Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks.

Here SIMS.

Your source of information and analysis to help you win your fantasy hockey league.

Block off hot a stem hit on, staylock block.

Here's your host, Jesse Souvier and Victor Nunyo.

Fantasy Hockey Live back once again.

Jesse Severe, Fan Tracks other places.

Victor Nuno, the Fantasy Hockey Doctor.

How you doing today, Victor.

I'm doing awesome.

Jesse.

It's good to have you back.

I was tired of talking to myself to the Audi's good to have you back.

How was How was Arizona?

It was great?

It was great.

It was the first pitch Arizona.

I've talked about it before.

It is a time when like the whole fantasy baseball world comes together once a year, two hundred people at this conference, and we get to go out and watch ball games and we get to you just you hang out with the people who are doing all the podcasts.

I am convinced Victor one day we're going to create one of these for fantasy hockey.

All the people from all the pods, all the fans, you come.

We have panels, we have people presenting original research on fantasy hockey.

Man, it would be the stuff as far as I'm concerned.

Would you be into You're a man who gives a lecture from time to time, you'd be able to fit into that.

Oh yeah, I give probably more lectures than I want to with my teaching jobs.

Yeah, but that sounds fun.

I know they have something like that.

They have an analytics conference, which seems really cool, but not It would be awesome if it had something that was specifically geared towards fantasy hockey.

That would be amazing.

If listeners are attuned to a thought like that, man and also less lazy than me, reach out to me, and I would like to take credit for your idea, or take credit for the work that somebody else would do to set up a conference like this.

I think I made it too blatant, Victor.

They all caught on.

Never mind, forget everything I just said.

Let's get into the beat of this episode.

You'll hear from Victor.

I Victor today by popular demand.

I believe we went out and we asked people about this.

We're going to talk about salary leagues, and that is something that you and I have great interest in.

We have been playing salary leagues for a number of years, and there's just a lot of things that are different about playing salary leagues and a lot of a lot of considerations you have to keep in mind.

Why is it that you like to play in salary leagues?

Victor Well, I think for me, the way that I'm wired is the more complex the better.

When something's really simple and straightforward, I just get bored.

And not like Fantasy hockey points only leagues are boring or anything.

There's a specific nuance to it.

But I just like when there's more things to think about, how many teams there are, how many categories, all the different factors, and you know which teams and players are interesting.

And then the salary cap is just like a whole other layer.

It's like another dimension.

It's like we suddenly realized there were four dimensions or something.

This would be like, oh so amazing.

So that's a way that I think about it and why I like it, because it's just another it's a completely different thing.

To think about it.

I always talk about just think about how much you would like Coroll caprisof in a points only league.

He'd be amazing one of your best players.

Now take that same situation and put it in a cap league, all of a sudden, he's maybe like the fiftieth most interesting player because he's so expensive.

And you experienced this and when one of your leagues recently, so I know you're aware of that situation.

But ayeay, I just love the extra layer complexity that it adds.

What about you, Yeah, for sure.

And we've done series on salary before, and one of the things that I have found is I've gone on because I'm way into dynasty and I've become convinced over the years that one of the problems you can have with a dynasty league is if there's not some sort of a salary constraint in a die Ynsty league, things get out of control.

It's too easy for one team to build a super team that simply will not disappear, and especially with a different level of skill, it's simply not going to be corrected at any point.

If you have salaries that puts another check.

It's not just once you have assembled the team of the superstars.

If you figured out some kind of a loophole, you can just go on winning forever.

And we're talking specifically about real salary leagues.

That's what we're doing today, not ones where you bid in an auction and then you live with whatever you won with your bid into future years, but rather ones where you use the league that the NHL, or the salary that the NHL gives out to the player, and probably the term that the NHL gets out to the player.

So it is becoming my favorite kind of league to do, Victor, and we need to talk about I wanted to have a philosophical talk with you here at the beginning about a couple of aspects of these leagues.

And then in our second segment we're going to get into some individual players and their salaries.

But one of the things that we're trying to do then is if you've added this extra dimension, this extra layer into the way that you are valuing players, and that is how much you're getting for the buck in a salary cap, the question is how do you value these guys.

And one of the things that is interesting specific to the sports leagues, in specific to hockey is guys come in with very small contracts, and sometimes they produce much better than those very small contracts.

Right away, the minimum contract is like seven hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for an NHL player, and obviously Maclin Celebrini making a basically minimum contract is more valuable than almost anybody in terms of the production you're going to get.

And then after the first couple of years that a player has their entry level contract, they have what we sometimes call a bridge contract, where they're not getting superstar money, but they're also not getting chump change.

But in restricted free agency, maybe a player who's going to end up making ten million dollars is getting three million dollars instead of eight hundred thousand dollars for a couple of years.

So when we're trying to value players in salary leagues, it's very difficult for us.

We have to consider that those are special cases.

I don't know, Victor, how do you account for all those things in your mind when you try to figure out how to value players.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about.

I think that the as you mentioned, the entry level contracts are like a different category almost in and of themselves, because even an average sort of producer is going to be better value per dollar than someone with a large contract who's maybe not way out producing it.

