Incidentally, what is Kovalchuk actually worth?
by Hawerchuk on Jul 22, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
77 comments
I think, for all intents and purposes, Ilya Kovalchuk is a simple player. He's a black hole on defense - worth essentially zero - and he has the best shooting abilities in the entire league, bar none (now that Alex Tanguay's a question mark.)
So figuring out his value is pretty straightforward. I looked at how many goals Ilya Kovalchuk should have scored - were he an average shooter - from the spots on the ice that he shot from, and compared that to the actual number of goals scored:
| Goals | Expected | Actual | Added Value |
| Total | 151 | 228 | 77 |
| ES | 85 | 143 | 58 |
| PP | 66 | 85 | 19 |
Purely on the basis of his shooting, Kovalchuk gave his teams an extra 77 goals over 5 seasons, or 15.4 goals per season. Six additional goals are worth roughly one win in the NHL, so Kovalchuk generated an average of 2.56 wins per season. At 2009-10 free agent rates - $2.23M per win for a UFA - Kovalchuk adds $5.71M in value above replacement. Add in replacement-level salary ($500k) and he should command $6.21M per season at 09-10 rates; with one year worth of salary inflation, it's closer to $6.5M, which is roughly what my reader survey found last month.
You can build 5% salary escalation (and some de-escalation) into Kovalchuk's contract, but even an optimistic assessment of his abilities and his potential to stay healthy puts his contributions at 30 wins over the life of the contract. At best, he's worth $90M on the ice for the rest of his career, and likely much less. Some teams may be able to generate additional revenue from him, but there's no way a $102M contract - whatever its length - is anything other than an overpay.
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Is his defense bad enough that it would deduct wins and reduce the $6.5M?? I’m assuming it would be a minor difference if that.
No. According to Tom Awad’s All-time GVT spreadsheet, Kovalchuk ranks 1313rd of 6008 in career DGVT at 13.4. Above replacement level so his defensive contributions would actually ADD to the $6.5M.
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But Kovy has played 8 years of hockey in the NHL. That means he’s averaging 1.7 DGVT every year, which is replacement level given the distribution this year.
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therefore it isn’t bad enough to deduct wins.
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Related OT: An analysis of what Tomas Fleishmann is worth would be an excellent topic for the future with his arb hearing coming up next week.
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by CP2Devil on Jul 22, 2010 9:46 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
It was bad for MacArthur! It’s one thing to be a free agent on June 30; it’s a whole other thing when it happens a month later and you have to find a new job.
His numbers are pretty good given his role. I just don’t know how they got to $2.4M – that implies he’s comparable to guys with UFA contracts of $4M.
Hey, Lucic sells a lot of jerseys (#7 among NHLers) that’s got to count for something.
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jul 22, 2010 11:11 AM EDT up reply actions
Is this just an oversimplification of his value, or do we not care that his Penalty+/- is +29 over the last 3 years (.322 wins per year,$718k of value per year), because we assume it’s cancelled out somewhere else?
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In your Kaleta argument, you say his value comes from the full +72 over three seasons, not his relation relative to an average forward.
I’m sure I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t understand the disconnect between that argument and this one.
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by George E. Ays on Jul 22, 2010 10:30 AM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, I was being slightly facetious when I talked about Kaleta. At any rate, for Kovalchuk, I already made a bunch of approximations (6 goals = 1 win, 1 win = $2.4M) so $718k get lost in the shuffle.
Got it. Thanks.
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by George E. Ays on Jul 22, 2010 10:36 AM EDT up reply actions
Conceptually, you should be comparing Kovalchuk’s shooting rates to a replacement shooter, not an average shooter. But they’re probably close enough that it’s not the biggest source of error in this approximation. Just felt it’s worth pointing out, because it’s already too easy to confuse replacement level with the average level.
Two reasons I don’t think that’s true:
1) We have accounted for replacement level by looking at the shot totals while he’s on the ice. They’re strongly negative, putting him at replacement level. Corsi and Fenwick assume that every player is an average shooter – so we need to compare to that level.
