G values for a certain playoff team let me know in the comments.

The big % number on the left represents the odds that team wins the series based on my current regulation data and performances throughout the regulation season (primarily goal differential). And the top-left is the current season series record. As the series record changes so do the odds so these will be updated nightly. The San Jose - Vancouver series doesn't seem to be a good one for Vancouver, as the home team (Vancouver) has only a 43% chance of winning based on regular season performance.

NYI and Carolina are Out

As far as I'm concerned the New York Islanders and the Carolina Hurricanes are eliminated. It would require quite a bit of magic to get them in (4% and 3% chance respectively).

This means only Toronto and Montreal are fighting for #8

Canucks sign Salo

Sami Salo has signed for a reported $14 million over 4 years. As noted by the Vancouver Sun this the identical salary to Mitchell and Ohlund. If you include inflation to this deal it makes it work out to about $3.3M/year.

I'm a big fan of paying <$4M for a defenseman. Unless you really know what your getting (Pronger, Lidstrom), your better off getting 2 decent defenseman than one you hope will be amazing (and will likely be injured). There are plenty of examples of overpaid players, but some of the more recent signings are quite embarrassing (Chara, Jovanovski). In fact I would argue that 5 of the 9 defenseman who get more than $5 million per season are significantly overpaid. I was concerned that Salo would test the market and there would be a number of teams who would offer $4.5M+ for him, however it appears Salo would rather stay in Vancouver than anything else.

Happy day for a Vancouver fan.

East Playoff Race

I just made a neat little graph that is updated automatically as the image comes directly from my website. If another team joins the race I'll add them to it as well. The graph starts January 1, 2007 and ends on April 8, 2007. As you can see there's still a lot of room for improvement.

The cost of Safeway’s Score & Win contest.

I’ve often wondered what the odds of winning the Score & Win contest's $1,000,000 grand prize. Every game you see the ad and know that there is almost no chance of actually winning it (especially with the Canucks who can’t even score 5 goals combined). I can’t imagine what it’s like to know you’re the one who has a chance at a million though. Presumably they’ve got some accountant type calculating the odds and making sure they are able to pay award with the advertising if such an unlikely even occurs. So I’m just going to provide you with the accountant’s math so you all know the chances of winning the big prize.

First I looked at 2002-2003 to 2005-2006 data to get this list:
Probability of scoring exactly 1 goal given you scored at least 1 goal
= 0.89279 = P(G=1|G>0)
Probability of scoring exactly 2 goals given you scored at least 1 goal
= 0.09583 = P(G=2|G>0)
Probability of scoring exactly 3 goals given you scored at least 1 goal
= 0.01043 = P(G=3|G>0)
Probability of scoring exactly 4 goals given you scored at least 1 goal
= 0.000953 = P(G=4|G>0)

Using the assumption that goal scoring is Poisson, which is proved to be reasonable by Ryder, implies P(G=X) = exp(-k)*k^x/(x!).

Here’s where it might get confusing. [P(A|B) = P(A and B)/P(B)]
P(G=1|G>0) = P(G=1)/P(G>0)
P(G=2|G>0) = P(G=2)/P(G>0)
P(G=1|G>0)/P(G=2|G>0) = P(G=1)/P(G=2)
P(G=1)/P(G=2) = [exp(-k)*k^1/(1!)]/[exp(-k)*k^2/(2!)] = 0.89279/0.09583 = 9.3

Solve for k: [with computer]
k = 0.215
You can do the same for 2->3 and get K = 0.32 and 3->4 gets K = 0.274
Since I consider 1->2 to be the most accurate I went with 0.215

The probability of an average player getting 5 goals is:
exp(-0.215)*0.215^5/(5!) = 0.000003
The probability that a given player doesn’t score 5 is 99.99969%, so the probability that none of the 18 possible scorers gets 5 is:
(0.9999969)^18 = 99.994%

Or the probability that a player does score 5 in a game is: 0.00005577

Since the prize is an annuity distributed over 20 years it’s only worth about $680,000 when it is won (@ 4% discounting).
Multiply the costs by the odds of winning in a given game:
$680,000*0.00005577 = $38/game
Works out to one 5 goal game every 7-8 seasons. [Does anyone have a list of 5-goal games?]

Your odds: [BC]
There are about 2 million possible shoppers (exaggeration) and Safeway has a 30% market share, so there are about 600,000 entrants (assuming they all shop equally often). Making the final value to the individual viewer:
$0.00006/game or 0.006 cents/game.