So you have to have them in a separate category.

And then I think of him as like my top liners, and then your top producers, and then you're sort of like middle producers who might be a bargain, and then your entry level contracts, which are three different categories.

And to some extent, the top producers almost don't matter in the sense that you need a few superstars on your team and you can ignore a little bit how much they make.

Now that isn't entirely true, because some superstars are way overpaid for what they might produce in certainly because I think an example of this might be like a bradon Point who isn't terribly expensive, but nine point five million for someone who doesn't provide a lot of peripheral coverage.

If you're in a peripheral heavy league, his value might be.

Less than that.

But if you're in a points focus league, or if the points that he does score add up to a decent value, he might be fine.

But it's just to say that some of those guys at the high end matter a little less.

And then you have your kind of.

Little players who some of them are just woefully overpaid for what they produce in fantasy, and some are actually incredible value.

So those are the second category.

And then the third are basically.

The entry levels or the bargain bind guys, and I feel like you need a healthy mix of all of them.

And generally you can't get too many of those superstars anyway, so you're limited by availability.

But I also think that you shouldn't have too many.

I think the Toronto Maple Leafs have been an example of this in real life, having too many of those large contracts, and then they've struggled with depth and maybe potentially some other issues.

But that's a good example of when you spend too much on those top guys, you don't have enough for the our bargain big guys in the middle that can be very productive.

No matter how many of those entry level guys you have, it's just not quite enough.

So I think you need a healthy mix of all three.

I don't know if that makes sense.

Jesse, Yeah, and there is obviously there's a big difference between what happens in the NHL in team assembly and what we do here in fantasy, because in fantasy we just have to stack guys on top of each other.

I don't care if they all play the exact same position on the ice practically, as long as it fits into my settings, my roster settings.

I don't care if they all have the same type of game.

I don't care if they would compliment each other if they were actually skating out there together.

What's important to me is that they all score points.

They all score my kind of fantasy points, and that's where that's where it becomes important to me.

But when it comes to NHL teams, you do have to consider, is the studs and scrubs as we say, a strategy going to be a successful one for teams.

In terms of context, folks, until recently, it was pretty simple.

With the NHL.

The minimum contract is around eight hundred thousand dollars and the top contracts until fairly recently were about ten million dollars, and you considered anybody in between the there was a gradation.

A guy who was getting a contract between maybe one and five million dollars.

Was that was maybe a bridge contract or maybe it was just a krusty veteran who got a rather low contract to hang around.

But now, as you say, capriz Off is going to be making seventeen million a year, that's three million more than Leon Dy's dry sidles fourteen, which I believe is the second largest contract for a pro and so you have to consider that a caprizof now costs as much as practically two players to two of the top paid players did last year.

It's a huge jump, and there's an expectation the CAP's going to grow, and there have been rumors that in fact it's going to grow even more by more than what was initially thought.

We're in a rising cap environment, so people are signing to these contracts and you have to decide do you believe what NHL managers believe that it's okay that this contract is eye popping right now, because in a couple of years from now, in dynasty, it won't seem so crazy because the.

Overall cap will go up enough.

So yeah, it's difficult to assess what you're going to need there now.

One thing I really like to think about when we do this is to figure out where we're going to set a replacement value in fantasy.

I've always considered replacement value to be the core principle, and you talked about that when you said some of these minimum contract guys there you almost have to discount.

You can get a certain amount out of a guy, even on a minimum contract.

And for me, one tempting way to do this, I'm speaking around the point a little bit.

One tempting way to do this would be to say, career caprice Off is going to make seventeen million dollars starting next year.

And let's say that he got me eight point five fantasy points a game, but he gets eight point five fantasy points, and it's seventeen million dollars that we're paying him.

You could make that ratio, or you could say the next guy down maybe makes a little bit less, but his denominator is different, and therefore it's slightly higher or it's slightly less something like that.

But do you set or how do you set the replacement value and the surplus value on a player Victor do you look at it as simply how many points you get per dollar and you can just take that all the way down the line for these players, or how do you consider how much exactly you're going to.

Value each guy.

Yeah, I don't know if this is the best way to do it, But the way that I like to do it is value per dollar.

I love looking at value per dollar, but you can't only look at that because some people's value per dollar is astronomical, but their actual relative value to what is replacement level for that league or average roster spot for that league isn't very high.

So you're getting great value in terms of how much you're spending, but it's just not even.

Worth it because they're so low.

It's if someone's fan track score is like in the forties, but their value per dollar is one of the best you could get, how much does that actually contribute to your team?

Very little?

So I think that you have to look at value per dollar, but then also just look at what is their actual contribution in their league, whether it's a fan track score or points per game or something like that, and you can look at what's replacement level in that league.

And salary cap leagues are always fun to look at who the free agents are, right, I think that's always a good measure of like, when you look at free agents in a salary cap league, are they actually guys who would be free agents in real life?

Because if they are, then that's probably a good setup.

But if they're not, if you have like your Corolla presouce, or if you have some of your best players who happen to make a lot of money, or free agents in that league.

The settings are probably, in my opinion, not quite right.

