Quick Hits: July 5, 2019
1) July 5 is the arbitration filing deadline for eligible restricted free agents (RFAs). Among the Flyers' remaining RFAs, only Scott Laughton is arbitration eligible.
When a player files for arbitration, he forgoes his RFA status (although he theoretically could sign an offer sheet with another team until July 5) and awaits a hearing. Cases are typically heard in late July to early August. The team and the player can negotiate right up to the time of the hearing, and can cancel the hearing if an agreement is reached beforehand. Arbitration decisions are generally for one-season contracts, although in some cases, it can be for two.
Laughton carried a $962,500 cap hit but a real-dollar base salary of $1.05 million in the second and final season of the now-expired two-year deal he signed in 2017. This past season, he dressed in all 82 games (he has only missed one game over the past two seasons), logged a career-high average 14:51 of ice time, recorded career highs of 12 goals and 32 points while starting 63.7 percent of his even-strength shifts in the defensive zone. Thirty of Laughton's 32 points came at even-strength, with the other two (a pair of assists) coming shorthanded.
Laughton won a career-high 54.2 percent of his faceoffs in 2018-19. Primarily a center, he also played left wing at certain junctures of the season. A regular on the Flyers penalty kill, averaging 2:14 of PK ice time per game, he was a contributor to the team's significant upswing after Thanksgiving (after a disastrous sub-70 percent first quarter than sank the club's full-season totals).
If there were to be an arbitration hearing in late July of early August, the aforementioned may be issues brought out by the Laughton side to justify their side. On the Flyers side, if they were to end of in front of arbitrator, they could bring out the fact that Laughton's underlying stats (such as the in-vogue "expected goals" analytic) trended negatively with the increased shutdown responsibilities.
Offensively, his overall decent productivity for a player in his role was interspersed with a nearly two-month long goal drought (26 games, 8 assists) between mid-December and mid-February that Laughton himself admitted had his confidence at low ebb for awhile. Going goalless on 40 shots on net in that span pulled his season shooting percent way down for awhile although he rebounded to a final 9.2 percent. On the PK, largely due to the team's awful start and a tough spell over the final week or two after Philly was mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, Laughton was out for 30 opposition power play goals. Overall, he was out for 89 total opposition goals.
With the Flyers recent acquisition and signing of Kevin Hayes, Laughton is likely to return to the fourth-line center role at even strength that comprised most of his games prior to this past season. That is, assuming good health for Sean Couturier, Hayes, and Nolan Patrick. If he plays a wing, Laughton conceivably could move up periodically back into the top nine.
2) There are always pros and cons when it comes to trading to fill a need versus signing a free agent for the same purpose: assets and players expended in the acquisition cost vs. the likelihood of cap overpayment.
There is an ongoing debate among Flyers fans as to whether the Flyers would have been better off trading for Nazem Kadri rather than acquiring the rights to Kevin Hayes and then signing him to a seven-year contract that carries a $7.14 million cap hit.
One can debate which one is the better player strictly in terms of on-ice strengths and weaknesses. Cap-wise, there is no question having that Kadri at a $4.5 million cap hit for the next three seasons is a significantly better value than Hayes a $7.14 (with a full no-movement clause on top of it). On the flip side, the Flyers' acquisition cost for Hayes was a fifth-round pick (a point of the Draft where there is statistically less than a 10 percent chance of a draftee ever playing so much as a single NHL game, although there are a few home runs), whereas Colorado had to trade defenseman Tyson Barrie in order acquire Kadri.
The closest Flyers equivalent would have been to trade Shayne Gostisbehere for Kadri. Instead, the Flyers -- who, lest we forget, still have to deal with getting restricted free agent Ivan Provorov signed to a new contract -- still have Ghost. They still have all of their prospects in the farm system. They also didn't have to trade off any high-end Draft picks in 2019 or 2020 to fill the need for a second-line (or at least 2A in a performance-based rotation) center.
Instead, the Flyers ended up offsetting their trade for Justin Braun by trading down a mere three spots in the first round of the 2019 Draft (going from 11th to 14th is a negligible difference in terms of likelihood of selecting a future top 6 forward or top 4 D) and getting a second round pick. The next day, they traded up near the top of the second round and landed a second first-round caliber prospect. It remains to be seen what Cam York and Bobby Brink turn into down the round but, at least right now, they are two nice additions to the farm system.
When all factors are weighed, there are plenty of knee-jerk reactions but no one definitive "right" answer as to whether the Flyers would have been better served to trade for a center than to do what they did with the Hayes acquisition. My own opinion is that a team is generally better off focusing more on acquisition cost and then rejiggering the cap considerations (within limits) than to potentially open one hole to plug another. It's a different matter if there is the depth to withstand a deal, but I personally would not have been comfortable in saying that the Flyers had the blueline depth to withstand a similar trade to the one Colorado made with Toronto.
3) When it comes to weighing Player A's salary versus Player B's, it is a common fallacy among fans (and some in the media) to compare apples to oranges. In most cases, desirable prospective unrestricted free agents carry more negotiating leverage than comparable RFAs. Additionally, the timing of a certain deal matters. For example, if Seth Jones' first RFA-eligible season had come after his fourth NHL season rather than his first three, his current deal would be considerably higher. Lastly, the passage of time and upward adjustments of the salary cap floor and ceiling has a corresponding inflationary effect on salaries.
