In yesterday's post, I looked at CapGeek's list of the 20 closest comparable cap hits to the deal that Joffrey Lupul had just signed. I cut out the RFAs from the comparison because their contract situation necessarily means that the value of their contracts are not equal. I think compared Lupul to the remaining ten players based on the percentage of the upper level of the salary cap that their cap hit represented in the first year of their deal. This is because a dollar is more valuable if there are fewer available. I also looked at how old the players in the comparison group were when they signed he deal as well as their point per game production in the two years prior to signing the contract.
Of that list of deals, there wasn't really any that jumped out as being universally loathed other than Shawn Horcoff's. One issue that caused that, which is what I hope that doesn't happen to Lupul, was that he was essentially left babysitting a team that was made worse and worse. He's a good player but he's not Superman. Anyway, seven of the players have played at least one season under their new deals. So I wanted to get a sense of the production that they had in order to get an idea of what Lupul will have to do in order to fit in as an acceptable contract:
| Name | Team | Start | Expiry | PPG Since |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Gionta | MTL | 2009 | 2014 | 0.62 |
| Jason Pominville | BUF | 2009 | 2014 | 0.82 |
| Marian Hossa | CHI | 2009 | 2021 | 0.93 |
| Martin Havlat | SAN | 2009 | 2015 | 0.75 |
| Martin St. Louis | TBL | 2011 | 2015 | 0.99 |
| Shawn Horcoff | EDM | 2009 | 2015 | 0.47 |
| Tomas Plekanec | MTL | 2010 | 2016 | 0.69 |
I originally has Ales Hemsky on the list with 1.00 points per game just to mess with the Oilers media (Hemsky has had 1 point in 1 game player under his new deal) but I avoided the temptation. As a group, they produced 0.75 points per game. That's obviously depressed by Horcoff. If you take him out then you are left with an average of 0.80 points per game. By either measure, Lupul will be expected to produce at a good clip. During his time in Toronto, Lupul has average 0.89 points per game after averaging 0.57 points per game for the rest of his career which gives a total figure of 0.63 points per game.
| Name | 2009-10 | 2010-11 | 2011-12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ales Hemsky | DNQ | -6.59 (8) | 1.51 (3) |
| Brian Gionta | 4.01 (1) | 12.57 (1) | DNQ |
| Jason Pominville | 3.91 (4) | 8.32 (3) | -1.98 (8) |
| Joffrey Lupul | DNQ | -21.73 (13) | -2.68 (5) |
| Marian Hossa | 23.01 (1) | 5.89 (5) | 7.49 (5) |
| Martin Havlat | -4.91 (6) | -2.52 (2) | DNQ |
| Martin St. Louis | -1.32 (4) | 2.50 (8) | -5.87 (5) |
| Mikhail Grabovski | 17.93 (1) | 9.91 (1) | 8.94 (1) |
| Shane Doan | 7.59 (5) | 5.70 (4) | 4.43 (4) |
| Shawn Horcoff | -10.99 (9) | -3.68 (4) | -6.82 (7) |
| Tomas Plekanec | -7.96 (9) | 3.98 (5) | -6.53 (6) |
For this comparison, I used the raw corsi figures for the last three years as well as the player's rank among their team's forwards that played at least 40 games in each particular season. There are some ugly numbers on the board as well as some strong ones which is okay because no one's ever said that Lupul would be the best contract in this group of comparables. I'd of course like to highlight that Grabovski is great.
Hopefully this is another helpful data point when considering your evaluation of Joffrey Lupul's contract.