After the Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators threw it back to the 1980s it got me thinking about whether MacKinnon was warranted as the highest average draft pick in Yahoo drafts this year. In any normal league Connor McDavid should be the first overall pick, end of discussion. From there it was only a short leap for me to bring that around to salary cap leagues, where it is less than a sure thing. When I started up with the Top 200 Cap League Skater rankings, the idea was to be able to formally answer this question. However, the entry-level contracts muddy the water a little, as players like Cale Makar, Andrei Svechnikov, and even Adam Fox provide more overall value based on their regulated cap hits. These players you can usually find in the second round of drafts though (if not much later), because everyone knows that it's impossible to replace the top talents. Let's re-hash the debate, shall we? And if you have opinions (who am I kidding of course you have opinions!) then drop them in the comments.

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The Big Three (or Four?)

This starts with Connor McDavid, but the fun part for cap league owners is that it doesn't end here. Over the last couple of years, I have won non-salary cap pools with McDavid on my team, but I have yet to see anyone do it in a cap league. I've seen it done with Draisaitl, I have seen in done with MacKinnon, and I have seen it done with teams loaded up on other stars like David Pastrnak, Aleksander Barkov, etc. The other name to arguably be included in the top tier is Nikita Kucherov. However, this year he has fallen off the radar a little due to his hip surgery, but he will be back with a vengeance and should at least be in the conversation when healthy. As it stands though, there is a top three of McDavid, Draisaitl, and MacKinnon before the values and the rankings start to get blurrier. Here are a few details on each:

Connor McDavid

Age: 24

Cap Hit: $12.5 million (signed until 2026)

Peak scoring pace (82GP): 124

Current season pace (82GP): 164

Three-year average in Shots/Hits/Powerplay Points: 264/47/46

Nathan MacKinnon

Age: 25

Cap Hit: $6.3 million (signed until 2023)

Peak scoring pace (82GP): 111

Current season pace (82GP): 115

Three-year average in Shots/Hits/Powerplay Points: 369/57/38

Leon Draisaitl

Age: 25

Cap Hit: $8.5 million (signed until 2025)

Peak scoring pace (82GP): 127

Current season pace (82GP): 150

Three-year average in Shots/Hits/Powerplay Points: 240/47/41

The current year paces of McDavid and Draisaitl are ridiculous, and if the season was a full 82-game slate they would have a serious shot at 150 points. As it is, cracking 100 points in a condensed 56-game schedule would be just as ridiculous. We haven't seen anyone pace for something close to this since Mario Lemieux. Meanwhile, MacKinnon seems to have hit his peak at a point pace around 110-115. Maybe if Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, and MacKinnon stay healthy for an entire season, then we could see 120 out of the star centre, but that's a big if.

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Laying Out the Optimal Roster

In a vacuum, MacKinnon at $6 million or Draisaitl at $8.5 million presents more of a bang for your buck than McDavid at his $12.5 million price tag, can we agree on that?

Putting that aside, the perfect roster would be one where every slot was optimized as much as possible, and you end up using up as much of the cap as possible to do so – does that point also make sense? Well to optimize a roster (assuming 12F, 6D, 2G and everyone is healthy) we would have something along the lines of:

Carter Hart/Andrei Vasilevskiy – $4.5 million

Cale Makar/Quinn Hughes – $2 million

Rasmus Dahlin/Neal Pionk – $4 million

Roman Josi/John Carlson – $12 million

Mackinnon/Pastrnak/Draisaitl – $21.5 million

Elias Pettersson/Andrei Svechnikov/Brady Tkachuk – $3 million

Mika Zibanejad/Jonathan Huberdeau/Brad Marchand – $17 million

J.T. Miller/Aleksander Barkov/Sean Couturier – $15.5 million

*Note this is me spending three minutes on this as an example – I'm sure your favourite player just slipped my mind and still deserves to be included*

Total team cap hit: ~$79.5 million (plus a few bonus overages).

To throw McDavid onto that team, we have to subtract elsewhere. Is substituting McDavid in over MacKinnon worth downgrading Miller to Kevin Fiala and Carlson to Dougie Hamilton? Or maybe a single swap of Marchand to Jack Hughes, or Vasilevskiy to Philip Grubauer? It could be argued both ways, but personally I prefer the way it's laid out above. As always though, the league size, positional requirements, and the scoring/settings will play a large role in player value.

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Make Your Selection

The best term to describe how I analyze cap teams is 'opportunity cost'. Every dollar you spend somewhere is taking away from optimizing another roster slot. If you’re spending more than you need to at any slot, the trickle-down hurts. It may not be evident when you abstractly say “I’ll take McDavid and make room for him” but if you actually sort through what he costs you in terms of not being able to fit throughout the years he is on your roster, then it appears to come out favouring the better bargain player. The best player isn't necessarily always the most valuable.

For me and my Cap Rankings shown in the table above, I prefer the cost flexibility of the less expensive options, but the good thing here is that there isn't necessarily a wrong choice.

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All statistics and cap info are all pulled from FrozenTools. Follow me on Twitter @alexdmaclean.

Stay safe!

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Previous Capped Articles:

Surprising Sophomores in the Top-50 of Our Cap Rankings

Early Concerns and Buying Opportunities