2) What is a replacement shooter? Almost no one who shot the puck with any regularity is a demonstrably bad shooter. Guys who truly lack shooting talent (say Jody Shelley) barely touch the puck.
Ok, I might be confused about this so bear with me
but if a team of average shooters generates I assume a .500 record, and Kovalchuk produced an EXTRA 6 wins… on top of the average, are we leaving something out by not accounting for the fact that he’s “replacing” an average shooter, and not a replacement level player?
You give him $5.71 mill above replacement, but then you argue that shooters aren’t replacement level players. I just find it confusing that you’re comparing him to other shooters, and not a replacement player in the first instance, and then in the second you’re using comparison to replacement with the UFA valuation.
If you could clear that up for me I’d appreciate it.
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- Sir Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
or to put it another way
Is there a way for you to repeat the same VUKOTA valuation JUST with UFA/RFA players that you consider shooters? or would there be so few cases of those players going to UFA that it’s not worth it? Could you replace the projections on UFA’s with the projections on players who re-sign with their club before going UFA with the idea that they would get roughly equivalent dollars and term from their present team?
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
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I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
by Steve Burtch on Jul 22, 2010 10:51 AM EDT up reply actions
This is a bit of a grumble-grumble post, Gabe. He’s the biggest fish in the free agent pond. He’s going to be overpaid, it’s like a law.
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jul 22, 2010 11:12 AM EDT reply actions
I know you’re making approximations, but I think ice time might be skewing the picture. Even though he’s a great shooter, looking at those raw totals hides his really high ES TOI/60. Sure he’s exceeded expected numbers, but he can rack up all those extra goals due to ice time, right? And I think it’s even more pronounced on the pp, since he sees the most pp time in the league but is only slightly above average in pts/60 and goals/60.
I don’t know if it would have much of an effect, but it might be worth considering.
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Gabe is measuring the extra goals in terms of shooting percentage, so ice time is a factor only in that it gives him more opportunities to shoot. It’s not like points where the raw totals just go higher and higher the more time you get. In theory his percentages could suffer with more ice time.
On the PP, he’s often played the point, so if anything, that would probably drag his shooting percentage numbers down. It certainly isn’t fair to compare his point and goal totals with other forwards.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 22, 2010 11:30 AM EDT up reply actions
Gabe is measuring the extra goals in terms of shooting percentage, so ice time is a factor only in that it gives him more opportunities to shoot.
Right, but the above analysis looks at raw expected and actual goals. Even if his ES exp:act ratio stays the same (1:1.51), less ice time means less added value. If Kovalchuk doesn’t see top 10 ice time, he might only be expected to get 130 goals (or something like that). Using the ratio, Kovy would have 196 actual goals, which is 11 less goals in added value than the above analysis. This could be a marginal effect, but Kovy is in the top 5 when it comes to ES and PP time on ice.
I see your point about his point play, but I don’t think it would be fair to compare him to d-men, since Kovy is a forward with a forward’s shot and shooting talent. But doing that comparison anyway for this year, he’s still middle of the pack among d-men in pts/60.
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Yeah, forwards who play defense on the PP are tricky to compare either way because they often still play some shifts at forward. That said, he would have been the 34th best defender among guys playing at least two minutes per game, so that’s not bad, at least in the top third.
As for the shooting effect, you’re correct that ice time makes a difference to the total amount of value he would add. A team that plans to reduce his ice time would thus benefit less from his skills.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 22, 2010 2:25 PM EDT up reply actions
The raw and expected
goal totals are based on his shooting positions, which results from his total shot numbers at various positions. The fact that he gets so many opportunities doesn’t change the fact that he far exceeds the average NHL shooter.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
by Steve Burtch on Jul 23, 2010 12:30 AM EDT up reply actions
Yea, but that’s not the point. Kovalchuk’s value is relative to the value of every other NHL player: if everyone shot like Kovy, no one would care about Kovy.