Who is the most valuable player?

When I look for the best players I ask one basic question. What percent of the team’s offence was this player on the ice for? A great player will be on the ice for almost every goal, a horrible player will be on the ice for every goal against. In reality a star forward will see around 50% of a team’s offense (240GF*(1 IGF¹/2 GF)*(3 Goals or Assists/4 IGF¹) = 90 Points. Do they contribute to that 1 goal out of four in which they don’t get a goal or an assist I would say most certainly they do, is it maybe as large a contribution as the assists? Maybe, maybe not it would depend on the player. In contrast these star players are often on the ice for very few goals against. Now to make things “fair” I’ve excluded goals against when short handed as some star players play short handed and others don’t (their percentage of goals against would be much larger if you play short handed). The difference between the two gives some sort of value of a given player. If for example a player is on the ice for 75% of the goals for and 80% of the goals against, I wouldn’t consider that player as amazing as the one on the ice for 50% of goals for and 40% of goals against. So the difference between the two values equals a sort of “star power” ranking.

Equations

The basic equation is quite simple I look at how many goals the player scored on the power play, penalty kill and at even strength and divide by how many goals the team scored in those same situations. For goals against I look at how many goals the player has against at even strength and when their on the power play and compare that to how the team did as well. This can be expressed in an equation as:

GF% = (GF.pp + GF.sh + GF.ev)/ (TGF.pp + TGF.sh + TGF.ev)
GA% = (GA.pp + GA.ev)/ (TGA.pp + TGA.ev)
GF = Goals for, TGF = Team goals for
GA = Goals against, TGA = Team goals against
pp = power play, sh = short-handed, ev = even strength.
GF.pp = Goals for on the power play
GA.pp = Goals against while on the power play
Score = GF%-GA%

Summary

TGF and TGA can either be used as the total number of goals over the course of the season or only calculated using games in which the given player has played in. For example, Forsberg has played 40 games I could use Philadelphia’s total goals for and against in the 74 games they have played or I could use just the goals for and against in those 40 games. I prefer to work on a per game basis so that’s what I’ve chosen. There is a number of ways to present this data; I could make a long list of players and their scores (which are unit less percentages), however I have decided to graph them as a scatter plot, where the individual score is on the Y-axis and ice time per game is on the X-axis. This will help analyze players who don’t play as much and make them comparable to players who player more, which makes it easier to compare defenseman to forwards. In order to present these graphs and have 300 names visible I needed a large graph (4000x3000 – 500kb), which some people may find annoying. I decided to compile two different seasons in graphs so people can see how well they correlate.

Problems

This statistic has the opposite problem to the plus minus statistic in the fact that it will make players on bad teams (teams without depth) look better then they maybe are and players on good teams (teams with depth) look average as when the player is off the ice the team is still producing goals. Therefore, this should be a good balance to a plus minus statistic. This effect does not prevent top players from getting to the top, be they on a bad team or a good team. This statistic, like almost all hockey statistics, suffers from line quality factors, which should be kept in mind. Since I’m looking at total goals for on the power play and even strength I excluded players without power play time, to be specific: power play time/even strength time > 13%. For most players this works out to about 2 minutes of power play time per game.

Results

• 2005
  
• 2006
• Time (S) should be Time (min/game)
  

Last season Joe Thornton won the Hart Trophy and rightly so, with a +25% difference between percentage of offence and percent of defense Joe Thornton ranked number one in his ice time category (Nagy was #1 over all, 1.1 points/game on a bad team). Smyth last season scored +10% and +20% this season (+25% so far in NYI). Bergeron was 5% in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007, and sitting at amazing 30% (in 13 games). So anyone dying to look at these huge tables in person, here they are:

Hart

Should Crosby get the Hart Trophy? I would argue no, there are too many good candidates above him: Pronger (90²), Visnovsky (99²), Lidstrom (102²), Thornton (#2³), Brind’Amour (#19³), Selanne (#10³). But since it normally goes to the forward with the most points (in recent years) or a goalie with an insane save percentage (1 defenseman as won it in 32 years) I would expect Crosby to get it.

1. IGF = individual goals for, IGA = individual goals against (plus or minus statistics including power play and penalty kills)
2. A comparable number of points for defenseman to compare to forwards (1.7*Points)
3. Point ranking out of all forwards.

