:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/photo_images/5989251/20120313_ajw_se7_761.jpg)
A post by Bill Meltzer on what Scott Hartnell's next contract should look like led to a discussion in the comments on today's Fly-By of what he is worth. I decided to take a look at what we should expect from him going forwards.
Was his production this year really an outlier?
A lot of people have proposed that Hartnell made a big jump forwards this year because he was on Claude Giroux's wing, and that this sort of production is what we should expect of him when paired with a superstar playmaker. Yet his even strength production doesn't seem to have changed much:
| Year | Goals/60 | Primary assists/60 | Points/60 |
| 2008-09 | 1.26 | 0.66 | 2.47 |
| 2009-10 | 0.36 | 0.89 | 1.79 |
| 2010-11 | 1.13 | 0.54 | 2.16 |
| 2011-12 | 1.04 | 0.52 | 2.13 |
Take away an unlucky dip in his shooting percentage in '09-10 and this is a reasonably modest but steady decline. It's about what you'd expect from a player in the post-prime years from age 26-29, right before scoring starts to really crash in the early 30's.
But why such a strong bump this year? Take a look at Hartnell's power play production:
| Year | 5v4 TOI/G | 5v4 goals | 5v4 shots on goal | 5v4 shooting percentage |
| 2008-09 | 2.32 | 6 | 21 | 28.6% |
| 2009-10 | 2.67 | 8 | 32 | 25.0% |
| 2010-11 | 2.75 | 4 | 19 | 21.1% |
| 2011-12 | 3.06 | 15 | 57 | 26.3% |
He's always been a phenomenal power play shooter. He got a little more power play time this year with the Flyers drawing a ton of penalties, but the difference wasn't huge. What does seem to be a huge difference is how often the team got him the puck when he was ready to shoot from his favorite spot.
When I started this analysis, I expected the punchline to be something like "he shot 14% on the power play each of the last three years and jumped to 32% this year, no way should the team pay up hoping that continues." Now that I see that the boost actually came from his shot rate, I'm much more encouraged; that might plausibly be a reproducible result of Giroux's passing and/or Laviolette's scheme.
We've seen players like Dany Heatley suffer declines at even strength as they age but continue to produce extremely well on the power play. It's always scary to pony up a big contract after a single stand-out season, but if that power play shot rate continues early this year, I wouldn't be against the idea of extending his contract for a few more years.
Something in the $5M per year range is pretty good for a 30-goal scorer. Given how deadly his power play shot is, if they continue to get him those power play shots (and this is the big "if" -- I want to see evidence that it's reproducible before I'm signing him), he should be able to stay in the 30-goal range over the next few years.