My point is that when determining how much value Kovalchuk brings to a team, factoring in his ice time might be appropriate. There are other players who convert at a lower rate than Kovy, but if they were given the opportunities that Kovy is given, their raw and expected totals might be the same or even greater (this is especially true on the pp for kovalchuk. He’s not elite in either pp goals/60 or pts/60).
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but there’s no way a $102M contract – whatever its length – is anything other than an overpay.
Unless you’re only paying him $66M in cap space over eleven years and are operating on a huge budget. Which is pretty much what the Devils were trying to do.
The other possibility is that the other aspects of his game should be valued at greater than nothing. I don’t think he’s great at the other aspects of the game but “more than nothing” seems attainable. Over three years he’s started 48.3% of his shifts in the offensive zone and has ended 48.8% of his shifts in the offensive zone. That’s a pretty respectable total. It’s not great or anything, but it’s not zero-value either. Granted, that’s on the strength of one great season In 2008-09 (starts 45.0%, ends 49.1%) but that season still counts. His Corsi with N.J. is also enough of an outlier, that I’m willing to see what he looks like in that environment a bit more. His Fenwick% in 27 games with NJ was 53.6% compared to the team average of 52.2%. I don’t know the usage there, but again, it seems unlikely that kind of total is at or below replacement. Even his totals in Atlanta are quite a bit better than the guys at the fringes of the league when you take the context of his ice time into consideration.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 22, 2010 11:27 AM EDT reply actions
I haven’t run the numbers separately, but Tom Awad did and he has him at +1 win or so for 2009-10 including shooting and qual comp. I think it’s likely that his five-year value at ES is replacement. But there are huge error bars on these estimates.
When you say replacement, you’re talking freely available talent when all rosters are filled, correct?
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 22, 2010 2:29 PM EDT up reply actions
I assume he changed it after the lockout and that this would be the post-lockout number. That number seems in the range at least. Do you know where he got it from?
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 23, 2010 2:01 AM EDT up reply actions
That’s the $500k question. Replacement is somewhat arbitrary – I used to use the combined record of all the expansion teams. I suppose you could take a bunch of $500k veterans and look at their Corsi, for example.
For pre-lockout, I’ve always thought of 40 points as replacement level because it’s conservative (i.e. it values NHL players a bit more), it’s a nice round number. and the 1999-00 Thrashers are the only modern team to miss it (which is baffling; how bad was that team?). 50 points has been my post-lockout thinking, but that’s again based on having a nice round number, and general observation rather than some kind of rigourous method. 52 points is specific enough that I thought you might point me to an article Tom wrote on the subject where he defined what he was doing. Too bad for me.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 23, 2010 9:42 PM EDT up reply actions
Sounds like the topic of another hockey cliche investigation...
You can’t teach offence, but you can teach defence.
It’d be interesting to see if there is any truth to this adage, players that are offensive stars as youths that pick up greater defensive value as they age. We can see if Kovalchuk can be saved at age 27, or if it’s too late for him.
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I think it was likely true of Mogilny and Hull; not so sure about Jagr or Bure. It would be interesting to check out.
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by Back In Black on Jul 22, 2010 12:26 PM EDT up reply actions
it’s funny, i was wistfully checking out some highlights of the devils’ one playoff win this april, and kovalchuk’s defensive shortcomings were on display. during one shift, he leaves the zone early because he thinks the devils will probably get the puck, and it (in part) leads to a scoring chance against. at another point, the devils turn the puck over on the power play, and kovalchuk rushes back up ice to prevent a scoring chance, which he does. except that there’s also a devils defenseman there to cover the play, and the puck ricochets back to a flyer and kovalchuk kind of stands there stunned as the flyers complete a cross-ice pass that leads to a great scoring chance.
i get the sense from ilya from his interviews that he’s kind of led by the nose – atlanta let him do what he wanted, so he did. i think his defensive play will get better in new jersey, though it will certainly never be good.
