The New York Islanders are set for another busy offseason, with key players in need of new contracts.
One those those players is forward Anthony Beauvillier, who’s a restricted free agent. Beauvillier scored 15 goals and 28 points in 47 games this year, a pace of 26 goals and 49 points per 82 games. He’s due for a big raise from his $2.1 million AAV but there’s a good chance that he could end up on another bridge deal, given New York’s cap situation.
A little while back, I came up with a simple method to predict some contracts and I’ve been able to get reasonably close to the AAV on most, provided the term came in as expected. Essentially, it’s a matter of finding a middle number between the player’s career points per 82 average at the point they signed the deal and their points per 82 average in their contract year. Then, you can take the AAV with that number and essentially find a cost per points average. I’ll give one example of doing the math, then just give the numbers that each comparable projected for Beauvillier’s contract.
I apologize if you’ve seen this already in a past contract prediction and if you’re not interested in the math, you can skip to below the next video to get right to the projections.
Here’s an example of how I worked through the numbers on Jake DeBrusk’s two-year contract, which was signed ahead of the 2020-21 season for $3.68M per year, in order to predict Beauvillier's contract.
DeBrusk averaged 48.5 points per 82 throughout his career before signing and 44.2 points per 82 in his contract year. The middle number between these totals is 46.4.
For players who signed before the cap went up to $81.5 million per year, I’ll have to adjust their AAV to make sure it’s applicable for today’s cap, based on their cap percentage. DeBrusk did sign once the cap was already at $81.5 million though, so his cap percentage is still applicable.
Below, I’ll divide the AAV by the points average (decimal moved on points average).
3.68 divided by average (4.64) = 0.7931 payment rate
Now, we’ll need to find Beauvillier’s points average, shown below:
38.2 career points per 82
48.9 points per 82 in contract year
43.5 points per 82 average
Then, you can take this payment rate of 0.7931 and multiply it by Beauvillier’s average points total (4.35, decimal moved). This brings Beauvillier’s projected AAV to $3.45M on a two-year deal.
So here’s a list of how past contracts would project Beauvillier’s next contract using this strategy, based on players who were around the same age when they signed their contract (with players’ ages by Dec. 31 in the first year of the contract in brackets). It only includes players who were signed in the offseason directly before starting the first year of their new contract:
Athanasiou (24): $3.60M x 2 years
DeBrusk (24): $3.45M x 2 years
Vrana (23): $3.45M x 2 years
Teravainen (23): $3.45M x 2 years
Reinhart (23): $3.40M x 2 years
Fiala (23): $3.40M x 2 years
Toffoli (23): $3.25M x 2 years
Mantha (24): $3.05M x 2 years
Buchnevich (24): $3.00M x 2 years
I did also look at some longer term projections using five-year contracts from the last seven or eight years, shown below:
Ennis (25): $4.95M x 5 years
Niederreiter (25): $4.90M x 5 years
Bailey (24): $4.80M x 5 years
Schwartz (24): $4.80M x 5 years
Miller (25): $4.65M x 5 years
Palmieri (25): $4.55M x 5 years
So if the Islanders and Beauvillier agreed to another two-year bridge deal, it could be as low as around a $3 million AAV, but the more likely range would be between a $3.25 and $3.5 million AAV. If the Islanders went long-term, a five-year deal would likely land an AAV between $4.5 and $5 million.
Just by filling in the blanks, we could probably also project that a three-year deal would mean an AAV between $3.5 and $4 million, while a four-year deal would likely land an AAV between $4 and $4.5 million.
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How long do you expect Anthony Beauvillier's next contract to be?
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