Ever thought about what the cheapest possible competitive team would look like?
Well, it is summer so if you were going to try and put it together, now would be the best time.
The NHL is full of bad contracts. Players who do not provide as much as their lofty dollar amounts would have you believe. However, there are a lot of really good contracts for players who are not only productive in a traditional sense but in an advanced stats sense. They are out there, you just have to sift through the ridiculous amount of contracts and numbers to try and put a finger on the few amongst the many. Thankfully, we tried to put that together for you here.
We need to take a moment to really appreciate how good a site CapGeek was. In this experiment it would have been the absolute go to site considering how you could create your own roster just as we are trying to do here. There are tons of other very worthwhile sites which we will use like General Fanager and CapFriendly, but the work and effort that Matthew Wuest put into CapGeek should never be forgotten.
First off, some ground rules. We will abide by the current NHL Salary cap (Which we should not even come close to if all goes according to plan). Players on ELCs do not count. Since we are trying to field a competitive team and not just a cheap team, there are certain numbers we will try to get to. We will throw out names as we go along in explaining what we are looking for, but as a hint it will combine a number of analytics, stats, and baselines given to us from other playoff teams (Ex: Team total offense, team and individual corsi, team goals against). Considering the detail we want to go into with each and every selection, it was probably best to break this article up into two separate pieces: Filling out the offense (Maybe bottom 6 and top 6), and filling out the team defense and goaltending.
So let us go ahead and get started on the defensive portion of the team.
Goaltending
If you look into the top 10 in team on-ice save percentage, it ranges from .925 to .913. That is essentially what we will try and shoot for. If you look individually at the top 15 starters form last season, the even strength adjusted save percentages range from .947 (Steve Mason) to .927 (Jonas Hiller). Why would we focus on even strength only? Because, put simply, that is you would play most of your minutes over the course of the season. Even strength save percentages are often more indicative of a goalie's ability, considering shorthanded situations automatically put goalies at a very important disadvantage where they will face higher difficulty shots.
With that in mind, a starter and a back-up are needed. With that in mind, a starter is paramount. Of the cheapest and best available, here is your list of possibles:
Cam Talbot - $1.45MM - .935 AdSv% (adjusted save percentage)
Eddie Lack - $1.15MM - .933 AdSv%
Craig Anderson - $3.5MM - .936 AdSv%
Ondrej Pavelec - $$3.75MM - .937 AdSv%
Those, according to last year's numbers, are the best of the best available on the cheap. It should be pointed out that a goaltender like Steve Mason is available at $4.1MM. Goaltending, however, may be the one position in which you can skimp a little bit on in order to cut costs. There are also a number of players in the range of 10-20 who would be serviceable and cheap, ala Ben Bishop, Jaro Halak, and Freddie Andersen. For now, Cam Talbot looks like a leading candidate. However, when it comes to Lack and Talbot, the question hanging over their heads is can they post good numbers as a majority starter. Talbot has never been given the chance, and Lack's hold on that position in Vancouver was always tenuous at best. Again, we can revisit this later when we have extra money from the roster, but the idea is value versus contribution, not pushing the cap. For now, let us say that Cam Talbot is our guy.
For a backup? The all-cheap back up award has to go to Scott Darling of Chicago. In 19 games he posted a .951 AdSv%. He makes 587K.
Goaltending, however, is a position of extreme fluctuation. It can also be very dependent on defense. Putting together a good defense is paramount.
Defense
Seven defenders, and we are going to be looking for good producers coupled with good possession players. Why good possession? Because when your players have the puck more it is harder for teams to score. We can look at things like shot suppression while on the ice and overall time on ice as well.
Time on ice is a large factor. A player, ala Jake Muzzin, can look great playing 18-20 minutes a night. However, is he capable of maintaining that level of play when the ante is upped to 24-26 minutes? Hard to say. Let us not project, but get an actual proven first pair defenseman.
The top 15 defenseman in the league in time on ice ranged from 29:03 a night (Ryan Suter), to 24:38 a night (Tyler Myers). If you range into the top 30, Jacob Trouba played 23:18. If you range as far as 50, Josh Georges played 22:21 a night in 2014-15 (Yikes).
With these numbers in mind, we set our limit to 1900 total on ice minutes played over last season, which gave us a nice crop of 19 defenseman to choose from for our first pairing.
Obviously not many of these guys were cap friendly. Drew Doughty, Duncan Keith, Ryan Suter, P.K Subban etc. etc. There were a lot of players pricing themselves out of the 2015 all-cheap team.
A couple of players did indeed stand out though as being exceptionally good value.
One was Washington's John Carlson, who makes a cool $3.967MM a season. To further his value beyond dollars, Carlson played around 23:00 minutes a night, held a 51.8 corsi for at evens, held a -3.6% ZSO, and contributed 38 points at even strength and played both shorthanded AND powerplay minutes. According to Behindthenet.ca, Carlson also played the most difficult match ups for Barry Trotz and the Caps.
Carlson's inclusion as the leading defender on the All-Cheap team is almost a no-brainer, it came down to he and Roman Josi (Who we will get to shortly). Dollar for dollar, the 25-year old may be the most efficient and valuable player in the league right now. It is not out of the question that he can eat large amounts of minutes on any given night either. While his average TOI is in the 23:00 range, the Massachusetts native played an upwards of 28 to 29 minutes on multiple occasions during the season. His usefulness in all-situations and his production are of good quality as well. The only knock to Carlson are his suppression numbers. He holds a corsi for percentage above 50, which is good, but he does not necessarily keep shots down in his own end.
That being said, Carlson was paired up with a bit of a suppression boat anchor this year in Brooks Orpik. How bad was it you ask? Almost all of Carlson's numbers, like goals against, shots against, corsi against, etc. were better without Orpik than with him. Nevertheless, these are minor things if he is paired up with the right partner, and John Carlson is still the leader of the all-cheap defense.
