Yesterday afternoon the Kings made it official that they had inked defenseman Alec Martinez to a
six-year extension worth $24 Million dollars.
The 27-year old has become something of a cult hero since his cup-clinching goal and the "Jazz Hands" celebration that followed.
Cult standing aside, is this a good contract?
Let's talk about what we do know with Martinez.
Martinez will now be tied as the Kings third highest paid defenseman with Jake Muzzin, behind Drew Doughty and the suspended Slava Voynov. He has played 221 games over his 5 seasons as a roster mainstay and accumulated 62 points. His best statistical year came last season when he had 22 points and 11 goals in 61 games from the back end. He has yet to complete an entire 82 game season for the club, or a 70+ for that matter, as he has been a healthy scratch on a number of occasions throughout his tenure.
In terms of his standing on the roster, Martinez gives the Kings a good amount of depth as 4-6, left-shooting, defenseman. As it currently stands, Martinez is the only true puck moving defenseman capable of covering the right point. If you look even further down into the pipeline the Kings at left handed puck movers, they have even fewer options. Roland McKeown, Nick Ebert, Paul LaDue and Colin Miller are all right handed. Only Zac Leslie, who has been coined as an Alec Martinez lite, and Andrew Bodnarchuk are left handed. While it may seem unimportant, the handedness of Martinez gives the Kings a bit of variety in both even strength and powerplay situations, as the other options are Jake Muzzin, Bradyen McNabb, and Robyn Regehr. The other factor to consider here is the long term absence of Slava Voynov. Martinez may or may not be thrust into more of a 3-4 position versus playing his regular 4-6 position on the depth chart without No. 26. In general, Martinez is probably one of your better 4-6 defensemen in the league. When you look at his game log from this season you can see that the Kings have been deploying him in a variety of ways. On numerous occasions he's played in the range of 23-26 minutes, but has settled in at just around 19-20 for most of his games this year. That is a decent increase from his average minutes in previous years. He also gets very few offensive zone starts. Only 41.9% of Martinez's zone starts have come in the offensive zone this year, which is the second least amongst defenseman on the team ahead of only Robyn Regehr.
That may partly explain the sharp downturn we've seen in Martinez's analytics this season when compared to previous years.
Chart courtesy of the fine blog
Own The Puck
Essentially, Martinez has been asked to play tougher minutes than his average for a variety of reasons. The overall consensus though is that the Michigan native has developed that level of trust with Darryl Sutter and the coaching staff.
Unfortunately for Martinez, this year has been a very rough year compared to his previous ones. Thus there is a surprising nature to at least the price of the contract. The Kings, at best, are paying for potential.
When you line up the 5-on-5 quality of competition, Martinez is ranking amongst the worst on the Kings. This means he isn't generally being matched up against the most difficult of opponents, yet he is still finding himself in the bottom half of the team in corsi and corsi relative. Only Robyn Regehr and the small sample size of Jamie McBain have worse numbers on the season amongst the blue liners.
Maybe it's just a bad year.
The numbers can be concerning, however, since they have been trending downwards for Martinez since about 2011-12. This year may be a little more sharp of a drop, but it isn't isolated. The only hope here is that the former University of Miami-Ohio Redhawk is experiencing something of a K-wave right now, and the upturn will come shortly as he enters the prime of his career. For this reason the term on his contract makes a lot of sense. Martinez turned 27 during the offseason, and this contract will take him up the age of 33. This seems to be a pivotal point in many NHL players careers, as they must establish whether or not they have long term value that will sustain into their late 30s. We are seeing two such situations on the Kings currently with Justin Williams and Jarret Stoll. We saw a similar situation with Marian Gaborik last year, and his instant chemistry with Anze Kopitar and his remarkable 2013-14 post-season seemed to seal the deal for Lombardi and crew. While Martinez may be on a bid of a slide statistically right now, at age 27 there are plenty of years here in the prime of his career for him to hit the upswing of this K-wave right at the perfect time.
The money value is still a sticking point though. At his best Martinez may be one of the best 4-6 defenseman in the league. Currently though, he very much isn't.
The comparisons are rudimentary given the small sample size on the season, but at current glance Martinez is comparable to the following players in various statistical categories.
