The first part of this series focused on the acquisition of star players, while the second examined how former championship teams transitioned from the rebuilding phase to the point at which they became competitive. This third and final installment will focus on salary cap management.
Having a star player in the second half of a long-term contract
Given that every NHL organization operates under the same budget constraints when building its roster, it is the general managers who spend that money most efficiently who end up being the most successful. The long-term contracts handed out to Hutson, Caufield, Slafkovsky, Suzuki and Dobson already provide a considerable amount of surplus value to the Canadiens, especially in the context of a rising salary cap. The teams included in our sample also benefited from cap inflation. Many of them relied on at least one star player who was already in the second half of a long-term contract.
A rebuilding team can afford to overpay a player early in his career, knowing that it will later benefit from a discount once its contention window opens. Conversely, a team like the Maple Leafs, for example, has never truly been able to fully capitalize on the surplus value offered by the NHL’s best players, largely because the contracts given to their young stars were shorter term deals that had to be renegotiated upward rather quickly.
This does not mean, however, that teams should play roulette when handing out long-term contracts to young players. A current Kings employee showed in the past that one bad contract has a negative impact comparable in magnitude to the positive impact of two good contracts.
Don’t pay too much for depth players
Good teams do not spend significant money on depth players. The reason is fairly simple: the difference in contribution between most bottom-of-the-lineup players is, at best, marginal. For example, if we tried to evaluate each player’s contribution at even strength this season using a fairly simple formula based on shot attempts and goals, we would find that the gap between Nathan MacKinnon and the 20th-best contributor is equivalent to the gap between the 88th and the 416th-best player in the NHL according to that metric. In short, it is elite players who drive the difference.
This does not mean that depth has no impact on a team’s season. In 2016, Dom Luszczyszyn estimated that teams reaching the Stanley Cup Final were getting 1.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) more from their depth than teams whose run ended in the conference finals.
That said, the teams in our sample typically do not allocate more than 4% of the salary cap to players who play fewer than 16 minutes per game. Generally, only the top 8 to 10 players on the teams we studied earned contracts representing more than 3 to 4% of the total cap space available.
By signing Jake Evans and, more recently, Alexandre Texier, the Canadiens are committing more than $5 million to players whose contribution may very well be comparable to that of players available at the league minimum. Similar concerns could also arise in the future in the case of Mike Matheson. When the Canadiens are at their most competitive, Matheson will be older, and it is possible that his contract will be viewed in much the same way we currently view those of Anderson and Gallagher.
Build infrastructures
Good teams do more than simply refrain from handing out substantial contracts to depth players, they are also able to identify contributors, sometimes essential ones, at minimal cost. The Lightning, which operates one of the oldest analytics departments in the NHL, introduced us this season to Charles-Edouard D’Astous, Dominic James and Gage Goncalves, not to mention the breakout season Darren Raddysh is having.
Jeff Marek also reported last summer that the Panthers’ general manager never makes a decision without consulting his analytics department.
In short, good teams have the infrastructure in place to identify undervalued talent.
Final thoughts: Are the Canadiens built like past champions?
The Canadiens are following in the footsteps of past championship teams. While the teams in our sample all met at least 11 of the 13 criteria identified in this three-part series, the Habs comfortably check eight of them. The organization also appears to have its future championship goaltender. It is also reasonable to expect that, among the group of young stars the Canadiens are building around, one or two could eventually establish themselves as consensus top-15 or top-20 players in the league.
That said, the team is still searching for a second star centre. If Canadiens management were able to acquire one, there is little to suggest that Montreal would not follow the path of previous champions. In that scenario, it would not be a few bad contracts that would prevent the Canadiens from winning their 25th Stanley Cup.