Goal Differential

I'm sure there are others who do this, but it was easier to make my own list. Here are the goal differential for each teams without the extra shoot-out goal awarded to the winning team and no empty net goals as requested.

Epct = gf*gf/(gf*gf + ga*ga)
also known as the Pythagorean expectation.

First and Second assists

Most people would agree that a first assist is not the same as a second assist and many hockey statistics people have tried to explain how some assists are worth more than others (first worth more than seconds), with little actual analysis I might add. I’ve often wondered about the differences in them, but found it difficult to show one is worth more than the other. Founder of new hockey statistical analysis: Alan Ryder says: “It seems reasonable to conclude that, on balance, there is more value generated in a first assist than in a previous touch of the puck. The Forechecker says: “the general agreement is that 1st assists are generally ‘worth more’ than 2nd assists”.

About a year ago I did a regression on player’s salaries testing many variables, such as player contribution and many of the standard variables: goals, assists (first and second). In general hockey statistics people believe some assists are worth more than others (first worth more than seconds). However, the regression showed the second assists cost GM’s more. That is to say a GM was more likely to spend more on a guy with more second assists than a guy with more first assists. The difference was not statistically significant, but it was interesting none the less and suggested that people’s intuition, that second assists being worth first assists, may not be valid. What matters more than the ratio of first vs. second assists, but rather a players ability to get an assist on a goal (be involved), but even that can be flawed as some player’s roles don’t encourage assists (net presence)

Error Approximations

Even if we knew the absolute value of a first assist versus a second assist there would still be the perennial error lingering around that messes with the results. If you assume for the moment that a forward gets a first assist on 33% of goals and a second assist of 23% of and the player sees around 100 goals, then that player should have 56 assists plus or minus 10 (46, 66) and this would be perfectly within the random expectation. Now assuming they have 56 assists, the should get about 33 first assists and 23 second assists (33% and 23% of 100 respectively), with an error of 7, so anything from 26 to 40 first assists and 16 to 30 second assists, this implies the expected random variation in the ratio of 26/56 to 40/56 to or 46% to 71%, this can be seen here. For a player with half as many plusses as Crosby the expected ratio range is: 8.3/23 to 18.3/23 or 36% to 80%. In addition much of the ratio has to do with style and not necessarily increased value. Goal scorers don’t generally pass, but do create rebounds so their primary assist would be firsts (accidental firsts). The above shows there are a number of ways to get a “bad ratio” between first and second assists: either too few first assists or too many second assist. Too few first assists could be a bad thing or could be the result of random variations. Too many second assists could also be the result of random variations or it could be a good thing.

Expected Assists vs. Actual assists

Its interesting looking at how well different players did compared to the expected performance based on how many plusses the player gets in different situations (power play, penalty kill, even strength). I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the graphs below, but these are standard residual vs. fits graphs. They plot the expected value (number of assists you would expect given a certain number of plusses) against the errors (residual or difference from the actual number of assists). In these graphs the residuals are normalized so the typical range for 95% of the data is presented as the green area (-2, 2) and the rest of the residuals (|error|>2) is left as white.

In the first assist graph you will see a lot of play makers in the top half (residual > 2). I’m not sure what to make of all the names though, so I’ll let anyone else try and figure it out.

It’s the second assist graph that I find most intriguing. The most dominating players in this category include: Sakic, Thornton, Savard, Crosby, Brind’Amour, Weight and Elias, with Jagr and St. Louis close to making it as well. These players are all skilled play makers, should we say they're worse because of al these second assists? On the flip side: Smyth, Murray, Homstrom, Ovechkin and Kovalchuk. Interestingly, Selanne and Heatley fall close to this group. Other notables include: Parrish, Hejduk, Staal, etc. Both types of players are probably necessary on a given team (high second assist players and low second assist players), one may be able to argue that low second assist players may actually be contributing to more goals than their statistics might indicate (eg. Smyth’s point totals underestimate his value). It’s hard to argue that Crosby’s second assists over estimate his value, due to the fact he is part of a much larger number of goals than his plusses indicate. Personally, I would take a Sakic, Thornton or Crosby over an Ovechkin or a Kovalchuk. I’m not sure any of this shed more or less light onto assists though, but I think it highlights the variability and player styles in determining what types of assists a player gets.

