Last week, the Stanley Cup finalist Nashville Predators locked up their number one centreman Ryan Johansen. The two sides came to an agreement on a $64 million deal that sees Johansen in Nashville yellow for the next eight years.

On the whole, General Manager David Poile has locked up the core of the team to very cap friendly deals, and has been receiving praise for it all around, with the cherry on top being his nomination as the GM of the Year. However, it doesn’t seem as though Poile was able to get Johansen to take much of a discount compared to the other contracts. From one point of view, it could be that Poile knew all along that this massive extension was coming, hence ensuring everyone else took a discount to make the money work. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Johansen was actually asking for even more than he finally got, and this was the discounted price.

No matter what way it gets sliced, Johansen deserved the raise. We saw what happened to the Predators without him in the Stanley Cup finals. They were outmatched up front, and they still don’t have a top end second line centre to fill in behind him. Between Nick Bonino, Calle Jarnkrok and Colton Sissons, there are three second/third line centres, but no standout. With the defence still the backbone of this team, Johansen becomes the next essential piece to the success, so as possibly the most important individual of the group, it makes sense that he is paid as such.

What all of you really want to know, though, is whether Johansen is worth his contract for your salary cap league. It would be nice if there were a hard and fast yes or no answer to this, but there isn’t and that’s the whole fun in it. At $8 million dollars for a top centre, the closest comparables that have signed in the last year are Evgeny Kuznetsov (at $7.8 million a season), Joe Thornton (at $8 million a season) and Steven Stamkos (at $8.5 million a season). Johansen doesn’t hugely stick out as being largely above or below those three in most standard league setups.

Points Leagues

At $8 million per season, if Johnasen is to be worth the contract, then he has to bring quite the return to the table. For points-only leagues, the standard has been set over the last four years, where Johansen scored between 60 and 71 points each season (seeing his goal total drop down to 14 for the past two seasons). Expecting around 65 points moving forward should bring you very close to the actual total, and gives us the idea that the Preds’ first-line centre has priced himself our of a good value range. There were 42 players to hit the 60-point plateau last season, and 59 to average enough to get themselves there in a full season. The $8 million dollar contract ranks tied with three others as the 15^th largest going into next season. Since a large jump in production for Johansen is not likely, then at this point, there are many better options for points-only or goal-heavy leagues.

Multi-Cat Leagues

This is really going to depend on the categories and setup of each specific league, because there are some definite high and low points when you look at Johansen’s stat line. The shots are the first obvious sore spot, as they have been declining for the past four years. Last season, Johansen was below two shots per-game for the first time since his rookie season, and there really isn’t an indication that the number will start climbing again anytime soon; especially since he is playing with two shoot-first players on his wings in Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson.

The truculence categories (hits, penalty minutes and blocks) are fairly average for a 65-point player. The hits are the highlight, as his two seasons prior to this one, he was credited with 115 each season. Last year, Johansen’s penalty minutes almost grew significantly, climbing from 36 to 60, but a drop in hits from 115 to 77 countered this. Blocks are lower than the average forward, but if you are focusing on blocks from a forward, there are bigger problems.

Other possible stats being counted in an average league would be plus-minus, power play points, and average time on ice (ATOI). Nashville projects to improve on last season’s regular season finish, and with that, the plus-minus scores across the team should increase. Johansen has never been above 10 in that stat, but it is possible we see a small bump this season. His production on the power play won’t hurt you either, and the expectation of a minimum 20 points by way of the man-advantage has been set over the last five seasons. The less commonly counted average TOI stat would be what is expected from a first line centre, somewhere around 18 minutes per game.

Leagues that count faceoffs are where this 25-year-old centreman really shines. With an average of 728 faceoff wins, and a win percentage that has steadily climbed in each of the last four seasons (reaching 54% last year) there is very good value here on top of an otherwise average production for his salary. In cap leagues where faceoffs are a category, first line centres are a coveted asset at almost any cost. The $8 million price tag in this case can certainly be managed for the return that Johansen brings.

Conclusion

As with just about any player with almost any contract, it comes back to the fantasy manager to know the setup of the league to properly analyze what value an individual has. Johansen’s value fluctuates greatly in different leagues, based on different stats and positional settings. A few years down the line, this deal will certainly look better than it does today, but at the moment, fair market value is the ceiling of what we can expect off of this deal.

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All cap related info is courtesy of Capfriendly.

Thanks for reading. As always, you can find me on twitter @alexdmaclean where I post some of my other smaller musings that don’t make it into the articles.  

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