His potential partner(s)? Well, only two others really stand out: Roman Josi of Nashville and Andy Greene of New Jersey.
Andy Greene would have been an absolutely brilliant selection...if not for the $5MM extension he signed recently that priced him out of contention for the all-cheap defense. Greene's low-key defensive style and excellent shot suppression numbers would have made for a perfect tandem of right-left balance and stay-at-home/puck-mover balance.
So we are going to go a little cowboy with this one and go with a top pairing of all offense. Roman Josi, making an affordable $4MM a year and playing near 27 minutes a night on average. He, like Carlson, has excellent all around offensive numbers with some questionable shot suppression numbers. However, just like his partner, he faces some difficult ZSO numbers and quality of competition numbers. In fact, the HERO charts of JC and Josi are almost the exact same:
Carlson and Josi would make for a tandem that could terrorize defenses, put up a huge amount of points, and play quality minutes in all-situations. They may be exposed a bit defensively, but in theory they should be able to dominate possession with their style and abilities. That will lead to less goals against and less chances against.
Now to the bottom four defensemen.
While you want a third pair who is just a touch below your top pair, the 4-6 defenseman can be a mixture of players playing between 17-20 minutes a night. That leaves our range for a good third defenseman at around 20-22ish. Let's do it.
At 20 minutes even you get Jason Garrison. At 22 minutes you are looking at Dennis Seidenberg. There is a wide range in this grouping for sure.
With a ton of possible candidates (About 40), it was tough to pick out a single player who could play good quality third d-man minutes. Also, depending on the style you want to play with your team you could have various different players inserted. There are also a number of players who could be in this mix, however they are on entry level deals and are thus eliminated from contention.
Jared Spurgeon is, probably, the best available guy to play as a three D. Maybe you haven't heard of Minnesota's 25-year old defenseman, but when you look at his contributions it is strange that more people outside of the State of Hockey are not high on him. He was outstanding last season.
Excellent, across the board.
Other factors, he contributed 25 points, played both shorthanded and powerplay minutes, and had a -3.37 ZSO. All of this, and he is available for a very affordable $2.66MM
Going over a multitude of numbers and possibilities let's fill out the rest of the 4-6 with some of these best names in contention. Remember, we are looking for modest time on ice, good defensive contributions, low cap hits, and some offensive capability.
Tyson Barrie (Col) - $2.6MM
Danny DeKeyser (Det) - $2.187MM
Ron Hainsey (Car) - $2.833MM
Karl Alzner (Wsh) - $2.8MM
Thomas Hickey (NYI) - $2.2MM *the feels Kings fans, the feels*
Mattias Ekholm (NSH) - $1.037MM
It should be noted that some of these players, like Ekholm and Barrie, are on bridge contracts which will only increase given their upside. They will cost more in the future.
Tyson Barrie, in particular, looks like a potential stud in the making for the Colorado Avalanche.
His 53 points were 8th amongst defensemen last year.
Of these six we need to select three. Maintaining a right-left balance and a good offense-defense balance. Here is what we came up with for the final roster layout on starting defense.
John Carlson ($3.967MM) - Roman Josi ($4.0MM)
Jared Spurgeon ($2.66MM) - Mattias Ekholm ($1.0375MM)
Tyson Barrie ($2.6MM) - Thomas Hickey ($2.2MM)
and for a final seven defenseman spot? We went with the ultra cheap, and relatively safe defensive defenseman Jordie Benn. Welcome to the all-cheap press box team, Jordie.
Benn is making 700K a year, and actually puts up fairly decent shot suppression numbers. For a low-risk, switch-in, 7th D who is not on an ELC, he is not bad.
So, altogether, the all-cheap team defense and goaltending
John Carlson ($3.967MM) - Roman Josi ($4.0MM)
Jared Spurgeon ($2.66MM) - Mattias Ekholm ($1.0375MM)
Tyson Barrie ($2.6MM) - Thomas Hickey ($2.2MM)
Jordie Benn (700K)
Cam Talbot ($1.45MM)
Scott Darling (587K)
A grand total of $19.2MM in cap space. With the cap set for $71.4M next season, that is around 27% of our money spent. Even if we decided to go with a true legitimate starter in Steve Mason (4.0M), that is around 22.2M, or 30% of the cap.
How does that compare to other teams? Other competitive teams?
The Chicago Blackhawks are currently paying around 27.5M to their defense and goaltending, or around 38% of the cap.
The Anaheim Ducks have efficiently spent $19.77M on their current defensive make-up. They also have one of the cheapest rosters currently in the NHL. Their defense is Around the same as our all-cheap team. However, they have Sami Vatanen and Hampus Lindholm on ELCs, and both Freddie Andersen and John Gibson coming up for contract as well.
The Penguins? 23.23M on their current defense.
The New Jersey Devils, who currently have the second lowest team salary, are spending 20.571 on two goalies and six defenders. The all-cheap team, so far, is beating the cheapest teams in the league. We have established them with no ELCs and several players who are both productive in a traditional sense and an analytical sense. Some have bridge contracts which will only get higher, but with so little spent already it would be easy to lock those up when they move to a higher contract number. We have right left balance, a number of players who have played both sides of special teams, and a decent offense defense balance to boot.
Thoughts so far? Who do you like? Who do you not like? Thoughts? Concerns? Will goaltending be an issue behind that defense? Did we leave a good cheap player out?
Let it be known in the comment section.
Thanks to
General Fanager for putting together a great cap site
Also, as always,
War On Ice continues to be one of the best resources around. Likewise with Dom Galamini, AKA, @MimicoHero, at OwnthePuck.
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