Conclussion

What I’m trying to get across is that second assists and first assists are certainly different, but they don’t necessarily have different values. Certainly some second assists are the result of luck, but all players get some assists as part of luck, but often that pass was as important as the final pass.

Playoff Races Update

West:

There is essentially one battle left and it's remarkable that Colorado has managed to keep pace enough to still be in the game at this point. All Colorado has to do at this point is win the one game in hand on Calgary (@ Phoenix) and then win one more game than Calgary over the last 11 games. If you compare their schedules, Colorado plays Edmonton twice, Phoenix twice (one game in hand + once more) and 6 tough divisional games. Calgary on the other hand has the next three home games vs. Minnesota, Detroit and Nashville. Followed by a four game road trip against the division (and one against Chicago). In April, thanks to a scheduling problem in December (if I remember correctly), Calgary plays Colorado twice and Edmonton on the 7^th. I'm sure if Edmonton can knock Calgary out of the playoffs they'll at least try to win. Sandwiched between those 3 challenging games is a game in San Jose.

East:

The goal in the East is to get to 92 points. While I wont guarantee that Atlanta and Tampa make the playoffs they're sitting at 96% each at this point, which is as good as Calgary chances. So I'll focus on the 5 teams who are fighting for two spots: New York Islanders, Toronto, New York Rangers, Carolina, Montreal.

New York Islanders
Looked home and cooled for a week until they lost DiPietro. 6 home games and 4/6 away games against weaker teams (Tampa, Florida, Philadelphia), if they don't make it they wont deserve it. Two games against the Rangers will be the big impact games.

Toronto
I'll continue to maintain that 3 teams from the North East division will make it in the playoffs (although my numbers show this only happens about 68% of the time). Toronto will battle for this spot with Montreal and they have two games against each other including one on April 7.

New York Rangers
New York has one of the more challenging schedules for their remaining games with 5 games vs. other playoff race teams in their last 7 games. They need to gain ground (against Boston and Philadelphia) in the next two weeks in order to stand a chance.

Carolina
If Carolina makes they playoffs they'll prevent Toronto or Montreal from making the playoffs. You could call it a three way battle here (Carolina vs. Toronto vs. Montreal) for the 8^th spot. With only one game vs. other playoff race candidates their schedule favors their success, however they need to win about 7 games out of 10 to make it, which would be a challenge, considering they've gone 12-13 (OT: 2-4) since January 1.

Gut feeling: New York Islanders in 7^th with Toronto in 8^th.

March Frequency Stadings Update

You can see last month's here. Nashville has jumped to number one and San Jose has fallen three spots. Montreal has gone from 12 to 17 as well.

N name W L T ePTS SW TL OL LW CB 1 NSH 52 19 12 115 3.2 60% 33% 43% 61% 2 ANA 50 19 13 113 2.9 55% 37% 48% 61% 3 N.J 47 17 17 112 2.9 49% 40% 47% 66% 4 DET 52 23 7 111 2.9 54% 42% 55% 62% 5 BUF 47 20 15 109 3.2 49% 43% 46% 68% 6 DAL 47 23 12 105 2.5 46% 46% 58% 59% 7 VAN 47 26 9 104 2.9 52% 42% 49% 58% 8 MIN 42 21 18 103 2.7 44% 45% 47% 60% 9 S.J 49 29 4 102 2.5 50% 47% 65% 55% 10 OTT 48 27 7 102 2.5 51% 44% 58% 53% 11 PIT 41 24 17 99 3.6 47% 44% 37% 66% 12 CGY 46 29 7 98 2.9 51% 44% 50% 55% 13 NYI 40 29 13 93 2.9 47% 45% 44% 53% 14 TOR 40 30 12 92 2.8 49% 44% 44% 50% 15 CAR 43 33 6 91 2.9 48% 49% 52% 54% 16 T.B 39 30 13 91 3.4 46% 47% 40% 60% 17 MTL 39 31 12 90 2.9 42% 51% 49% 57% 18 NYR 37 30 15 89 3.0 47% 45% 39% 51% 19 ATL 39 32 11 89 3.4 49% 45% 38% 56% 20 COL 39 35 8 86 3.6 51% 45% 37% 56% 21 FLA 38 35 9 85 2.9 40% 55% 51% 57% 22 BOS 35 34 13 83 3.4 48% 44% 34% 51% 23 STL 34 36 12 80 3.2 41% 52% 39% 55% 24 WSH 34 35 13 80 2.6 39% 52% 45% 49% 25 EDM 37 40 6 79 2.5 44% 52% 52% 43% 26 CHI 33 36 12 79 2.9 43% 50% 40% 48% 27 CBJ 33 39 10 76 2.7 42% 52% 44% 46% 28 PHX 30 45 7 67 2.9 36% 60% 46% 50% 29 L.A 25 46 11 61 3.5 38% 56% 30% 52% 30 PHI 25 49 9 58 3.5 41% 54% 29% 48%

