Please explain the massive gap between him and matthews. Mc and drais have each other. Matthews at least has marner. Stamkos had St. Louis. Then point and kuch. What player even close has eichel played with. Yes he gets a lot of o zone starts. Who else on his team is an actual threat. Skinner? Remember ror didn’t want to be a babysitter either.
- Peter Richards

Watching recent games, Rinehart seems to be a threat.

Watching recent games, Rinehart seems to be a threat.
- MJL

So Rinehart and Eichel are on the same level?

New blog.

I love you PT21, but I honestly stopped reading after point 1. Trading Couts IMO would be the absolutely wrong thing to do.
- jd250

it's your thinking that has been the same thinking that has won us frank-all since I've been a fan.

Please explain the massive gap between him and matthews. Mc and drais have each other. Matthews at least has marner. Stamkos had St. Louis. Then point and kuch. What player even close has eichel played with. Yes he gets a lot of o zone starts. Who else on his team is an actual threat. Skinner? Remember ror didn’t want to be a babysitter either.
- Peter Richards

Not having high quality teams/linemates didn't exactly stop Bure, Iginla, Selanne, Mario, Dionne or OV from shooting the lights out. That level of talent transcends.

If Eichel is gonna be teammate dependent, then he's not a 'generational' talent.

Farabee
Provy
Hart

I’m 50/50 on Coots. You can keep him to build around. Lord knows you always need center depth. At the same time if the offer is just too good to pass up I think you have to do the deal. Flyers have a lot of holes to fill.

Everyone else fair game for fair, sensible trades.
- hereticpride

this

So Rinehart and Eichel are on the same level?
- Peter Richards

That's a puzzling question. You asked if anyone else on the team was a threat.

Very kind and generous of you.

lol @ bold
- Scoob

The only bad thing is that the lady meeting me outside talked to me for a good 30 mins.

In doing this analysis for the rationality for Couts re-signing, I want to lay down some basic assumptions.

1. That when people think and offer a probability for something, it represents a numerical summary of their most educated guess about the likelihood of that event. For example, if someone says: what is the likelihood of Flyers winning cup in next 4 years, there is a huge amount of variables involved. But we also buy insurance for products and firms give us prices based on odds. Last year, Wimbledon was the sole tournament that did not lose money: they had pandemic insurance.

In other words, it (summarizing lots of variables into a number/odds) is possible, and I will work with the 12% odds of a team with SK winning the SC in the first 4 years of his signing as the best educated guess of our chances.

2. Just because things are conventional does not mean they are rational. For years, the data suggested that teams in the NFL should go for 4th down more often than they did. (Before the Andy Reid era, it was so rarely seen). I don't expect to change anyone's mind. I am simply going to try and dig deeper into the cost-benefit analysis of the contract. Iotw, just keep an open mind.

3. In some of the calculations that follow, I am going to make approximations. Why? Because some of the data I hoped would be available easily is not so, and I have to use proxies and approximations. I will try to sell you that they are reasonable guesses.

4. I am going to look at the worth of a player from two metrics:
(a) His points/$ spent in contract.
(b) His impact on Stanley cup chances for his team (the change in likelihood)

I will break up Couturier's contract into two parts in my argument:

1. The first 4 years, where I will argue that based on the numbers provided, his impact will be less than what you might think on each of the following grounds:
(a) production per $ spent
(b) Change in championship chances
(c) The degree of mentorship/experience value.

2. The next 4 years, where I will argue that the contract will be overvalued in

(a) production per $ spent (he will get far more than he deserves)
(b) Change in championship chances (he will adversely affect them)

The mentorship part does not matter at the 2nd half as by then so many of our young kids should be veterans themselves. (Provy, for example, would begin year 12).

The mentorship part does not matter at the 2nd half as by then so many of our young kids should be veterans themselves. (Provy, for example, would begin year 12).
- PT21

First of all, nobody is going to read this most likely. Including me. Secondly, this statement is beyond stupid and is a likely indicator of what's to follow. As if the Flyers after the current young kids become veterans, won't ever again have more young kids on the roster. So there is no need for mentorship

I am going to look at the 12% chance of a cup during the 1st 4 Couts years and say that this 12% chance most likely corresponds to a borderline playoff club/16th place team. If you don't like fairly elementary probability/calculations, please just move to the bottom line and assume the numbers are correct.

There will be 32 teams in the league by then. Let the Flyers chances of winning cup in years 1,2,3 and 4 of the new Couts deal be labeled a/32,b/32,c/32,d/32 respectively.

Then by definition, the chances of Flyers winning a cup in at least 1 of the 4 years, is =1 minus their chances of winning none, which is =

1- [(1-a/32)(1-b/32)(1-c/32)(1-d/32)]=0.12 (12%)

Now, I am going to make an approximation. Unfortunately, I could not find a spreadsheet with NHL final draft order determined after cup (I found actual draft orders but that is very distorted because of trades). I could also use NHL regular season standings as a proxy but again, that is not perfect either as we are really taking about final season standings after playoffs.

What we do see through eyeballing however, is that the average team position over any 4 year window is fairly stable. Wild swings from top to bottom might happen but they are quite rare. As such, we will approximate the yearly chances of winning the cup for the flyers, instead of different probabiities, by averaging them.

Let us define x=[(a/32)+(b/32)+(c/32)+(d/32)]/4.

We then solve 1-((1-x)^4)=0.12 and come up with 1/32.

