Newf,

Solid effort and a good read. For me I could counter most of your points that you presented, which means you haven't convinced me of your argument at all...

One thing you need to be careful when looking at stats, is you need to see a bigger picture than just raw numbers... One aspect that you failed to acknowledge is the games played aspect. Someone who scores 10 goals in 10 games is much different than someone who scores 10 in 82. That's where I can counter a lot of the points that you've raised.

Goalscoring front... One thing you have to consider is games played and healthiness as well, Gomez played 548 out of a possible 574 games in order to tally 116 goals... If you work it in terms of goals/game it's 0.21. On the Getz front, he only played 512 out of a possible 574 and he tallied 137 goals... Once again if you work it in terms of goals/game it's 0.27. It's a subtle difference, but if you consider that over a full 82 game schedule, it's an extra 5 goals... Another factor you need to consider is Gomez's "missed games" are spread around, so they might have been knick-knack injuries which really won't affect the play/production over a full season. With Getz' injuries they were blocked, so there might be larger influences over the season. Eg.) the 4-5 games after returning he had to get back to game shape, so that might have decreased his production during that span...

Another big factor that needs to be addressed is the 33 goals that Gomez had, if you look at his career breakdown that 33 is a massive outlier. Everything else is within that 13-16 area. So that 33 you would probably have thought would have influenced the contract that he got with the Rangers. If you look at Getzlaf's numbers, you could argue that he's consistently at the 25 range... Getz didn't have a 50 goal season to inflate his goal totals like Gomez did, but he did have a 11 goal season last year that pulled the average down.

If he's healthy, he's more of a 25 goal scorer than 17, so I don't know where you pulled that number from?

Assists front... once again you didn't factor in games played. Gomez recorded 334 in 548. A/game of 0.61. Getz recorded 335 A in 512 games for A/game of 0.65. Once again subtle difference but adds up to an extra 3 assists over a full 82 game season.

Playoff performance... Once again solid points that you raised, but you can't look entirely at just point production. To me during the playoff runs, Gomez was a "tag along" or a "role player", he helped his team win, but I don't know if he was the cog that ran everything. He had Parise, Elias and even Gionta to help him out. I remembered more of Parise and Elias in those 2005-06 and 06-07 playoff runs than I did of Gomez... In that 08-09 Ducks run, Getz and Perry were monsters, and they were very much memorable in that run. Like you said, GMs are going to remember that, which is what's going to earn Getz a massive high-priced contract from multiple teams... The difference for me is Getz was memorable, Gomez wasn't.

Weak free agent class Another thing you also have to consider is that Gomez was overpaid, because of Sather... After watching years and years of Gomez playing with the Devils tormenting him, Sather I'm sure would have been all right here's our chance to weaken out competition and stab them in their hearts, by poaching one of their leaders. The Rangers/Devils rivalry is massive, I'm sure that played a role in Gomez's massive over-rated contract. Also Gomez's FA class was very weak as well, so that might have been a major reason which inflated his contract.

One of the biggest things that I think you brushed across is the physicality and size of Getz compared to Gomez. Getz is 6'4", 221. Gomez is 5'11" 200... So I mean GMs are going to take that into consideration as well. There aren't very many number 1 C's who have the size and plays with such physicality as Getz. He averaged 2.55 HIT per game over the last 3 seasons... 0.83 BS per game over that same span... compared to 0.37 HIT and 0.36 BS for Gomez. This is one of the major aspects that separates Getz from Gomez.

So what you'll find is that Gomez is over-paid in terms of his contract because all he brings to the table is points (when he doesn't produce that, that's the main reason why he's considered overpaid), he also did very well to use that "one year" to really secure himself a lucrative contract. There wasn't enough consistency in Gomez's play to warrant such a high priced contract. $7.35 mil per season, when the salary cap was $50.3 mil was ludacris! (14.6% of the cap), but he and his agents did a great job of luring Sather in. Getz isn't going to be getting that type of money, in today's terms, a team would need to offer him $10.3 mil a season to be equivalent of the percentage of cap as Gomez. As far as I can tell, no team is going to commit that much money to a player not named Crosby, Malkin, Stamkos or Ovechkin. Getz brings more to the table than just points, he brings a lot of the intangibles. So he might be overpaid in terms of the points that he does produce, but he won't be an "overpaid bum 3 years down the track" because of the intangibles. If he gets $7 mil a season like you suggest, that's pretty darn good value for what he brings to the table and I don't see how you can at all consider that "overpaid"...

There's a lot more differences between Getz and Gomez than there are similarities, IMO.

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