Capped: Derek Dorsett Cashes In

Chris Pudsey

2015-04-09

DerekDorsett

Looking at the fantasy implications of Derek Dorsett’s new contract.

On Wednesday evening, the Vancouver Canucks shored up a piece of their future, re-signing gritty forward Derek Dorsett to a new four-year, $10.6M contract. He will bring a new cap hit to the Canucks of $2.65M, making him the fifth highest paid forward on their roster. His current contract is costing the Canucks $1.63M against the cap and expires at the end of this year.

The 28-year-old winger was acquired at last years draft from the New York Rangers for a third round pick in the 2014 entry draft, 85^th overall (Keegan Iverson). That pick was previously acquired from the Anaheim Ducks in the Ryan Kesler deal. At the time of the trade, GM Jim Benning was quoted as saying this about Dorsett:

"We’ve been talking about bringing in some good energy guys that are going to work hard and compete hard physically and he’s going to do that for us."

While his energy and grit may not always show up on the stat sheet for the Canucks, he is having a career year offensively. His previous career high for points in an NHL season was 20 points with Columbus in 2011/12. This year he's already up to 25 points. While this isn't a part of his game he's really known for, or worries about, he has to be happy contributing.

Thanks to Frozen Pool, let's a look at his numbers for this year.

player	GP	G	A	P	PntPG	+/-	PIM	Shots	HITS	PPG	PPP	SHG	BLKS	PPTOI	%PP	%SH	TOI/G	%TOI
DORSETT, DEREK	77	7	18	25	0.32	4	169	85	163	0	1	2	37	00:22	7.7	8.7	12:01	19.8

If we take a look at five other NHL forwards making a similar salary to Dorsett's cap hit, we see this deal really isn't quite as bad as some may be thinking.

Name	Team	Age	Cap Hit	GP	Pts	SOG	PIMs	Hits	Blks	+/-
Derek Dorsett	VAN	28	2.65	77	25	85	169	163	37	4
Cal Clutterbuck	NYI	27	2.75	74 📢 advertisement:	15	121	58	328	29	0
Nino Niederreiter	MIN	22	2.66	79	37	149	28	154	31	3
Brad Boyes	FLA	32	2.625	76	36	149	16	59	37	10
Steve Ott	STL	32	2.6	77	12	49	84	181	14	-8
Curtis Glencross	WSH	32	2.55	69	35	106	45	123	47	2

Call me crazy, but Dorsett seems to fit in quite nicely with others in that same price range of $2.65M per year. Some guys in this price range are a bit more offensively minded but other bottom-six, grinder type players are right there with what Dorsett brings to the table and his overall strengths.

In regards to what Dorsett brings, fantasy hockey wise, let's use Fantasy Hockey Geek and see how these same skaters fare in my multi-cat league, the UHL. For those that don't know, the UHL is a 24-team, Salary Cap Dynasty League that is populated by many regulars here on Dobber Hockey. The league uses the following stat categories for scoring for skater; G, A, Plus/Minus, PIM, SOG, GWG, PPP, SHP, Hits, Blocks and FOW. Each team rosters a total 23 skaters and we use the same salary cap number as the NHL.