13. Winnipeg Jets (last season: 22)
It’s always awesome to see a player’s glow up when it comes to contract efficiency. The pressure of being worth a public dollar figure is an intense reality that many rarely consider. A few years back, Josh Morrissey, after a down year, looked like a bad bet to be worth his deal. But he put in the work, got better and better, and now has Winnipeg’s most valuable deal at $6.3 million for the next five years. He’s turned into a true No. 1 defenseman thanks to his offensive explosion and now projects to be underpaid by $2 million per year.
Winnipeg made some solid bets contract-wise this summer to augment that. The team is in a state of disarray at the moment with key players one foot out the door, but the Jets are doing good work to set themselves up for the future. New deals for Morgan Barron and Dylan Samberg look promising while a bridge deal for Gabriel Vilardi looks like an absolute steal. He was the centerpiece of the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade and has a very promising trajectory that puts him at a price tag worth almost double his cap hit.
Up front, the Jets have a lot of solid deals from stalwarts like Nikolaj Ehlers, Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele and newcomer Nino Niederreiter. Nothing overwhelmingly good though, which means some of the work is undermined by expensive pacts to Adam Lowry, plus Nate Schmidt and Neal Pionk on the blue line. A $6 million cap hit for the next two years for both of those guys is Winnipeg’s biggest issue here by far. It’s what puts the Jets closer to the league’s middle — a familiar place for this group.
by etchiboi
9 Comments
Real nice to see such a high surplus value on Vilardi even post signing.
Sorry – are we number 1 in the league, as implied by the number? Or are we closed to the “league’s middle” as suggested by the last line?
If Adam Lowry is our worst value forward that’s a good thing because his value isn’t captured in CF% and other possession metrics
Let me be clear, I’m a believer in possession metrics and think they have a ton of value, however with hockey they do not tell the entire story.
Adam Lowry might be the best player in the league that hasn’t had an advanced stat developed for his type of player. He isn’t rewarded by either traditional scoring counting stats, or more advanced possession stats, but you would be a fool to say he is a bad contract for the Jets.
Hot take but I don’t think this team would have held onto a playoff spot in March/April if it weren’t for Lowry.
10 milli surplus got dang Joshua
How could pionk be negative for more than his actual contract number??
Is the surplus value over the whole contract, or just one year?
Either way, I don’t understand how Pionk could have a -6.4M.
These can kinda be all over the place sometimes, but I don’t really disagree with any of this
For the record, our former players in Trouba, Copp, Chiarot, Armia, and Dubois are all in the red, with all of them aside from Armia being graded as those teams’ worst contracts per position group
Very surprised Apples is at even value