That's right - free agency is just around the corner. We've received all the data/rankings from NAIHL and will be creating our free agency spreadsheet over the next few weeks. As per last year, we exclude all entry level contracts and contracts that are minimum salaries.
Few preliminary observations:
1) There are approximately 700 players that we will use to determine salaries this year. Of which, approximately 500 of these players were signed in the NHL the past two years, meaning that there is a heavy weight towards recent real NHL signings.
2) Goalies (no surprise) remain (relatively) inexpensive compared to the crazy contracts signed 2+ years ago.
3) Breakdown of the 700 players. Approx 420 forwards, 210 defencemen, 70 goalies. (This is a larger sample set than last year's analysis.)
With that said, here's a little teaser of what the predicted goalie salaries are vs actual salaries (predicted salaries is the line vs actual = dots). The dots above the line (not surprisingly) are generally contracts signed prior to 2009-2010 season. [Note: Every year, I love seeing where Rick Dipietro lies on this graph. Gotta love Garth Snow!]