I think an interesting follow-up question is if his defensive play improves (ignoring whether that’s even possible), what happens to his offensive game?
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I’ve never watched Kovy play for an extended period of time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of his game is predicated on hanging up ice, behind the d-men, and tapping his stick very loudly. If he starts playing real defense, he’s not going to get the same quality or quantity of chances he got previously. I think that could have more than a very little effect on his game.
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well that’s incorrect, that’s not what his game is predicated on at all, based on the 32 games i saw him play in new jersey. he will leave the zone early and will abandon his defensive responsibility, but he’s not pavel bure, and even pavel bure wasn’t pavel bure – reports of red-line hanging are greatly exaggerated.
he will leave the zone early and will abandon his defensive responsibility
This is what I’m talking about. If he stops doing this (and even becomes proactive in the d-zone), I’d expect his offensive totals to take a hit. By how much is anyone’s guess.
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i don’t think that leaving the zone early is an effective offensive strategy, otherwise more players would do it more often.
I agree. If anyone reads Justin Borne he wrote a piece that referenced that idea recently. Leaving the zone early puts your team on a 4 on 5 if you don’t time it perfectly. Having the instinct to know when your teammate is about to be the beneficiary of a turnover and leaving the zone for an advantage is one thing, but traditional cherrypicking isn’t very common or effective anymore.
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 22, 2010 7:36 PM EDT up reply actions
It’s not effective because it puts your team in hole when they’re defending, so you’ll be outscored while on the ice. But that’s been Kovalchuk’s story (at least while he was in ATL); his defensive numbers were bad even when compared to his teammates. Most players don’t do it, but Kovalchuk isn’t most players.
I don’t think that’s his whole game but I think it’s not insignificant. If only they measured this…
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Because you don’t end up getting the puck. You end up putting yourself in no man’s land and unless you get a good bounce or a D is able to put the puck high above the point men you’re likely to stand around watching your teammates scramble. Additionally, rushing up the ice all alone is not a very effective way to create offense so unless it results in a pure breakaway you’re sabotaging your offensive attack.
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 22, 2010 8:09 PM EDT up reply actions
Some time over the next few seasons, history is quite clear that his scoring will go down regardless of his defence.
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by Back In Black on Jul 22, 2010 4:01 PM EDT up reply actions
Wingers have a very limited effect on the defensive side of the puck. Using goals/shots against to measure a wingers defensive value is a bad idea.
In terms of losing a man and giving up a goal, I’d probably agree that wingers are less likely to be responsible (defensemen aren’t terribly scary, although playing 4 on 5 because Kovalchuk is at center ice is bad news), but the puck doesn’t magically appear in the defensive end of the ice. Shots are a fairly zero sum game — if Kovalchuk’s priority and superstar skill is offense, he should be able to prevent shots by the very nature of winning puck battles, keeping it in the offensive zone, and firing his own shots.
Or, put simply, Kovalchuk’s defense should be offense. Buddy can score a goal like no one else, but he deserves to be marked down for not producing more opportunities and, by extension, allowing fewer the other way.
Wingers have a very limited effect on the defensive side of the puck.
Zach Parise disagrees.
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As do Marian Hossa and Jere Lehtinen.
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by Knee high to a duck on Jul 22, 2010 4:06 PM EDT up reply actions
I’m curious what you guys are basing their defensive impact on. Yes, they’re good defensive wingers. However wingers overall have very little effect on team defense. All they’re asked to do is stick with their point man and backcheck. The center does all the heavy lifting downlow.
Bob freaking Gainey was a left winger. They invented the Selke because of him. Jere Lehtinen won the thing three times, too. If you don’t think wingers can be impact defensive forces, I don’t know what else to say.
Defense is playing when your team doesn’t have the puck, wherever it is on the ice. Defense includes forechecking and backchecking, takeaways, faceoffs, keeping track of the other players position on the ice, calling switches/rotation when a teammate is forced out of his position, blocking shots, penalty killing and even a willingness to take a penalty to prevent a high scoring chance (this might result from your own mistake, or your teammate’s). If you think playing defence is only possible in your own end of the ice, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the term.
