New York Islanders Calvin de Haan Isn’t Worth Five Million

New York Islanders Calvin de Haan is set for a new contract going into the 2017-18 season. Is $5 million too much to pay for the 26-year-old defenseman?

With the acquisition of Jordan Eberle, the New York Islanders now have five players making at least $5 million on the cap. What if that number goes to six, and it’s not because the Islanders acquired Matt Duchene and his $6 million deal. Instead, they extend Calvin de Haan for upward of $5 million.

On June 26th in a spot on WFAN with Lori Rubinson, Brian Compton postulated that the New York Islanders might give de Haan give him a deal between $4 to $5 million. And likely resting on $4.25 per year.

That’s fair, everyone gets to have their opinion. I have no reason to doubt B-Comps number here. But I wanted to see how that stacked up in with the rest of the NHL.

As we know, when it comes to contract negotiations precedent is key. Agents and teams like to compare players against one and other to at the very least set the baseline for negotiations.

Using Cap Friendly’s Player Comparables Tool I was able to pull four defensemen who signed deals around $5 million. Were around de Haan’s age at the time of signing and had similar production. You can take a look at my results here.

Comparing Usage

Cap Friendly’s tool is fantastic. It gives you great output based on contracts and a few other key statistics like points. But I want to know a bit more. Such as usage (OppCF%) and efficiency (CF%) of these comparables in order to get a sense of how de Haan compares on the ice.

I chose the following four names to dive deeper based on how they compared to the parameters I selected in Cap Friendly’s tool as well as their age at the time of signing. I also excluded righty’s like Zach Bogosian.

All stats, except points, taken from stats.hockeyanalysis.com and are for all situations.

Looking at these numbers de Haan seems to be slotted well. Torey Krug is the only outlier here. He’s scored way more than the others on the list, he was a dominant possession player, but also faced significantly lower tiered opposition.

In the 2016-17 season, in all situations, Calvin de Haan faced the second toughest opposition on the team with a 52.5% Opposition Corsi-For. Which lines up with the other names on the list.

I originally wrote that Calvin de Haan could fetch between $2.5 million to $3 million per year with his next deal. But after this comparison, I have to side with Compton on this.

Next: Top UFA Targets for Isles

Seeing what other players were paid at the same point of their careers with similar production, deployment, and efficiency a deal around $4 million per year seems about right for Calvin de Haan.