What is the significance of this #? Well, all the odds across each team must add up to 32/32. Spread over 32 teams, this is the odds of the team right in the middle, the average team. In other words, the 16th team.

If you want more 'street' confirmation of this fact, simply look at odds of 30 team leagues across bookie sites. For example, the odds for the 16th team here:

https://www.vegasinsider.com/nhl/odds/futures/

are 30/1, which is very close to 1/32.

Now, I asked the question: what do you think will happen if Couts is NOT resigned and we only sign a serviceable Nisky type Vet across Provy (in terms of our draft position).

We settled on #7 as likely average draft, which means the team will finish about 27th in average. If you finish 27th at the end of the regular season, of course your chances at cup are 0, but since this is the average position, there are possibilities that the team had wild swings and did actually win a cup in a 4 year period while picking #7 on average (If Colorado wins this year, remember they drafted Makar just 2 years ago at $4).

What are the chances of a 27th ranked team winning the cup. Well, 27th is 11/16th of the distance between 16 and 32, so an approximation that the odds decay linearly from middle to bottom will take us to 5/16(1/32)=5/512 as their odds of winning any given year. Then their chances of pulling out a miracle in at least 1 year will be:

[1-(507/512)^4]=3.8%

In other words, the Couturier factor raises odds of winning 1 cup in 4 years by about 8.2% from 3.8% to 12 % (compared to the rebuilding case without Couturier).

EDIT: this should have been ranked 26th to pick 7th, but this mistake will not change much. In fact, it will improve odds of winning without Couts to 6/512, which means the improvement from having him compared to not having him will be less.

Next we will look at the worth of his contract.


According to ProHockeyRomours, the cost per point in the NHL for big money contracts was about $100K in 2017.

Since then, the salary cap increased by about 10% in 3 years. So, it is now about $110k per point.

Couturier has been averaging a little less than 80 points a season, but this season he is well above that, and there is no reason to believe that he has hit his peak yet. I assumed he will play at a 80 point season average for the first 4 years of his contract. That would make him a $8.8 million $ player. This is even without factoring in his defensive qualities, and his leadership and his mentorship. We agreed that the last 2 were perks with no monetary value, so it the $8.5 million $ is roughly in line with projections but over the course of the 4 years, is probably an underpayment of 1.5-2.5 milllion dollars.

Now we will look at the 2nd half of the contract.

We will look at the point per dollar value of his contract in the 2nd half (years 34-38). We settled on a figure of 63 points per season as average for older Couts.

That will be 5 years from now. Inshallah, the giant wheels of North American Capitaism should by then resume its smooth rolling motion. I am assuming that during that time, the points per $ will rise a further 15% to come in at $122k per point.

That means a 63 point player should make about 7.7 million dollars on average. Couts will be overpaid, but not by current standards. There will be about a deficit of 3.2 million dollars in his favor on this end.

Finally, we look at the Stanley Cup chance changes. First, lets look at it from his production alone. The same player is producing at about a 20% lower clip. But salary cap space has increased by about 12%. Thus we would take a small hit for our Stanley cup chances relative to what his play was providing in the first half of the contract.

The bigger hit however would be the Stanley cup chances from the lower picks because of his presence. I make a very rough calculation of changes in Cup chances because of position of pick, using this chart as a guide.



A random pick in the 7 range produces roughly 3 times as much points as a random pick in the 27 range. There would be 4 such picks foregone.

What is the relationship to points produced to Stanley cup chances? I have been arguing for some time that it is exponential in terms of points of a star player beyond a threshhold, meaning that it is is better to have a 90 point player and a 50 point player on the sale line than 2 70 point players.

But for the purpose of this analysis, I want to rig the scales as much in favor of Couts as possible. Let me instead assume that Stanley cup chances improve linearly with points produced. Then, we are looking at the difference between 4 players who on average produce 40 points a season to 4 who on average produce 20. This may seem low but Dman on both ends of the draft surely skew the point production. All on ELCs for some of that time of course (given that they would have been picked during the first half of Cout's contract)

EDiT: Should be 26
EDIT: Should be produces twice as many points, not thrice. Calculations assumed twice, thrice was a typo.

In summary then:

We are looking at Cout's next contract from two perspectives:

1. What the $ spent on him are fetching the club directly (in terms of points per $ spent)
2. What it is fetching us indirectly: changes in Stanley cup chances.

What we find based on fairly reasonable info is roughly the following:

First 4 years:

Based on a 8.5m X 8 contract, the club comes out slightly ahead during the first 4 years based on a 80 point production.

Couts' presence improves the chances of a cup during the first 4 years of his contract significantly, from 4% to 12%. However those chances are still pretty low.

Last 4 years:

Couts is a little overpaid during the second half of the contract. Not as much as one might think. Overall, the value of the contract is negative, but if you factor in possession stats, defensive stats, intangibles, a case can be made the contract overall is easily a fair one based on these assumptions.

However, there is a significant hit from his presence based on quality of the new players in team. It means about 4 guys who on average are going to be 2nd/3rd line or 1st pairing players in the NHL become 4rth liners/2nd pairing guys down the line. You also have substantially smaller chances of getting a star player. I do not have enough info to honestly compute the changes in Stanley Cup chances from this event.

So we can get killed again?
- SuperSchennBros

YES

Allison & York look very good.

Somehow with a 3-2 lead Stiffan Bustrick is -2 in a game where the Flyers have a 1 goal lead. And he’s last among forwards in ice time. Unreal. I want him off this team