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Zach Hyman’s play is so strong this year that The Athletic’s analytics team has his value pegged at $13.0 million. That’s $7.5 million more value than the $5.5 million that Hyman will make in 2022-23, according to stats analysts Shayna Goldman and Dom Luszczyszyn.
By comparison, The Athletic ranks the Toronto Maple Leafs as having $46.6 million in surplus value, the Calgary Flames $14.3 million and the Vancouver Canucks, -26.6 million. The better the team, the higher the surplus value.
Goldman and Luszczyszyn use a number of metrics, such as goals, assists, penalties drawn and taken differential, usage and team-based defensive numbers in an attempt to determine a player’s value.
I don’t claim to be an expert in their work and their description left me with some unanswered questions, but their method looks sound enough, at least when it comes to evaluating the offensive capabilities of players. Goals and assists, as always, are a reliable indicator of individual offensive thrust.
Evaluating defensive players with team-based metrics, such as how many goals against or shots against a player is out on the ice for, fails to zero in on the individual defensive contributions and mistakes of each player, and it’s in this area I found myself in most disagreement with The Athletic rankings of the Oiler players.
To rank defensive prowess, Bruce McCurdy and I go over video of every Grade A shot against the Oilers, evaluating which players made major mistakes on each Grade A shot against. We publish the results so others can scrutinize our observational work, which has a subjective element.
The Athletic ranks Brett Kulak in the 62nd percentile for NHL d-men in terms of his defensive play. What I’ve seen with Kulak is a player who struggles with coverage and battles against tough competition, a player who is likely best off playing third-pairing minutes, not second-pairing. For his play this year, I’d rank Kulak in the 25th percentile for defensive play, just behind Evan Bouchard, 33rd percentile by my own estimate, Tyson Barrie, 50th percentile, Cody Ceci, 66th percentile, and Darnell Nurse, 75th percentile.
The Athletic has Nurse in the 42nd percentile and say his real value is $6.2 million this year, whereas I would peg him at $8.0 million.
I also think The Athletic has Hyman’s defensive play ranked a bit too highly at 72 per cent. I’d peg him at 50 per cent, given the relatively high number of major mistakes on Grade A shots against that he makes for a winger. I’d peg his value at $11.5 million.
My own estimates are based on The Athletic’s work, with adjustments made when I differ when them on the defensive prowess of players, and maybe adding in a bit more value when it comes to toughness, as seen in players like Nurse and Evander Kane.
It’s an interesting attempt that The Athletic is making here, and as more individual metrics become available league-wide for NHL players, their fairness and accuracy will only improve.
For now, it looks like the Oilers have plenty of valuable contracts, which makes for both a good team and also one that has trade-able pieces, if it should come to that. For example, if other teams value Kulak or Tyson Barrie the way that the Athletic does, it should be possible to move out one of those players rather easily in a trade.
Source: EdmontonJournal
