A few days ago, I was asked by a reader to give an overview of what the New York Islanders’ offseason could look like and what moves they should make, including contract signings, trades, etc. It’s a task that will take more than one article, so I’ll be breaking it down into several pieces which will be posted over the next week or so.
The first part of this will be looking at the Islanders’ current payroll and predicting what each free agent’s new contract will look like. I thought it was fitting to start with the star of the team, Mathew Barzal.
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. 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.
*NOTE: If you don’t care about the math (which is fair), skip to after the next video to see the projections.*
I’ll give one example of doing the math, then just give the numbers that each comparable projected for Barzal’s AAV. Here’s an example of how I worked through the numbers on Mark Scheifele’s contract, which was signed ahead of the 2016-17 season for $6.125M per year.
52.4 career points
70.5 points in contract year
61.5 points average
Scheifele averaged 52.4 points per 82 throughout his career before signing and 70.5 P/82 in his contract year. The middle number between these totals is 61.5. I also have to take the $6.125M AAV and use the cap percentage that it took up in 2016-17, then apply that to the current cap (estimated at $81.5M). This brought the AAV to about $6.84M. Below, I’ll divide the AAV by the points average (decimal moved on points average).
6.84 divided by average (6.15) = 1.117 payment rate
Now, we’ll need to find Barzal’s points average, shown below:
72.5 career points
72.4 points in contract year
72.5 points average
Then, you can take this payment rate of 1.117 and multiply it by Barzal’s average points total (7.25, decimal moved). This brings Barzal’s projected AAV to $8.1M on an eight-year deal.
I used five players for this who were each starting the first year of their new contract in their season played at 23 years old (by Dec. 31). I tried to keep most fairly recent, so Scheifele is the only one on here that wasn’t entering the first year of his contract this season. Here’s what each comparable predicted Barzal’s contract at (rounded):
Point= $5.9M x 3 years
Rantanen= $8M x 6 years
Connor= $8.3M x 7 years
Schmaltz= $8.55M x 7 years
Scheifele= $8.1M x 8 years
While the numbers here are all slightly different (contract predictions aren’t a science, obviously), there’s certainly a range on the projected AAV. With this information, I think on a seven or eight-year deal, Barzal should be getting somewhere between $8M and $8.5M per year.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted this weekend):
What is your prediction for Barzal's AAV on a seven or eight-year deal?
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