Ville Leino is hitting unrestricted free agency next month. We've had a lot of talk about what sort of contract he might sign. I'd like to make a quick comparison between Leino's numbers this year and Matthew Lombardi's numbers prior to reaching unrestricted free agency last year.

Here's a key to what those abbreviations mean, but you don't even need to look them up to see that the two players have amazingly similar numbers.

Both players got a ton of offensive zone starts (Lombardi was #2 on Phoenix last year, Leino was #1 on Philadelphia this year) against weak competition (Lombardi was 9/13, Leino was 11/14). Their goal scoring, primary assist, and total point rates were virtually identical, as was their Corsi relative to their teammates.

There are some differences -- Lombardi had more of a track record in the regular season but had been very disappointing in the post-season. Lombardi is a center but was a year older. Lombardi is faster but isn't as strong with the puck.

But on the whole, given how ridiculously similar their numbers are, I think Lombardi's 3-year, $10.5M deal ($3.5M/yr) is a pretty fair estimate of the market value for Leino.