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And why does Lehtinen stand out so much? Because he’s the only wing to win it in almost 20 years. And Gainey is in the HoF. Not exactly a typical wing. I’d say it’s one of those “exception proving the rule” situations. Obviously wings don’t have zero defensive value, but that wasn’t the original comment.
You’re right about D being played all over the ice, but most of the stuff you cite is currently unmeasurable, so as far as statistical impact, I’d say the original point still stands.
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 22, 2010 6:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Unmeasurable? So is picking up your point man, or defending down low, which were cited as defensive responsibilities in the first post. All of these characteristics should help contribute to the defensive metrics we’re currently using.
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by Bruce Peter on Jul 23, 2010 10:25 AM EDT up reply actions
Yes, unmeasurable. Maybe that’s why people have been pointing out that GVT and other measurements aren’t accurately reflecting defensive contribution. It’s by far the hardest part of the game to quantify so I’m not sure that the stats we have are even giving us an accurate representation of defensive ability. See the comment directly below by GP!. If you can’t unlink offensive and defensive performance then what’s the upshot? We aren’t adequately measuring defense when we try to isolate “defensive” play.
And from a common sense perspective, can you really argue that wings aren’t the least important position defensively?
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 23, 2010 11:02 AM EDT up reply actions
The Art Ross Trophy has also been dominated by centres. Unless I’ve miscounted, since 1978 the trophy has had 13 winners, only four of them wingers. That’s about the same ratio as the Selke.
Centre is a more important position; it doesn’t mean that wingers are unimportant defensively.
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by Back In Black on Jul 23, 2010 9:35 PM EDT up reply actions
Did I say unimportant?
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 23, 2010 10:12 PM EDT up reply actions
You said “the original point still stands”. The original point was “wingers have a very limited effect on the defensive side”. Call me crazy, but I read “very limited effect” as being similar to “unimportant”.
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by Back In Black on Jul 23, 2010 11:24 PM EDT up reply actions
I guess it’s semantics but I think it’s a pretty common sense position that the wings are the least important position both defensively and overall. I’m not sure what your point about that Art Ross is meant to prove.
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 24, 2010 9:57 AM EDT up reply actions
You're being confusing
I’m the one who said centres were more important than wingers. You don’t have to point that out to me.
You said that the Selke Trophy was dominated by centres as an illustration that the defensive impact of wingers is low. I countered with the Art Ross Trophy because it’s an offensive trophy that wingers also don’t win very often. My point is that just because wingers win the Selke less frequently is not evidence that they are unimportant defensively.
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by Back In Black on Jul 24, 2010 10:27 AM EDT up reply actions
I don’t think the Art Ross is relevant for the current debate and I’m not even sure how it’s controversial that wings are the least important position when it comes to defense. It’s common sense. Centers can be more important both on offense and on defense. How many wings are truly difference makers in the defensive end?
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 24, 2010 10:33 AM EDT up reply actions
There is actually a big difference between “least important” and “unimportant”. The first isn’t controversial, the second is very much the point at issue.
Your main argument was that wingers don’t win the Selke often. My counter-argument (which you haven’t understood) was that wingers also don’t win the Ross often, but no-one claims that they’re “unimportant” offensively.
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by Back In Black on Jul 24, 2010 11:01 AM EDT up reply actions
But it’s not an apples to apples argument, which is why it has no real value in this debate. The Art Ross is frequently won on the strength of high assist totals, and area that Centers dominate. If you go look at the Richard it’s an entirely different story.
My point isn’t just that wingers don’t frequently win the Selke. How many wings are game changers in the defensive end? Could you name 5?
