By Tony Abbott -
On Tuesday, The Athletic's Dom Luszczyszyn released his annual list of the 10 most valuable contracts in the NHL. The list included a solid mix of the best players in the NHL (Nathan MacKinnon, Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox, Matthew Tkachuk), underrated players signed to cheap long-term deals (Gustav Forsling, Josh Morrissey), and players who are somehow both (Jack Hughes).
And at the tail end of the list, right at No. 10, sat the Minnesota Wild's Beautiful Boston Boy, Matt Boldy.
Boldy, a.k.a. "Mr. 49 Sheets," just completed the first year of his seven-year, $49 million contract, which bought out his first three seasons of free agency. During that season, Boldy scored 29 goals and a career-high 69 points and is poised to get even better. Luszczyszyn's model had Boldy's worth being $8.2 million last season and projects him to average $11 million of value for the next six years. All told, the Wild can expect to get $25 million of surplus value on a dirt-cheap $7 million AAV contract.
That's a perfect deal, one that Bill Guerin no doubt hopes to repeat with Brock Faber, who is eligible for an extension this season. The Calder Trophy runner-up has a ton of negotiation power on his side, with a 47-point rookie season that was beyond anyone's wildest dreams. You wanna talk about surplus value? Even with a second-half rib injury that sapped his play-driving ability, Faber's season was worth $6.2 million on a $925K entry-level deal.
Faber has one more year on his ELC, but after that, number go up. Evolving-Hockey's contract projections peg a Faber extension as seven years with a cap hit of around $7.1 million. A maximum eight-year extension is expected to land at a $7.7 AAV. The Athletic has speculated that he could receive as much as $9 million annually.
The higher Faber's number comes in, the higher the bar for how well he has to play to get real surplus value out of the contract. Maybe there's nothing wrong with paying Faber sticker price in a vacuum. Still, with the Wild's tendency to overpay by a million here and there with depth players, the key to keeping Minnesota competitive will be getting some surplus value robberies at the top of their lineup.
Boldy's contract is one such deal, but what would Faber need to do to make his next contract a similar steal? Is it possible?
We'll use $9 million -- the high end of Faber's predicted extension -- as the baseline for our AAV. After spending the entire day crunching the numbers, Hockey Wilderness found that over eight years, Faber would need to produce $10 million of value to recoup even $1 million of surplus value per season.
Looking through Luszczyszyn's Player Cards from last year, we find that 21 defensemen could deliver $10 million of value to their teams last season. Back-of-the-napkin math suggests Faber must be a top-20-ish defenseman (around where Charlie McAvoy, Victor Hedman, or Aaron Ekblad were last year) to produce meaningful surplus. Another nine players occupied that $9 to $9.99 million value zone, meaning if Faber dips below the top-30 league-wide, he's probably overpaid.
And remember, that top-20 threshold is just to deliver Minnesota $8 million of surplus value over the life of an eight-year deal. That's less than a third of the surplus value that Boldy is projected to generate over seven years. To get in Boldy's neighborhood of upside, Faber would have to be around a top-10 defenseman. Drew Doughty was 10th among NHL defensemen, giving his team $12 million of value. That consistent, top-10 play would earn Minnesota $24 million of surplus value over the life of Faber's hypothetical deal.
So either the Wild will need Faber to be a top-10 defenseman to get major value, or they will have to push the AAV down. Something in line with Evolving-Hockey's eight-year projection would add $1.3 million of surplus per season. Over eight seasons with a $7.7 AAV, a top-20 version of Faber would instead generate $18.4 million in surplus value, which is much more in line with Boldy.
Looking at Evolving-Hockey's Standings Points Above Replacement, Faber sat in a tie for 33rd among defensemen, adding 3.4 points in the standings to Minnesota. That's a pretty good indication that Faber is worth the long-term investment. Even a $9 million contract would be about right if Faber just hovers in that top-30 zone.
But there's a big difference between investing properly in these young players and finding a major steal. The $4 million of extra value Minnesota is projected to get from Boldy annually is a cushion for injuries, decline, and overpaying elsewhere. In a salary-cap league, maximizing value becomes crucial for contending teams. With the Wild potentially giving themselves less margin for error going forward with recent extensions, it's crucial to give themselves plenty of room for upside on Faber's next deal.
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