W - wins, L - losses, T - ties (for 82 game season) - estimated using simulation.
PTS - expected points using this method.
SW - average score switching - high numbers likely indicate difficulty maintaining a lead (bad defense/goaltending)
TL - Percentage the team takes lead.
OL - Percentage the opposition takes lead.
LW - Percentage the lead results in win. (otherwise it is tied again).
CB - Percentage of come backs - # of times team re-ties game. (otherwise opposition wins).

Goalie wins (2007) II

The previous goalie wins post only looked at regulation victories however, in the past, it was standard to look at overtime victories as well. So here is the list of goalie wins sorted by regulation + overtime (but not shoot-out) victories. Luongo is on top.

N lastname Wot Lot Wso Lr ot% r% 1 LUONGO 34 22 39 19 61 67 2 BRODEUR 33 19 41 18 63 69 3 HASEK 33 10 34 9 77 79 4 KIPRUSOFF 32 24 33 19 57 63 5 GIGUERE 29 10 33 8 74 80 6 RAYCROFT 28 23 31 21 55 60 7 WARD 27 19 27 17 59 61 8 EMERY 26 16 27 14 62 66 9 TURCO 25 18 31 18 58 63 10 FLEURY 25 17 32 14 60 70 11 DIPIETRO 25 22 30 19 53 61 12 LEHTONEN 24 25 30 20 49 60 13 TOSKALA 24 9 24 9 73 73 14 ROLOSON 23 32 25 29 42 46 15 MILLER 22 16 32 15 58 68 16 THOMAS 22 24 29 22 48 57 17 LUNDQVIST 22 23 29 20 49 59 18 BELFOUR 21 18 22 14 54 61

• Wot - regulation + overtime wins.
• Lot - regulation + overtime losses.
• Wso - regulation + overtime + shoot out wins.
• Lr - regulation losses.
• ot% = Wot/(Wot + Lot)
  
• r% = Wso/(Wso + Lr)

Goalie wins (2007)

The new rules giving goaltenders wins in shoot-out has resulted in a lot more wins for goaltenders as they can no longer tie. In addition goaltenders are given a OTL for a overtime or shoot-out loss instead of a loss. In other words most goalies will have more wins than losses. Goaltenders are now getting 40-win seasons. Many websites list goaltender wins as one of their primary goaltender statistics. Instead of including all the "false" wins in overtime and shoot-out, I've made a list of goalie wins in regulation. Also included in the table is the NHL wins and the regulation win percentage. So here's the list [updated version on my website]:

N Lastname W Wot Wpct 1 KIPRUSOFF 32 33 63% 2 BRODEUR 30 41 62% 3 HASEK 30 34 79% 4 RAYCROFT 26 31 55% 5 WARD 26 27 60% 6 GIGUERE 25 32 76% 7 LUONGO 25 39 58% 8 EMERY 24 27 63% 9 TOSKALA 23 24 72% 10 DIPIETRO 23 30 55% 11 ROLOSON 22 25 44% 12 LUNDQVIST 21 28 51% 13 MILLER 20 32 57% 14 TURCO 20 30 53% 15 LEHTONEN 20 30 50% 16 FLEURY 20 32 59% 17 MASON 19 24 66% 18 BELFOUR 19 22 58% 19 BUDAJ 19 23 56% 20 VOKOUN 18 22 69% 21 THOMAS 17 28 44% 22 KHABIBULIN 17 22 46% 23 HUET 16 19 52% 24 KOLZIG 16 19 46% 25 LEGACE 16 23 52% 26 NORRENA 15 18 47% 27 HOLMQVIST 15 23 54% 28 NABOKOV 15 16 48% 29 JOSEPH 12 15 32% 30 GERBER 11 12 55% 31 BACKSTROM 11 14 58% 32 FERNANDEZ 10 22 38% 33 DENIS 10 16 42% 34 SMITH 9 9 64% 35 BIRON 9 12 69% 36 THEODORE 9 11 39% 37 AEBISCHER 9 12 45% 38 NIITTYMAKI 8 9 24% 39 AULD 7 7 35% 40 GARON 7 8 47% 41 BRYZGALOV 7 7 50% 42 CLOUTIER 6 6 30% 43 TELLQVIST 6 10 40% 44 LECLAIRE 5 6 25% 45 SANFORD 5 6 36% 46 ESCHE 5 5 36% 47 GRAHAME 4 7 27% 48 JOHNSON 3 5 19% 49 Boucher 1 1 9%

