While the playoffs have been front and center in the month of May, front offices are looking ahead to next season and we’ve seen a few pending free agents players sign extensions with their current teams.
I’ve updated the 22/23 season value curves with all active contracts. Let’s take a look at the updated value curves and early trends in the market.
Player Impact Value
First, a brief reminder of what the term ‘value’ means in this context. Here we are talking about Player Value, which is the average cap hit for a player of equivalent Impact as compared with all other players around the NHL. It gives us a method to compare the spending efficiency of teams relative to all active players in the league.
Market Value is similar to Value, except that it considers only contracts signed within the past 2 years. For the 22/23 model, this is all contracts signed since January 1, 2021. This gives us a better sense of what the current free agent market looks like relative to contracts for players signed from prior seasons.
The curves are broken down by position and, obviously, will be affected by newly signed contracts. So, let’s take a look at the notable signings since the value curves were set at the end of the regular season.
Forwards
There were two notable signings since the beginning of May among the forward group. The Pittsburgh Penguins extended Bryan Rust for 6 years, while the San Jose Sharks re-upped with Alexander Barabanov for 2 years. Both were pending UFAs and both signed for slightly more than their projected value. Considering the market curve sits below the overall value curve, neither of these looked like high value deals.
It’s only 2 new data points, but the early trend heading into the 2022 offseason is UFA forwards getting more than their projected value and more than other recent signings.
Defensemen
Mark Giordano and Nick Seeler are the 2 defensemen signed during May that affect the value curves, returning to the Maple Leafs and Flyers respectively. Again, we’re dealing with a very small sample but the early trend for defensemen is the complete opposite from forwards. Both Giordano and Seeler signed what look like very team friendly deals, which pulls the curves downward.
Goaltenders
Joonas Korpisalo is the lone NHL goaltender to sign an extension since the value curves were last updated. The previous curves were inverted counter to what we’d expect, yet with a very reasonable deal for Korpisalo and very few data points to generate the curve from, we get a much more reasonable looking value curve than the previous iteration.
Updates to 22/23 Team and Player Cards
I’ll be updating the team and player cards for the 22/23 season with the updated value curves over the next few days. You can get access to the cards for all 32 teams and all regular NHL players by signing up for an annual membership.
