How Much Did the Flyers Pay For A Point?

During the season, there was a really interesting post over at Jewels From the Crown about how much players were being paid per point they scored.  Unfortunately, his story title was even better: I would like to buy some points. How much are they?

There are a few ways of looking at this topic in general, such as Bird Watcher's Anonymous looking at points divided by salary over the past 10 years.  Really an interesting read.  The Copper & Blue then took that data and showed why Nashville should be the model for NHL teams.

Quisp was nice enough to give me the spreadsheet he used for his post at JFtC and I updated it to include the full season and swap in a few Flyers for his Kings.  This will allow comparison between some of the Flyers and the rest of the league.

Jump for that chart as well as a full table for all of the Flyers players.

As explained in the JFtC article, the table is color-coordinated with the darker the background, the higher the cap hit.  The white background are players in their entry-level contracts.  Obviously, entry-level deals will be of higher value, so it might not help you to compare.

Table key:  Cap is obviously the player's cap hit, while Pts = points, GP = games played, and PPG = points per game.  The two that need explaining, however, are Cost/Pt(1) and Cost/Pt(2).  The first column could be called "true cost" as it simply divides a player's cap hit by the amount of points he scored to find out how much each point cost the team.  Now, before anybody screams that there are more ways a player can contribute, I know.  This is just a fun exercise because NHL GMs tend to undervalue two-way players, and I'm curious what they are actually paying the flashy goal scorers. 

The second Cost/Pt column adjusts for games played, so you take the player's scoring rate and extend it to a full season.  If you want to know the formula, it's [(GP/82)*Cap Hit]/Pts.  Generally, they're pretty close, but for players like Joffrey Lupul and Daniel Sedin, it shows how much their injury cost the team and how much a healthy player would have.

What's really awesome about this table is that it's sortable - thanks Travis! - so you can click on the headings to sort them how you wish.  Right now, they're sorted by Cap Hit.  As you can tell, the five best bargains are still on their entry-level deals.  And while Danny Briere is expensive, he's not as expensive as fellow free agents Drury and Gomez, and is only marginally more expensive than Mike Cammalleri and Ryan Smyth.  Small win.

Really, there isn't much to say about the table except play around with it.  What Quisp said in his post still holds true:  the highly paid players may not be the best bargains (in terms of cost per point), but if you sort by points per game, you see what you're paying for.  Keep in mind that Nicklas Backstrom just signed for $6.7 million per, so even he is no longer the entry-level steal every team covets.

Now, before getting to the most interesting numbers (forwards), let's get the ugly/boring/inconsequential numbers out of the way.

Defense table:

I threw in OKT just to show the difference between him, Syvret, and Krajicek.  As the best value in Cost(2), Danny Syvret truly is Offensive Dynamo.  Oskars Bartulis isn't far behind. 

And yes, I fully realize Kimmo Timonen being just barely ahead of Ryan Parent in this column is scary, but that's why I prefaced it by saying it's all for fun and this is the throw-away portion of the show.  Cost Per Point for defensemen doesn't really tell you anything.

Excess forwards:

I separated these guys out because not one of them scored more than 5 points on the year and only Mika Pyorala played more than 13 games.  Also note that Leino's Cost/Pt(1) doesn't take into account the 7 points he scored in 42 games with Detroit, so his true cost is much lower.  But man is Andreas Nodl a steal!  I kid, I kid.

Now the truly interesting forwards table:

Here is where we see how expensive injuries are.  Simon Gagne would have been just as expensive as Mike Richards - which makes sense given their cap hits are only separated by half a million dollars - but missing 24 games made his production the most expensive among Flyer forwards. 

This also shows how much a bad year hurts the team as Scott Hartnell was the third most expensive producer on the team, second most factoring in games played.  Also, you can see the other end of the spectrum here too.  The Flyers bottom six forwards were all dirt-cheap.  Specifically, six Claude Giroux points cost less than one Danny Briere point.

Really, this is nothing we didn't already know:  Your high-priced guys are paid to score while your medium-to-high priced guys are paid to do both.  Getting production out of your entry-level deal players goes a long way toward creating a successful team. 

Any thoughts?