Free Agency 2022: Salary Projections for the Top-150 Free Agents

Alexander MacLean

2022-05-24

Typically, I have informally added my salary projections to the end of a Ramblings article, but this time I wanted to put them out as a separate page to keep it a little cleaner. I have been working on contract projections since the fall of 2017, and it has been a big help to my own planning in fantasy leagues, on top of just being a fun bit of data to use for other discussions and articles.

My projections are done as an algorithm that I have set up as part of my cap league skater and goalie rankings. It would be impossible to project the cap league values of these players without an input, and as a result I have gotten to the point of refining this system where the output does a respectable job of projecting the cap hit of a player on their next contract at any moment in time. I have not found it at all important to be able to project the term on these future contracts, as those are generally easier to foresee, in addition to them having a negligible impact on the future fantasy value of a player. As a result, I only show the projected cap hit below. If you take a look at a few of the players though, it's nearly a given that the contracts given to the higher profile players will be longer term, while the depth and fringe lineup players will be shorter. In the middle, the players in their late 20s and early 30s get the term, while the older and younger players have to settle for the shorter-term deals.

There are a few players in here where the projection looks a little high off the bat, including Jack Campbell, Valeri Nichushkin, and Tony DeAngelo. The system is completely numbers based, so the risk with goalies that have a shorter track record, or players that bring along off-ice baggage (hello DeAngelo and Evander Kane) are harder to quantify. Nichushkin's case is interesting though, as he's someone that really had to simmer, and took a long time to develop. His jump this season is greatly leaning on his increased ice time. What that means is that if he does end up signing a fat contract on his way out of Colorado, is that the production should be able to be maintained, as his other underlying numbers all look normal. The only red flag is that the 27-year-old has played six full seasons now and doesn't have a year with an IPP even close to the usual 70% metric that we like to see from players that can drive their own line. It does make me think that a team without a lot of depth will try to lure Nichushkin away to anchor their second line, and he will struggle to produce in that kind of environment.

One player that jumps out to me on the opposite end of the spectrum is Yakov Trenin. Trenin is the centre on the Herd Line for the Predators, and was one of their best players in the series against the Avalanche. Trenin is only projected for a new deal at just above $1 million, and despite David Poile having a track record of being able to sign his RFAs to bargain contracts, even that seems a little low for an established third line centre.

Two contracts signed recently that my algorithm had some issues with were the Mark Giordano and Bryan Rust contracts. Both took discounts to stick with the teams they wanted to play for, and as a result they both came in about $1.5 million below where I had them pegged. It doesn't happen too often, but I could see a few other veterans such as Patrice Bergeron, Claude Giroux, and Ondrej Palat doing the same.

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If you note a mistake, or have any further questions about the ranking system, please let me know. You can find me on Twitter here @alexdmaclean. Comments are always appreciated.