• W - regulation wins
• Wot - regulation wins + OTW + SOW [NHL wins]
  
• Wpct - regulation wins/(regulation wins + regulation losses)

Avery diving

The first such incident will result in a warning letter being sent to the player, the second such incident will result in a $1,000 fine, the third such incident will result in a $2,000 fine and the fourth such incident will result in a one-game suspension.

Avery has been called for his fourth dive. Of course since his 3^rd resulted in no action the worst that can occur here is a $2000 fine.

OT Percentage

On February 22, 2007 8/12 games went to overtime. This represents the most overtimes in one day with the new NHL rules (2005-2006 and 2006-2007). Previous record was 6 recorded twice in 2005-2006 and three times this season. It probably won’t shock anyone, but as teams get closer to the end of the season they seem more motivated to go to overtime. In fact in the last 80 games there have been 34 overtime games. There was a similar (less pronounced) trend last season and I combined the two to make a relatively simple graph (shows percentage of overtimes in games 0-99, 100-199 etc.) I combined 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 season together to get more accurate results. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. There is the obvious increasing pattern here, but as you can see from the error bars very few conclusions on the exact nature of the relationship is hard to tell, there appears to be a “jump” date for the instance when overtimes increase (possibly two jumps) and by the end of the season there are 50% more overtimes than at the beginning. I did a regression to test the jump theory and the relationship was very good on this small set. Although there could be a trend this season for overtimes to go as high as 40%, which of course means 40% of games involve an extra point in the last 300 games.

Player Value

I like to call Smyth the smart and defensive Bertuzzi, as he stands in front of the net on the power play and gets garbage goals, however is value goes much beyond that because of his hockey sense and strong defensive abilities making him a great two way player. If anyone was thankful you made it to the finals last season you should first thank Pronger, but quickly get to Smyth as he was possibly as important to the team as Pronger.

Before getting into the specific value of Smyth a word on long term contracts. Many people may be familiar with the Payday lottery or "million dollars a year for 25 years lottery", essentially what these lotteries do allow for a large initial dollar value ($25 million), but cost the lottery corporations significantly less by putting off a lot of the payments into the future. For example, at 6% the million dollars over 25 years is only worth about $12.8 million (this is what the it costs the lottery corp today). For the same reasons the a contract for Dipietro's over 15 years is only worth about $2.9M/year (when you look at it that way it looks like a steal). A 5 year contract for Smyth at $5.4M is really only worth $4.5M. The number can change for example if Smyth's contract is top or bottom heavy. Just because a very large contract is signed doesn't mean it's worth that much. Since the costs of these contracts are known explicitly it's easy to get a long term investment with good returns to cover them. Another good present example is Doan for 5 years works out to about $3.8M, most wouldn't have a problem paying Doan that much. In the end a "real $5.4M" contract would require $6.4M per year, I could easily see Smyth sign for $30M+ over 5 years...

There's been quite a bit of discussion about every aspect of Ryan Smyth. One of the primary questions has been was $5.4M enough [or $4.5M in present value], or was Smyth greedy. First of all player value varies from team to team. Carter for example this summer could've signed in Detroit or Vancouver for around $1.8M, but choose to sign on a team that needed [wanted] him more for $2.5M. RiversQ wrote a long post about comparable players, but the post mentions both Sullivan and Arnott who actually play together, meaning one doing well implies the other will do well. Of the players listed Sullivan is probably the most comparable in my mind, but he for whatever reason choose not to sign for market value. That being said he will get a lot more in 2009. Sullivan also is not the best player on the Nashville team, making his role significantly different to Smyth's.

