LB-Hockey

Contract Projector

The initial vision for LB-Hockey’s future included a variety of tools, and we have finally reached the final one from this original group! Don’t worry we’ve got much more coming down the pipeline, but in the meantime, let’s dive into our first salary-centric dashboard: the Contract Projector.

Worth vs Expectation vs Contract

The main attraction of this dashboard is this multi-area plot. For up to the next 8 seasons after the current one, depending on the length of the players current contract and likely extension following it, this chart visualizes the difference between three key indicators using cap hit.

The expectation series is linked to the contract once the latter reaches its full term, which helps in interpreting a player’s surplus value. The green area represents a player outperforming their current or likely future contract, aka providing positive surplus. The purple area shows when the current or expected contract surpasses the player’s projected on-ice value, in other words sporting negative surplus. And the blue-ish grey displays when those two overlap, indicating even value.

It’s also worth noting that throughout the tool, all season references are formatted with its first year as the identifier (ex: 2024-25 → 2024).

“Active Contracts” View

This tool has two view options in the document, selectable by switching between their tabs. With the first, “Active Contracts”, you can select any player currently under contract and glean into its value. In addition to the area plot explained prior, the bottom left section provides insights into the player’s projected performance relative to his deal. Here, metrics are provided for the most recent and final seasons of the deal, along with the player’s average projected worth and surplus value from now until its expiration.

You also have the opportunity to calculate these metrics for a custom extension. Just tick the checkbox and the options will appear below, where you can now select the extension’s starting year, length, and cap hit in millions. This will also be mirrored in the area plot by appending the Current Contract series.

“Expiring Players” View

If you wanted to glimpse at the possibilities of what an extension or new contract on the free agent market might resemble, this is the place to look. The “Expiring Players” view breaks down the likelihood for every length of a player’s upcoming new deal. The method is as follows:

1. First, all the possible terms are outlined.
2. Then, using our dataset, the model predicts how likely the selected NHLer is to sign at each individual contract length.
3. And lastly, term is now added to the predictors dataset as a variable to obtain the likeliest cap hit given the deal’s duration.

These predictions are shown in the bottom left table, showing the likelihood and salary at each term, with the highest probability contract getting highlighted. This highlight is done in green if that extension would result in a positive average surplus over the length of the deal, or in purple if it’s negative, making use of our projected worth model for the calculations. This colour behaviour is present in the bottom left of the “Active Contracts” view as well.

The line-area plot also sees some changes here. Added to the chart are bubbles at each season marker, visualizing the likelihood of signing this length of contract. Evidently, the bigger the bubbles, the higher the probability. The player’s age at the start of each season (September 15th of that year) have also been added to the horizontal axis.