RankNameAgePos Projected Cap Hit
1Johnny Gaudreau28F $10,564,900
2Matthew Tkachuk24F $9,558,600
3Filip Forsberg27F $8,394,700
4Nazem Kadri31F $7,812,600
5Patrik Laine24F $7,804,800
6John Klingberg29D $7,021,900
7Pierre-Luc Dubois23F $6,683,100
8Kris Letang35D $6,556,600
9Josh Norris23F $6,390,200
10Jack Campbell30G $6,041,500
11Patrice Bergeron36F $6,025,400
12Ondrej Palat31F $5,961,100
13Brock Boeser25F $5,955,400
14Valeri Nichushkin27F $5,931,000
15Darcy Kuemper32G $5,879,500
16Vincent Trocheck29F $5,815,900
17Kevin Fiala25F $5,768,900
18Ryan Strome28F $5,749,100
19Jason Robertson22F $5,441,700
20Tony DeAngelo26D $5,434,700
21Evgeni Malkin35F $5,209,200
22Jesper Bratt23F $5,069,500
23Ville Husso27G $5,029,800
24Noah Dobson22D $5,002,800
25Jake Oettinger23G $4,677,400
26Ilya Samsonov25G $4,634,600
27Vitek Vanecek26G $4,373,200
28Andre Burakovsky27F $4,165,000
29Andrew Mangiapane26F $4,155,500
30Adrian Kempe25F $4,077,900
31Andrew Copp27F $4,004,700
32Mason Marchment27F $3,895,300
33Victor Olofsson26F $3,885,900
34Dylan Strome25F $3,868,800
35Claude Giroux34F $3,811,800
36Evander Kane30F $3,765,200
37Ben Chiarot31D $3,707,100
38Lawson Crouse24F $3,652,000
39Ilya Mikheyev27F $3,466,800
40David Perron33F $3,413,800
41Josh Manson30D $3,289,100
42Rickard Rakell29F $3,038,200
43Kaapo Kakko21F $2,941,000
44Morgan Frost23F $2,899,000
45Reilly Smith31F $2,880,600
46Nino Niederreiter29F $2,855,200
47Dominik Kubalik26F $2,826,000
48Charlie Lindgren28G $2,814,200
49Adam Boqvist21D $2,735,200
50Marc-Andre Fleury37G $2,685,500
51Kirby Dach21F $2,676,800
52Ondrej Kase26F $2,542,900
53Phil Kessel34F $2,501,100
54Oliver Kylington25D $2,447,200
55Kasperi Kapanen25F $2,436,600
56Erik Brannstrom22D $2,428,800
57Isac Lundestrom22F $2,402,100
58Nicholas Paul27F $2,388,600
59Artturi Lehkonen26F $2,368,700
60P.K. Subban33D $2,355,800
61Evan Rodrigues28F $2,313,200
62Sean Durzi23D $2,272,200
63Mario Ferraro23D $2,243,600
64Kailer Yamamoto23F $2,218,400
65Pierre Engvall25F $2,197,500
66Martin Necas23F $2,174,900
67Rasmus Sandin22D $2,164,700
68Frank Vatrano28F $2,143,400
69Max Domi27F $2,133,700
70Sammy Blais25F $2,129,700
71Pavel Zacha25F $2,121,200
72Casey DeSmith30G $2,101,900
73Eric Comrie26G $2,051,900
74Jack Roslovic25F $1,999,700
75Mathieu Joseph25F $1,973,700
76Jesse Puljujarvi24F $1,929,600
77Scott Perunovich23D $1,898,700
78Mikey Anderson22D $1,889,000
79Luke Kunin24F $1,881,900
80Gabriel Vilardi22F $1,872,100
81Nikita Zadorov27D $1,791,200
82Alexandar Georgiev26G $1,774,600
83Sonny Milano26F $1,707,000
84Alexander Edler36D $1,656,700
85Braden Holtby32G $1,644,600
86Calle Jarnkrok30F $1,570,000
87Justin Schultz31D $1,547,600
88Rem Pitlick25F $1,534,400
89Miles Wood26F $1,511,600
90Nick Leddy31D $1,504,300
91Marcus Johansson31F $1,486,100
92Ilya Lyubushkin28D $1,479,400
93Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen23G $1,474,200
94Vladislav Namestnikov29F $1,468,000
95Tyler Motte27F $1,465,000
96Chris Wideman32D $1,434,500
97Jonathan Dahlen24F $1,432,100
98Timothy Liljegren23D $1,389,100
99Nicolas Roy25F $1,383,800
100Chris Tierney27F $1,318,700
101Kaapo Kahkonen25G $1,318,400
102Andreas Athanasiou27F $1,300,400
103Mikko Koskinen33G $1,293,000
104Paul Stastny36F $1,253,800
105Mattias Janmark29F $1,248,800
106Ryan Lomberg27F $1,240,000
107Denis Gurianov24F $1,165,000
108Ian Cole33D $1,160,500
109Michal Kempny31D $1,143,200
110Yakov Trenin25F $1,140,100
111Alex Formenton22F $1,138,600
112Scott Wedgewood29G $1,102,500
113Filip Zadina22F $1,102,300
114Barrett Hayton21F $1,064,200
115Owen Tippett23F $1,050,100
116Erik Gustafsson30D $1,049,500
117Derek Stepan31F $1,005,000
118Martin Jones32G $1,004,300
119Colin Blackwell29F $997,200
120Ryan Poehling23F $979,500
121Brett Kulak28D $958,600
122Johan Larsson29F $953,200
123Keegan Kolesar25F $925,000
124Noah Gregor23F $900,500
125Ryan McLeod22F $885,400
126Ethan Bear24D $884,900
127Noel Acciari30F $872,800
128Jesper Boqvist23F $872,500
129Juho Lammikko26F $871,700
130Josh Mahura24D $852,900
131Oskar Steen24F $847,000
132Danton Heinen26F $834,000
133Alex Galchenyuk28F $827,800
134Dustin Tokarski32G $822,700
135Sam Steel24F $816,300
136Ryan Donato26F $750,000
137Sam Gagner32F $750,000
138Brett Howden24F $750,000
139Vinnie Hinostroza28F $750,000
140Maxim Mamin27F $750,000
141Nico Sturm27F $750,000
142Zach Sanford27F $750,000
143Carl Grundstrom24F $750,000
144Nicolas Aube-Kubel26F $750,000
145Daniel Sprong25F $750,000
146Tyler Ennis32F $750,000
147Evgeny Svechnikov25F $750,000
148Zach Aston-Reese27F $750,000
149Mason Appleton26F $750,000
150Sam Montembeault25G $750,000

6 Comments

  1. Michel Rubino 2022-05-24 at 22:42

    Reilly Smith at 3M and Fiala not even at 6M.
    Don’t think so.

    • Alexander MacLean 2022-05-25 at 08:21

      Smith is interesting because everyone says he’s way overpaid at $5M, but at $3M he would be underpaid. It’s possible he ends up closer to $4M, but this is where the numbers have him and I don’t think it will be far off.

      As for Fiala, he’s still an RFA, and I can’t see a world in which he gets over $7M, so I think something around $6M makes sense for him. Will be an interesting case for sure.

  2. staceylundin 2022-05-25 at 00:42

    Copp at 2.5 is hilariously bad but for my salary Dynasty team I sure hope so!

    • Alexander MacLean 2022-05-25 at 08:23

      Thanks for the laugh Stacey. Yeah there was actually an issue with Copp’s numbers between his time with WPG and NYR this year they weren’t processing properly. I’ve updated the chart and he’s now nestled in right at a projected $4M. I think that makes a lot more sense. Is that in the range of what you expected as well?

  3. Joe Johns 2022-06-10 at 16:57

    Hi Alexander, thanks a lot for providing these estimates! … one thing – just for convenience would be really nice if you threw in an RFA/UFA column if you were so inclined …

    also I was wondering if you’d share any details about your model just out of curiosity (linear regression ? What were some key input variables? … ) no need to share if you’d prefer not of course …thanks again, all the best

    • Alexander MacLean 2022-06-14 at 21:58

      Hey Joe, I definitely agree that a UFA/RFA column would make sense for future.

      Really it’s one excel spreadsheet algorithm that I have tweaked over the years. All the usual stuff with age, position, and production, but also included are the Dobber upside and 3YP measures as well as some usage and other metric bits.

      Cheers!

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