As I have said before...In order to preview what teams will do this season it is important to look at what they got from their players in certain positions versus what they paid last year. Some teams have addressed some of these issues in the off-season, but for the most part what they have they can feel pretty much stuck with because of the salary cap and that is when many of these teams look to what they are really getting or what they are paying...
So what I did here is take the amount paid out in salaries last year and divide that by the total number of goals scored and I came up with the number 317,725. That number stands for how much a goal cost last year. $317,725.
For example....The Penguins scored 278 goals last year. So they got roughly $88.3 Million in value. Not bad when you consider the salary cap was 73 Million.
Conversely, the Avalanche score 165 goals. So they got a value of $52.4M.
So what did each team actually pay? I started off just using the straight up salary cap numbers from the teams, but when you look at those numbers it includes players that missed the entire year or most of the year to injury..Teams could eliminate that number through LTIR if they were above the cap with LTIR... If they weren't above the cap they couldn't. So I took out the money for the injured players who missed the entire season, and I took out proportionate money for injured players who missed part of the season...
Then I eliminated the Goalie salaries...because this is about goal scoring...
Now for the math:
I multiplied the team's goals by $317,725 to come up with a money value for the goals they scored. I then subtracted what they actually paid in salary to get the following list.
What Teams Got the Most Value For Money Spent on Scoring?
So what does this tell us?
Not so much in terms of how these teams will perform moving forward, but more about what teams are getting for their money..
...If they are high on this list but didn't do well last year that could be tied to good decisions on what they spent, but perhaps not spending enough to get it done...
Or maybe they need to address certain areas when it comes to scoring...
Of course the NHL isn't all scoring and I will do the defensive equivalent to this soon...I will also, and more importantly, get into individual players on my team previews...and that is where we will start to see the sign posts pointing towards possible moves/trades....
Let me know what you think so far. Open to all ideas...thanks..
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— Michael Augello (@MikeInBuffalo) August 2, 2017