Interesting regarding the potential next contract for Cozens.
Doubtful that his next contract will be a bridge deal, unless Cozens wants one, similar to what Dahlin signed.
https://www.expectedbuffa...-from-the-buffalo-sabres/
>>> Before the season, there was discussion on who would be that player to take the next step for the Buffalo Sabres. Dylan Cozens was a popular selection for that jump and through 23 games this season he has delivered.
The 21-year-old has nine and 21 points so far this season. Cozens has emerged as a true second-line center on the youngest and one of the most exciting lines in the league. He’s fifth on the team in expected goal share at 5 on 5 in Evolving Wild’s model and fifth in their goals above replacement model.
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The Comparables
I could go on for a little bit about how well Cozens has played, but instead, I want to focus on what this means for his next contract. I think I’ve said this a few times now, but I was able to confirm through multiple sources that Cozens is a player the Sabres were going to approach about working out a long-term extension. He’s a restricted free agent without arbitration rights at the end of this season.
I went digging in Cap Friendly over the last week searching for comparable contracts for Cozens under the following criteria:
Similar age (between 21-23)
Post-Covid (contracts within the last two years)
Non-arbitration eligible
In my conversation with sources, Jack Hughes’ contract with the New Jersey Devils came up as a contract that could be used as a comparable in negotiations. I get how that may not make sense to you on the surface, but we’ll get to that part in a little bit.
Using Hughes as the comparable in Cap Friendly, I found three other contracts that can be used as a baseline for a Cozens long-term extension. The four contracts I used here are as follows:
Jack Hughes (2021) – 8-years, $8 million cap hit | 9.82 cap hit percentage
Nick Suzuki (2021) – 8-years, $7.875 million cap hit | 9.66 CH%
Tim Stutzle (2022) – 8-years, $8.35 million cap hit | 10.12 CH%
Josh Norris (2022) – 8-years, $7.95 million cap hit | 9.64 CH%
All four of these players met the criteria I mentioned above. Hughes and Stutzle were 21 years old when they signed their contract. Suzuki was 22 years old and Norris was 23.
>>> The next step here was to line up all five of these players and see how their production lines up. At the end of the day, goals and points are still kings in contract negotiations at the NHL level. I lined up Cozens’ production for his career through this season against the other four players for their careers leading up to when they signed their contracts. So, to be clear, Hughes’ production you’ll see below is from when he entered the league through the 2020-21 season.
>>> I looked at goals and points per 60 minutes in not only all situations, but 5 on 5 as well. As you can see, Cozens grades out well here in this group and above Hughes in all four areas. These, by the way, are Cozens’ production numbers before he added to it the last two games.
Getting back to Hughes, you can see at a similar age that Cozens had higher production levels on a per 60 minutes basis. Of course, Hughes has the first overall pedigree and has taken off for the New Jersey Devils. However, this is why his contract can be used as a comparable for Cozens.
If you take this information in, you can start to begin to craft what a new long-term deal looks like for Cozens. The obvious part is eight years seems like the going rate on a long-term deal for a player his age and skill set.
Next, we can do some math to get to the cap hit. If we take the average cap hit percentage of the four comparable contracts (9.81%) and multiply it against the current NHL cap ceiling, we get an annual average value of $8.09 million. For argument’s sake, let’s round down to an even $8 million.
Now, where this can get tricky for the Sabres is if they let this play into the offseason. The cap could go all the way up to $86.5 million next season if the NHLPA pays back all owed escrow to the owners. That would bring Cozens to an $8.5 million cap hit with a 9.81 cap hit percentage. If the cap only goes up $1 million to 83.5, that works out to an $8.2 million cap hit.
It would appear the Sabres should have some desire to get this done during this season and not wait it out to the summer if they do want to go long-term.
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Tage Thompson
The last part of this is the unknown variable of Tage Thompson’s contract. You may recall he signed a seven-year deal with a $7.14 million cap hit in the summer. It’s safe to say that he has outplayed that contract before it has even kicked in.
With their top-line center locked in at $7.14 million, logic would dictate that they wouldn’t want to pay their second-line center more than that. However, as we just figured out, Cozens’ comparables are for a higher cap hit.
Thus we have our unknown variable in this discussion.
Do the Sabres tell Cozens’ side that they want him to come in no higher than Thompson on a long-term deal? Does Cozens’ agent tell them too bad and point to the list of comparables we just went over?
Of course, the two sides could meet somewhere in the middle, but that would likely be above Thompson’s cap hit. I would imagine the Sabres want to follow a model that has been made famous by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Get a good player on a team-friendly deal and continue to get your young players locked in early following the standards of the initial team-friendly contract. Winning Stanley Cups and having no state income tax in Florida helps in those contract discussions. The Sabres can offer neither of those things.
It’ll be interesting to see how things play out here as the season goes along. Cozens has put himself in line to get a new deal between $7-8 million. The question is if the two sides want to go long-term, which end of the range does the deal eventually fall in?
