Daily Faceoff has ranked the Edmonton Oilers last in salary cap efficiency. This comes as no surprise after the website began its annual salary cap rankings list and after a deep dive into the numbers determined that there isn’t a team in a worse situation financially than the Oilers. It isn’t a shock given the Oilers current salary cap woes. The team finds itself with just 21 players on the roster and only $382,499 in cap space. Though finishing dead last on the list is new, Edmonton ranked second last in last year’s version of the list.
Daily Faceoff’s ranking system looks at no-move clauses, dead cap space, the quality of long-term contracts, bargain contracts, and the good deals versus the bad ones. Unfortunately, based on those criteria, it is easy to see why the Oilers find themselves at the bottom of that list. Edmonton has several problematic contracts on their books, and while they have some bargains like Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. The bad deals outweigh the great ones.
Darnell Nurse is a really good defenseman; he eats a ton of minutes for the Oilers and plays a lot of tough situations. However, he does suffer a lot of mental lapses, and at $9.25 million a season, he just doesn’t bring the offensive upside you would like to see in a defenseman making that kind of money. Nurse is also likely to wear down as the miles pile up on his body. Those difficult minutes require that he play with a ton of physicality. It could take its toll on the 28-year-old when he gets on the wrong side of 30.
Some of the other bad contracts on the Oilers are goaltender Jack Campbell at $5MM per season as well as third-line winger Warren Foegele and third-pairing defenceman Brett Kulak at $2.75 million each. The contracts come in addition to the nearly $2MM per year the Oilers are still paying on the James Neal buyout.
On the surface, these contracts don’t look like outrageous overpayments because all the players listed above are still functional NHLers. However, in the flat cap era Campbell, Foegele, and Kulak are all replacement-level NHLers who could have been replaced by other players on contracts of less than $1MM per season. Couple that with the mishandling of Nurse’s previous bridge deals and it all amounts to around $10MM in inefficient salary cap spending that could lead to big problems for the Oilers down the road when they need to offer extensions to McDavid, Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard.
Maple Leafs are worse off. The Oilers are in bad shape, but the leafs are worse.
Leafs, arguably, have more team friendly deals. This has me inclined to disagree. Article could’ve just been about Nurse’s contract :P
Tavares’ deal is as much of a backbreaker as Nurse’s. And the leafs are 13.25M over the cap without LTIR. If anyone does comeback from injury they also have to shed that amount to be cap compliant. Campbell was overpaid last season, we’ll see which Campbell shows up this one. And Foegele I would call a small overpay. At least the Oilers are cap compliant.
The Leafs aren’t paying Jack Campbell and Darnell Nurse almost 15 million combined
Nope, but they’re paying Tavares and Brodie $16.
And when Samsonov gets injured and misses time, the leafs will be paying 9.9M towards goalies for Woll and Jones to be their top 2.
And beyond that … while one could describe McDavid’s contract as a “bargain” — in so far he’s the best player in the game, and someone would give him more money — $12.5 MM is a monster bite. Teams handing out contracts that large HAVE to be disciplined about it.
And the Draisaitl contract is probably the most team friendly in the league. Arguably the 2nd best player in the game the last 3+ years @8.5M.
@ Josh, CF shows them at 22/23 players plus 2 on PTO.
Yes, Nurse may be overpaid. If Campbell has a bounce back year, he won’t be as overpaid. Kulak, Foegle contracts will be done by the time McDavid and Draisytal need to be renewed and salary cap is going way up in next two years. Oilers also have the best bargain contracts in McDavid and Draisytal compared to production with most other teams top players by plenty. Part of playing in Canada means having to pay higher salaries to get and keep free agents, as other cities that have no state tax, and yes warm weather and far less fan interest and media coverage; which raises player costs. As an Oiler fan, I don’t care where they stand currently and don’t worry about 3 yrs down the road. Very few teams who are good, would have no players who are overpaid!
The Oilers and Leafs are not even close to a Cup, And both clubs handle money like a cow would handle a shotgun.
Even Minnesota with all the dead cap ranks higher than Edmonton? Ouch.
I like the effort DFO/Scott Maxwell are putting into this. Gives a good overview and lots of talkabouts in September.
However, the chosen categories for keeping the system “objective” are debatable. They are using several metrics that are used for the evaluation of each team. One is called “good contract percentage” for example. That’s fine because it gives an objective framework for grading 32 teams. On the other hand, percentage-wise, a very good deal for an elite player has the same value as an overpay for a 4th-liner. Each of them is counted as one contract. Even if one has much more significance for the organization.
Also, DFO’s system has an emphasis on 5vs5 production when evaluating a player’s effectiveness. I guess that’s to keep things comparable throughout the league. On the other hand, this leads to Nugent-Hopkins and even Draisaitl being ranked as poor contracts because of their reliance on PP.
I also see flaws in not weighting their six categories. Categories like “dead cap space” and “number of NMC” are treated equally to really important categories when determining the final rankings. So getting rid of 1 single NMC can give you a leap of several places in this category. Whereas in other categories you’d need a significant jump in roster quality to make up the same number of places.
So, yes, the final ranking IS flawed in my eyes. Nevertheless, great source of data and analysis for us hockey fans in a dire time of the year.