Over the years I’ve had some success in guessing contracts for Red Wings’ players.
As such, a few folks have asked me to share my guesses for the Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider contract extensions due this offseason. Prior to this season I projected a contract of 8 years, $8.75 million AAV for Seider and 6 years, $6.6 million for Raymond. Along with updating those projections, I figured I would detail how I arrive at my guesses.
Step 1. Identify Comps
The most important thing to do when projecting a contract is identifying reasonable comparables. From contract models such as Evolving-Hockey’s or Matt Cane’s prior to that, the two most important variables when projecting contracts are points and ice time. From there, we can then look at all contracts signed by players of the same position at similar ages (+/- 2 years) and similar negotiating status (RFA vs. UFA). We can use CapFriendly to identify players that fit that criteria and played similar roles with similar production to serve as our comps. In the case of Seider, these would be the 10 closest comparables and their corresponding cap hit%.
Step 2. Adjust for Vibes
After we’ve got our comparables, we’ve then got to adjust for the "contract vibes”. In this case, it’s giving consideration to the team culture, negotiating with Yzerman, and prior performance of the player’s agent. In the case of Seider, it will be a very interesting negotiation between his agent Claude Lemieux (yes that Claude Lemieux) and Yzerman. Recently, Lemieux was able to negotiate big extensions for Timo Meier (8 years, $8.8 million AAV) and Pierre Engvall (7 years, $3 million AAV). In all likelihood, the Seider deal will be the largest contract negotiated by Lemieux.
Step 3. Gut Check
After we get our comparables and adjust for vibes, the last thing to do is make sure we’re in the ballpark by comparing the guess to Evolving-Hockey’s projection. Over the years, the Evolving-Hockey model has been very precise with their contract projections so their model serves as a reasonable gut check.
Without further ado, here we go.
Moritz Seider projection:
8 years, $9.2 million AAV (10.5% cap hit%)
Comps:
Miro Heiskanen
Charlie McAvoy
Thomas Chabot
Lucas Raymond projection:
8 years, $7.9 million AAV (9% cap hit%)
Comps:
Kyle Connor
Cole Caufield
Matt Boldy
Andrei Svechnikov
If you’d like to contribute to my work, please instead consider donating to my 1-year-old nephew’s heart transplant fundraiser as he currently is awaiting a heart transplant.
Thanks Prashanth, really informative. For Raymond, the comparables are very interesting: Caufield & Boldy seem spot on, while Connor & Svechnikov strike me as more established “stars”. Probably just my bias/vibes, though.