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by Fehr and Balanced on Jul 24, 2010 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions
One reason I disagree is that by possessing the puck and driving up their Corsi, wingers are, in a sense of the word, playing defense, since they’re keeping the other team from having the puck. Knee high to a duck said it best:
you can’t unlink offense and defense at five-a-side; both help you control the puck and the opponent’s scoring chances better, just in different ways. Since hockey doesn’t have clear offense and defense phases in the way that football does and doesn’t have a shot-clock, players have to be able to perform both roles.
Any winger who does this plays good defense in my mind. That’s the reason the Caps were so successful this year. Everyone rags on Green or OV for not playing “defense” but that’s non-sense! They’re out-shooting, out-possessing and out-scoring everyone on the ice, which is much better than a “stay-at-home defensemen who plays well in his own end” (you don’t want him in that end!).
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He (Lou L.) also knows, like I do, this is the best chance to put a lot of people in the seats to grow revenue.-Jeff Vanderbeek
-
There’s a whole other, more conventional side to the economics of this deal. Surely ownership must be disappointed that even with a gleaming and centrally located new building, they are still at 88-89% of capacity-20th in the league in overall attendance. So whatever Kovalchuk is “worth” in hockey terms has to be seen through the prism of ownership’s bottom line expectations.
by Big Picture Guy on Jul 22, 2010 1:38 PM EDT reply actions
Shooting Position
While I see Gabe’s analysis is based on Kovalchuk’s ability to shoot at a higher percentage than other forwards, my understanding is that this is controlled by the spot on the ice the shot is taken from. Is there any value to Kovalchuk’s ability to get the puck to a better shooting position? I note he wasn’t on Gabe’s Top Ten List, nor did I see an analysis of it here.
You can drive a truck through that logic hole
I disagree with the implication is that Kovalchuk will score 15 more goals than a 500k plug in a season.
More rational is that he will outscore an average top 6 forward by 15 goals. A 500k player does not play top 6 minutes, even on a crap team.Thus I would argue the base to add to is roughly $2M -$3M.
Shooting % may level out for most of the league, but the typical plug player does not play against elite defenders. Pushing a 500k player into that role will result in vastly lower his shot totals (since they do not have requisite puck skills to get the puck to scoring positions).
Also as crappy as everyone says kovalchuk is on defence, he may be among the lower ranks of elite players in terms of defence, but he would be preferred to a fourth liner scrub.
He has typically been 8th or 9th on Atlanta’s matchup depth chart. That’s replacement level on an average team.
Interesting, I did not realize he lived such a sheltered life in atlanta. I would still contest that he will out score just about every $500k player in the league by closer to 30 goals than 15. Not sure if you have the data handy (not sure how you dug up shooting pct by location) , but would it be possible to use the subset of <$1M players as the basis to calculate the average and see if the variance increases?
That doesn’t ring true to me, even though I know it’s what your Corsi numbers say. Even though he’s 8th or 9th in 2007-08 and 2008-09 by the Corsi numbers, he’s top three in both years by the +/- QC numbers. That’s kind of odd. Looking over six games from this past year his most common opponents were:
Oct. 3 v. Lightning – M. Walker, P. Ranger, M. St. Louis, M. Ohlund
Oct. 21 v. Capitals – M. Jurcina, T. Poti, M. Knuble, A. Ovechkin
Nov. 12 at Rangers – M. Staal, D. Girardi, V. Prospal, M. Gaborik
Dec. 9 at Flames – R. Regehr, D. Phaneuf, D. Langkow, R. Bourque
Jan. 21 v. Hurricanes – T. Gleason, N. Wallin, J. Tlusty, C. Larose
Jan. 30 at Predators – D. Legwand, J. Ward, R. Suter, S. Weber
It looks to he was being sheltered quite a bit at home, but not nearly as much on the road. Without last change, he was forced to take on really good players. It just seems like a case where the number being spit out at the end doesn’t jive with the amount of time he spends against very talented players. There’s no way that your usual “replacement level” guy is seeing Regehr and Weber and Staal on the road.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 23, 2010 2:29 AM EDT up reply actions
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