I recently put together a couple of posts on assessing player value to help assess player transactions. Part 1 looked at player value based on their 5v5 Impact and Part 2 looked at cap efficiency and contract expiry status. If you missed them, you can find them at the links below. Now, we need to tackle the value of prospects and draft picks to complete the NHL asset value picture.
Assessing Player Value Part 1: Player Impact
Assessing Player Value Part 2: Other Factors
Understanding Probabilities
Unlike NHL players, we can’t valuate picks and prospects with the same level of certainty. For current players, we know they are playing at the NHL level and our valuation is dependent only on our assessment of their Impact. For picks and prospects, we have a situation steeped in another layer of uncertainty since we don’t know if the player will ever make it to the NHL.
To deal with this new wrinkle, we turn to probabilities. I’ll be using projections from Hockey Prospecting, where we get a Star Probability and an NHLer probability for skaters and simply and NHLer probability for goalies. There is a lot of detail on the method of calculating these probabilities on the Hockey Prospecting site if you want more background. In essence, probabilities are calculated based on production in and around a player’s draft year, with the probability the player reaches the following thresholds:
- NHLer: 200+ games for skaters, 100+ games for goalies
- Star: 0.7 career PPG for forwards, 0.45 career PPG for defensemen
Probability Based Value
Based on historical data, it’s clear the point production thresholds for star players is roughly equivalent to top line forwards and top pair defensemen. For example, Ryan O’Reilly, T.J Oshie, Jordan Eberle, and Jeff Carter are a few active players who have career point production at roughly the threshold for forwards. From here, we can put a value on Star Potential and NHLer potential.
The value of star potential is the value of an average star player. Star forwards are top line players, so we’ll use the impact of an average top line player. With 32 teams each with 3 top line forwards, we’ll use the median Impact for the top 96 forwards. Using the value curve from the first post in this series, we can give Star Potential for forwards a value of $5.23M.
The value of an NHLer is the value of an average NHL player, excluding stars. We’ll exclude the top 96 forwards this time and take the median Impact for the forwards from the remaining 3 lines. Using the curve from the first post in the series, we get a value of $2.79M for NHLer potential.
Following the same approach for the other positions, we get a value of $4.00M for defensemen Star Potential, $3.14M for defensemen NHLer Potential, and $1.95M for goaltender NHLer potential.
Prospect Value
To calculate the value of a particular prospect, we combine the values for Star and NHLer potential with the probabilities for the prospect.
Prospect Value = Star Probability * Star Potential Value + (NHLer Probability – Star Probability) * NHLer Potential Value
Draft Pick Value
We can use the same method to valuate draft picks that we used above for prospects by considering the historical success of draft picks, such as the one below from Byron Bader of Hockey Prospecting. Given we don’t know the position of the drafted player, we’ll take the average value for Star Potential and NHLer Potential for forwards and defensemen.
Example – Keith / Jones Trade
I recently checked in on the trade that brought Duncan Keith to Edmonton. The deal included two NHL players, a prospect and a draft pick so it gives us a bit of everything to put the full valuation system to use.
Player Value: We determine player value, including contract expiry status and opportunity cost modifiers, as we did in the Bear/Foegele example in the previous post in this series.
Prospect Value: We determine the value for Tim Soderlund following the method outlined in this post. We’ll use his D+3 probabilities. Although they are likely optimistic given he is a few years beyond that now and hasn’t cracked an NHL roster, it will put us in the right ballpark.
Draft Pick Value: We’ll use the method outlined in this post to determine the value of the 3rd round pick. I’ve used the 3rd round pick here, so if it’s upgraded to a 2nd the value will increase slightly.
| To EDM | To CHI | |
| Duncan Keith – Player Value | $2,190,000 | – |
| Duncan Keith – Expiry Status | $0 | – |
| Duncan Keith – Opportunity Cost | -$3,348,462 | – |
| Tim Soderlund | $418,500 | – |
| Caleb Jones – Player Value | – | $3,632,000 |
| Caleb Jones – Expiry Status | – | $131,977 |
| Caleb Jones – Opportunity Cost | – | $2,782,000 |
| 3rd Round Pick *conditional | – | $669,160 |
| Total Value | -$739,962 | $7,215,137 |
As we suspected in the original evaluation of the trade, Chicago got the better end of this deal by a wide margin. The picks and prospects actually made very little difference to the overall difference in value. In this case, it’s the opportunity cost that gives Chicago the biggest edge, with Jones providing Impact well above his cap hit and Keith providing Impact well below his cap hit.
Now that we have a complete method of valuing NHL players, prospects and draft picks, we can start using it to evaluate moves made around the league and develop mock trade proposals as an Armchair GM.
