Bang for your buck? - Fantasy Sports Forums

duballstar014 · #1 01-04-2011, 06:40 PM

Some of us are in salary leagues and looking for performance out of the bargain bin. For example, a $7 million 40-point player is much less desirable than a $600k 35-point player in my opinion. I started out by taking the 2010-11 salary of every player in the league and calculating what their salary per game is, then using that to gauge statistical value. Even if you're not in a salary league, salaries are important to look at because it can tell you how valuable (or expendable) the organization thinks you are. Here's some food for thought.

If you took every player in the league that has scored at least one point this year and averaged the point totals, you'd find that the average NHL player has 13 points on the year. I'm going to double that and take a look at players who've scored 26 points or more, which is a select 81 players.

These 81 players have an average salary of $4.6 million. In fact, only two of them make less than a million...and they both play for the same team. Of these players, Claude Giroux has the lowest salary per point, at only $11,165/point. By contrast, Pittsburgh is paying Sidney Crosby $65,291/point and Washington paying Alex Ovechkin $110,784 per point. Below are the top steals with at least 26 points. I think we can all agree that the majority, if not all of these guys, will not be traded anytime soon. All of these guys would make excellent additions on a fantasy roster, but they would be most valuable in a salary league.

So there's the good...what about the bad? Now I decided to look at the other spectrum completely and take players who've scored less than 26 points, but I don't want the absolute bottom of the basement, so I make another filter saying I need at least 5 points. Notice anything significant? I thought it was interesting that of the top 14 in this mold, 4 are from NJ and 4 are from OTT. You'll also notice that neither of these teams had a top player from the lowest salary/point stats. This isn't a knock on either of the two teams and you can take from it what you want, but these numbers tell me that each team should have some sort of major organizational move, whether it be a trade, call up, waiving of players, coaching change, etc. NJ already made their coaching change, but will it even be enough? I don't think many people would argue that Ottawa is looking to make their move.

Now, I'm not naive. Just because a player isn't scoring the way he should with a big contract doesn't mean he'll be traded. Many times a fellow GM will not take on that contract. There are times though toward the end of a season, where someone will be willing to take on a salary dump (Toskala and Blake for example) so it is a possibility. If the team is backed into a corner though, there's a chance your guy might end up waived with no takers and wind up in the AHL...sorry Sheldon Souray. When a team has one or two players underperforming, they can deal with it. When there are multiple guys doing it, you can almost always guess that change is coming. I'm aware that some of the guys (i.e. Clarkson or Handzus) aren't being paid strictly to score, but if you own any of the guys above, you should be aware that management is likely getting pressure to make a move and if they can move salary, they'll likely try to. Keep that in mind as you prepare your fantasy roster for the playoff stretch only a few months away.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed the read. Just for your time, here's a bonus trivia question:

Which two players (tied) have the lowest point total for anyone who has earned at least $1,000,000 this year in the NHL?

Edit: For the record, I've been working on this spreadsheet the last 2 days and have figured out a fairly simplistic way of updating it as the season progresses. I plan on using it for future articles too so if there's one or two small things you'd like to see in addition, give me a shout. Maybe I can incorporate it.

5hole · #2 01-04-2011, 07:07 PM

Boogard & Orr...lol

Killer67 · #3 01-04-2011, 07:10 PM

Okposo & Streit

5hole · #4 01-04-2011, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 5hole

Boogard & Orr...lol

Whats even funnier is rookie goalie C.Schnieder has more points them and has only played in 11 gms. He may actually have the best ppg of all goalies in the leauge