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Average cost for bottom pairing defensemen

July 15, 2018, 4:10 PM ET [56 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Teams in the NHL should always be looking to gain an edge with how they allocate money to depth players. A half million here and a half million there adds up and then you end up losing a player of substance because of it. These margins matter more so to contenders than the bottom feeders, but isn’t the end goal to win it all?

Here is a list of all 31 teams and their fifth and sixth highest paid defensemen on the team. Your bottom pairing is an area that you can find replacement level value that needs to be sheltered and you don’t have to buck up for it.

Below is a chart created from the information I obtained from Cap Friendly. Some of these players are currently unsigned restricted free agents. I used Matt Cane’s free agent predictions to make sure each team had a dollar amount for six defensemen.




The following players were given their cap hit through Cane’s prediction model

Brandon Montour 2.629M
Joel Edmunson 3.00M
Darnell Nurse 4.955M
Matt Dumba 6.299M
Noah Hanifin 2.33M
Shea Theodore 2.05M
Ryan Pulock 1.83M
Cody Ceci 4.093M
Jacob Trouba 4.491M
Brady Skjei 2.81M

Here is how each team’s 5th and sixth highest paid defensemen shakes out



Carolina leads the way with Brett Pesce and Trevor van Riemsdyk. They have invested heavily in this area with Dougie Hamilton, Justin Faulk, Calvin De Haan, and Jaccob Slavin on the team. They have one of the best defense groups in the league. They are also rumored to be shopping Justin Faulk so in a few weeks they could be dropping on this list.

Edmonton has famously traded away Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle so they could overpay Milan Lucic and Kris Russell who finds himself on the list as the most overpriced and least effective bottom pairing player on the list.

Rounding out the 5M+ club is Pittsburgh. They gave Jamie Oleksiak right around what his qualifying offer was after playing fine for half a season with the Penguins. Jack Johnson is obviously the other player driving the price up for Pittsburgh’s bottom pair.

As for the rest of the list there are a lot of players who are on entry level contracts or are still cost controlled RFA’s. Not many of these players are veterans with a track record of replacement level play that are operating on long term contracts and sizeable cap hit. A bottom pairing is a great spot for promising players on ELC contracts to get ice time. The lion’s share of the time they won’t be worse than a veteran making more money.

The average cost in the NHL for fifth and sixth defensemen is 2.9M. The lower the better.

Thanks for reading!
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