TOI/60
Nick Leddy (NYI)
Josh Manson (ANA)
Mike Green (WAS)
Jonathan Ericsson (DET)
Mark Stuart (WPG)
Calvin De Haan (NYI)
iCorsi/60 (Individual Corsi = iFenwick + Shots directed at net that were blocked)
Alex Pietrangelo (STL)
Kris Letang (PITT)
Alex Edler (VAN)
Brent Seabrook (CHI)
Justin Faulk (CAR)
Erik Karlsson (OTT)
Also note that Martinez's iFenwick this year is currently 4th in the league.
His opponent CF% is a bit ugly though as he is ranked 163rd out of 234 observable defensemen, and his CA/60 is sitting at 208th. Amongst him in the names are Chris Phillips, Roman Polak, Michael Stone, and Nick Grossman. The only saving grace amongst some of these numbers is the fact that Martinez is given way less opportunity in his zone starts and he, for the most part, is much younger than the majority of the players around him. Still, Martinez is having a rough time for the most part, and teams are exposing he and partner Robyn Regehr. Maybe you're thinking that Regehr is slowing him down? Only slightly.
Martinez holds a 46.9% CF when with Regehr, but only a 48.2 without him. There is a difference, but it's only slightly.
Also, let's look at cap hit comparables for a $4 million dollar a year defenseman shall we?
The following defenseman are all making $4 million dollars next season:
Mark Giordano (CGY)
Cam Fowler (ANA)
Roman Josi (NSH)
John Carlson (WAS)
The following defenseman are making within 500K of $4 million a season:
Nic Hjalmarsson (CHI)
Marc-Edouard Vlasic (SJS)
Erik Johnson (COL)
Kevin Shattenkirk (STL)
Jake Gardiner (TOR)
Dennis Seidenberg (BOS)
Josh Gorges (BUF)
Travis Hamonic (NYI)
Alexei Emelin (MTL)
Justin Braun (SJS)
There is some significant variance in quality with those names, but ask yourself if you feel comfortable with Alec Martinez being amongst them.
With all the variation in Martinez's analytics it's hard to really finger a comparable. He is doing very well in some categories, but very poorly in a lot of categories.
The trends have been downwards, but you hope this is just a valley in what is soon to be a peak in the 27-year old's career. He has shown flashes of being a real viable and consistent 4-6 defenseman. Heck, maybe even as good as a 2-3 defenseman on some teams (Insert Edmonton analysis here.)
Therein lies the risk and reward of this contract, although I would actually put this one on the more risky side of the Dean Lombardi scale.
If one side of the spectrum is the Muzzin, Williams, and Green contracts, then this Martinez deal is probably on the side of the spectrum with Gaborik and Quick (Although the way Quick is playing that 5.8 hit is stupid good). It could pay off in a tremendous way, or it could end up being one of those deals you look at on the payroll and sigh heavily.
As of next year the Kings will be paying approximately $22.32 Million dollars to six defenseman (Doughty, Voynov, Martinez, Muzzin, McNabb, Greene). That is 32% of the Kings payroll if the cap is $69M. In comparison, this year Chicago has $21.6 tied up in six guys (Hjalmarsson, Keith, Seabrook, Oduya, Rundblad, Roszival) and St. Louis has $23.1 invested in six as well (Shattenkirk, Pietrangelo, Cole, Gunnarsson, Bouwmeester, Jackman). So they definitely aren't on the extreme side of things when it comes to salary structure. That seems to be about normal for a potentially deep playoff team.
The term is great and makes perfect sense, but the value of it in the money aspect remains to be seen and probably won't be answered for at least a few years. Given the current situation with Voynov, the rumors of a potential rising in the salary cap, and Martinez's status as an unrestricted free agent (UFA) versus a restricted free agent (RFA), there are factors that likely drove the price up for Lombardi. Also, when you have the chip of "Cup-winning goal" on your side it apparently makes a difference. Just look what it did for Dave Bolland, the highest paid forward on Florida's roster.
With the contract talks out of the way, Martinez will be free to just play the game and not worry about his future. That is always helpful. He was drafted by L.A., developed by L.A., and is a significant piece of Los Angeles Kings lore. Add another home-grown piece to the long term puzzle for the Kings.
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