For these reasons, it is not always a valid argument to say "If Player A is only making Salary 1 then there's no way Player B should get more." The security afforded to a player on a long-term deal comes with a risk of falling below market value as the deal ages. Of course, teams take the opposite risk if the player doesn't perform up to expectations and they are on the hook for multiple seasons to come. For example, at the time it was signed, Edmonton's deal with Milan Lucic ($6 million cap hit) already seemed to be ill-advised and the deal has aged about as poorly as any contract in the entire league. The contract also still has four more seasons to run.
4) A more apples-to-apples comparison of salaries is how much of a team's total cap allotment is allocated to a single player, its core group, and by position.
In the Flyers' case, Sean Couturier, whose deal still has three seasons to run, is a major bargain at a $4.33 million hit. That, plus the fact that Nolan Patrick is still on his entry-level deal ($925,000) for one more season, probably figured into Chuck Fletcher's comfort level in going as high as he did on Hayes. Another factor: Hayes' $7.14 million basically replaces the combined $7.05 million that the Flyers took into last season on the now-departed Jori Lehterठand Dale Weise.
That doesn't guarantee that Hayes will individually justify his contract's term and cost -- the bar is set mighty high on that one, and the Flyers got zero discount in having to pay him at full UFA market value. What it does to, though, is explain why the Flyers felt they had some wiggle room heading into this offseason to pursue the center they felt would fit in best under Alain Vigneault.
Ultimately, it's the collective team result that matters most. For all that people get caught in individual stats -- I'm not immune it, either -- it's team results that matter in the big picture. Some puzzle pieces fit together and others don't, or at least not as well.
At least on paper, the Flyers got more potent at center and deeper on the blueline, with potentially better-slotted personnel on each line and pairing. There's still a ton of work, however, to get the pieces to gel. A strong second NHL season from Carter Hart would go a long, long way in that regard. Deep through the middle and steady in goal gives a team a pretty good chance at making the playoffs and a fighting chance at winning a given playoff series (with the burden on the goalie increasing in correspondence to the difficulty of the overall matchups).
5) On a related note to topics 3 and 4, I have a feeling that some of the same Flyers fans -- the group that is basically negative on anything and everything -- who moan about why they didn't sign Artemi Panarin when the Rangers did (nevermind the fact that the longstanding rumors that he craved playing in New York, and the choice came down to Rangers vs. Islanders) would have been the first to complain "overpayment" had the players been willing to come to Philadelphia and signed the identical deal, which carries a cap hit of $11.64 million for the next seven seasons.
Panarin's cap hit occupies 14.29 percent of the cap ceiling for the Rangers. To keep it in an apples-to-apples basis, that is in the same ballpark as Patrick Kane's deal with the Blackhawks (15.22 percent) ca. 2015-16. Without accounting for salary cap inflation, it pays Panarin roughly $1.1 million more in cap hit for 2018-19 than Kane's deal (which runs through 2022-23). The Panarin deal is also in the ballpark of Sidney Crosby's deal (14.5 percent) with the Penguins ca. 2013-14.
Let's put this front and center: Panarin is undeniably a great offensive player who is likely to continue to put up very strong stats in years to come. There is no disputing that.
However, he is not quite of the caliber of Kane or Crosby or even Claude Giroux (12.87 percent, ca. 2014). Unlike the other three, Panarin has never had a 90-point season (87 is his career year to date). He's never won (Crosby, Kane) or been a finalist (Giroux) for the Hart Trophy nor finished in the top eight -- much less the top 3 -- in an Art Ross Trophy race. Unlike Kane or Crosby, Panarin has never scored 32-plus goals in a season. One can also not argue that Panarin lacked quality linemates in Chicago or Columbus.
Generally speaking, most teams try to build through the middle -- centers, Dmen, starting goalie -- and then round out their roster on the wings. The Rangers are presently doing it differently. Their nucleus will be two high-quality wingers (Panarin and incoming rookie Kaapo Kakko), center Mika Zibanejad, some quality blueliners (led by recent acquisition Jacob Trouba, a restricted free agent this summer but negotiating a long-term extension), aging goalie Henrik Lundqvist and young netminder Alexandar Georgiev.
The Rangers certainly should be an immediately improved team but appear, at least to me, to be still be somewhat in rebuild mode -- the farm system has been improved for sure over the last 18 months -- no matter what Panarin does. In the short term, they have gone from a likely non-playoff team to perhaps a bubble team but one that still lacks depth. Panarin had more around him in Columbus than he will, at least in the immediate future, with the Rangers.
That doesn't mean the Rangers made a mistake in paying what it took to land Panarin. He gives them a centerpiece, a marketing tool for fan interest and, likely, years of 80+ plus point seasons to come. Any team would love to have the player. But the Rangers will not get Crosby-like or Kane-like production from the player. If Giroux is a half-step down from the NHL's true elites, Panarin is the next half-step down from there. Still a great player. Still vital to a nucleus.
But to say, strictly on merit, Panarin worth north of the cap allotment that Giroux got in 2014 or within .2 percent of what Crosby got in 2013 and a shade less than one percent off Kane's allotment in 2015 is to overrate Panarin a bit. Rahter, what we really have here is the inflationary effect of UFA status versus extending an in-house player.
6) July 5: Happy 50th birthday, John LeClair.