So I was just doing some quick math after I saw what the O'Reilly camp sent to the arbitrator and what the Avs submitted. I thought $6.75M was a bit steep, but hey why not ask for as much as you can?
Without looking deeply at fancy stats and putting any effort into this at all, I came up with a very simple formula. I took a Bleacher Report article from last year that listed their idea of the top 10 two-way forwards, looked at their cap hit, contract length remaining, and age for comparison sake. Looking at the first set here (and yes, ROR is included in this group and I just used last year's cap hit) we get an average of $6.16M for 5.1 years. The average age of that group is 28.8.
Rank | Name | Cap Hit Annual (in Millions) | Length of Contract left | Age |
1 | Jonathan Toews | 10.5 | 8 | 26 |
2 | Pavel Datsuyk | 7.5 | 3 | 36 |
3 | Patrice Bergeron | 6.5 | 8 | 28 |
4 | Ryan O'Reilly | 5 | 0 | 23 |
5 | Marian Hossa | 5.275 | 7 | 35 |
6 | David Backes | 4.5 | 2 | 30 |
7 | Henrik Zetterberg | 6.083 | 7 | 33 |
8 | Matt Duchene | 6 | 5 | 23 |
9 | Jordan Staal | 6 | 9 | 25 |
10 | Loui Eriksson | 4.25 | 2 | 29 |
Average | 6.1608 | 5.1 | 28.8 |
So based off the fact that Factor is younger than the average and will presumably get better with age, $6.75M/year doesn't sound so bad. Do I think he is worth that right now, maybe not, but I think he will be in a few years.
The interesting part I found was if we were to take out the highest and lowest paid players from this list to get a more concentrated average, the numbers come out eerily familiar.
Rank | Name | Cap Hit Annual (in Millions) | Length of Contract left | Age |
1 | Jonathan Toews | |||
2 | Pavel Datsuyk | 7.5 | 3 | 36 |
3 | Patrice Bergeron | 6.5 | 8 | 28 |
4 | Ryan O'Reilly | 5 | 0 | 23 |
5 | Marian Hossa | 5.275 | 7 | 35 |
6 | David Backes | 4.5 | 2 | 30 |
7 | Henrik Zetterberg | 6.083 | 7 | 33 |
8 | Matt Duchene | 6 | 5 | 23 |
9 | Jordan Staal | 6 | 9 | 25 |
10 | Loui Eriksson | |||
Average | 5.85725 | 5.125 | 29.125 |
Notice that average annual cap hit? Yes, that's right, it is exactly what the Avs submitted and is exactly 85% of O'Character's salary from this past season, which is exactly what the arbitrator must award. This makes me think that arbitration might not end well in Ryan's favor...