However, Smyth's value may not be measured completely in terms of points. The nature of his game is both defensive and offense, but much of his offensive contributions can be considered invisible. In fact while Smyth may have ranked 58th in overall scoring in 2005-2006 he ranked in the top 20 in terms of goals while on the ice per game [1.5] (pp/pk/ev), he was above the likes of: Forsberg, Briere, Brind'amour, Sakic, Strum (anyway you get the drift). This year on a team that was reasonably poor he is ranked 32nd [1.3], since scoring is down slightly this year the drop has occurred for many top players. The players around him in the rankings include Zetterberg, Kunitz, Langkow, Afinogenov. Either way Smyth is on the ice for half of Edmonton's goals, what is that worth? Of course this doesn't get into the question of defensive ability.

The real question Edmonton should be asking of any comparable player is who would you choose instead. Would Koivu sign in Edmonton for under $5.5M? If you were to look at comparable players and ask yourself would you trade them straight up no questions asked: Naslund, Havlat, Hossa, Fedorov, Gagne, Gomez, Gaborik, Savard, etc. Who would you rather have as your best player?

An easier question might be to ask: of the forward RFAs where would you rank Smyth in terms of skill? A graph showing the ranking of different salary levels shows that in order to be worth >$5M you have to be a top 25 player (with last year's dollars). At a point per game, typically ranks you around the 20th position and 0.9 points per game around 40th, it appears the team agrees that he is a top 25 forward with their offer, but of course a one year contract is different from a 5 year contract.

One can also look at Smyth in terms of PP/PK/EV. I'm not sure of all the options in the NHL but Smyth would certainly be up there with guys I would want on the powerplay. This year, due to: coaching, players and who know what, Edmonton stopped shooting the puck at the net and this hurt their scoring on the powerplay. Who knows how many more assists/goals Smyth would've had if Edmonton had taken 100 more shots at the net on the powerplay. Smyth leads the team, pretty significantly, although I rate Hemsky about as good as Smyth on the powerplay. In terms of Penalty killing, Smyth may not have the best GA/hr rate, but that's due to the players he was stuck playing with on the penalty kill, by my measures he was the best penalty killer on the team. Just ask the Islanders, where he is averaging 4 minutes per game. Even strength Smyth demonstrates where he really differentiates himself from his team mates and other compatibles in my mind. He's a part of a rare group of forwards who is responsible for >1 goal differential per game at even strength [Vanek, Crosby, Heatley, Datsyuk, Alfredsson, Briere, Selanne, Kunitz, Kariya, Pominville, Erat, Roy, Havlat, Legwand, Mcdonald, Zetterberg, Camalleri]. Some are there because of luck, other skill. In my book the contributions made by Smyth this year peg him at $5.4M, which ranks him #24 in terms of "expected salary".

In terms of Hockey Analytics "Player Contribution" system Smyth scored a decent 51 in 2003, 62 in 2004 and I rated him a 72 in 2006, he's probably a 80+ this season. Each 20 points in the player contribution = 1 win and 1 win is worth about $1M.

A lot of people look at Smyth's numbers and don't consider just how bad a team the Oilers were this year. Ranked 25th in terms of EV GD/hr, 23rd power play, 12th in terms of penalty kill. Goaltending has been good considering how bad the defense was all year.

The problem is with a player like Smyth there are very few alternatives that are truly "available" in July, Smyth would have loved to play in Edmonton and would've signed there. However, goal differential is goal differential and if Edmonton can find a number of good cheap pieces they might be able to finish this complicated puzzle this summer. In general there are fewer elite players than there are teams. The beauty of a player like Smyth [an elite player] is you know his value, you know what you're getting. The problem with the $3M guys is that they've only done well in "perfect" situations or gotten lucky for a year or two [Carter]. You never know if you're getting a goal scorer or a liability.

Some people mention that he can still sign in Edmonton. The problem with trading a player as a rental is that their value generally doesn't go down when they play in the playoffs (unless you're Cloutier), if you lose in the first round your value is flat (no change or small negative change), after that it's all up, up up. So if Edmonton wants to sign Smyth after he loses this year in the conference finals good luck, he'll be expected to sign for $6.5M all of the sudden.

How much will Smyth sign for depends on who he signs with and the terms of the agreement, dollars aren't everything and dollars are never the entire story. I suspect he'll get in the neighborhood of $6M especially after NYI beats New Jersey in the opening round [long shot guess].

Good luck to Edmonton next year, you'll need it.