That should not be the case, right, you shouldn't have those valuable players in free agency.

But you'll see.

Generally is that there's your fan track score or points per game or however you want to measure it, and then you'll see the salary.

So I'm just looking right now.

In one of my leagues, Sam Steele is the top free agent.

He makes two million, But there's other guys who are around the same amount, who make two or three times that amount.

That's pretty obvious what the better value is, Right, You'll take the guy who is around the same production, but his salary is a little bit less.

I think you have to look relatively like compared to.

Your replacement level in that league, which is always league specific, and then look at the relative values.

So in that sense, it's pretty straightforward.

You could just look at Okay, here are the top free agents.

These are how much they make, and probably the guys who are in that range of the top few free agents, whichever ones make the least are probably the best value.

So that's a pretty easy calculation.

But you might also find some other guys who are maybe a little bit more down who make even less.

Guys who are making league minimum and who are maybe a step or two below that might still actually be valuable.

But once you get to two far down the list, then at some point it's just not even really worth it because they contribute so little even though their value per dollar is excellent.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does, and I would say many of the same things as you, Like, I'm looking at my fourth sport roster, and the only reason I grab this one is because it's a points league.

So it's fairly easy to compare apples to apples.

I've got Jonathan taz on a two million dollar contract and he's getting three points a game.

I've got Kyle Connor a seven point one million dollar contract who's getting six point six points per game.

Now, if you actually compared those two points to the number of dollars they're being paid, you'd say Jonathan TOAs is a better deal because he's only being paid two million, he's getting three points.

Kyle Connor is being paid seven, he's getting six point six.

That's practically the same.

You're getting a much higher percentage on your Jonathan Ta's life doesn't work that way, man, because you need Jonathan Days and then the old cap, and he had a goal last just recently as you're listening to this, he had a goal for the Jets.

But it is it doesn't work that way because you do have to look what is freely available on the wire and figure out what is the marginal value above that.

So for me, the replacement level is what could I get basically on the wire for free, especially if the format would allow me to freely change guys around, And all the value you extract from somebody is what you can get from above that level.

And like you said, you can't simply run around saying the best values for my dollar are minimum contracts who get just barely above minimum value.

You have to pay for some of those expensive guys in order to be able to be successful in the league.

But to me, the value per dollar of guys who are below leave league average production is almost nil.

There's almost no value to that because, simply put, that's the point and I expect to get by doing nothing, and I know it doesn't work like that.

You don't just automatically get everybody's average every night.

You actually have to think about how players are going to change and play in the future and not how they've played in the past.

But yeah, I would say that is my starting point to doing this.

I think there is a pretty serious math to this.

You look at the number of roster spots you have as a constraint, you look at the number of dollars you can give out, and then you figure out what is the maximum number of points that I can accrue with those other constraints put around me.

And that does involve making calculations above what an average or the freely available value over replacement is.

So to me, somebody who's getting Kyle Connor's six point six points, that's worth a significant amount.

Two point ninety seven points.

For Jonathan tays Is, it's worth nothing because I could probably get somebody for even less than two million a year who can do that for me.

What Kyle Connor's doing I can't get.

I would I could, I'd have to have like several roster slots of somebody producing just barely above par, and I don't have.

Then I have to give out all those roster slots.

I don't know, Victor.

I feel like I'm talking myself around in circles.

That all makes sense in my head.

Do you look at at it that way.

Is that what we were saying.

Do you look at it in terms of there being some kind of mathematical formula?

How do you balance those things in your mind?

Yeah, I think, as you said, if you can get them out of free agency, then that's I think that's the same thing that I was saying.

That's the a replacement level, because that's the score or the points that is what I would use as the baseline, and so this is the production that I can get for this dollar amount.

And then you can just see, Okay, that's a really good calculation.

You can look at the average score that's available on free agency, and then you can look at what is the rough amount that you would have to spend, and there's some variables there, probably in some different amounts, but you can see generally they're not going to see like a huge variation, but you might you can see, okay, that's how much people are costing.

So then you can look at your own roster and you can see, okay, how much is this guy who I have better than what's out there that can help you with trades that can help you with Should I cut this guy?

Should I buy this guy?

Out because you might have a guy in free agency who's better value than someone you have on your roster, and maybe you need to trade or buy them out or whatever, maybe trade them to someone who has cap space.

So it just helps you make those decisions.

I'm really looking at this Sam Steele right now and thinking maybe I should pick him up in this league.

Yeah, exactly, I'm looking at I'm looking at the four sport again and just some of the values that are on the waiver wire.

The very top guy at the waiver wire is Parker Kelly of Colorado, who is earning three point eight two Fantasy points per game.

The kind of the baseline in this league is between is probably around three points, and he's getting a minimum contract.

He's getting eight hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.

And why is he a little bit on a shot percentage?

Heater, sure, but he gets two hits a game, He's got half a point per game.

That seems like he's probably online for something like that if he's going to keep getting minutes for the Avalanche.

So that's the thing.

Three point eighty two points per game at a minimum contract, you could be paying a guy four or five times as much to get that same production.

And even if you say his production is going to regress thirty three percent and he's going to be down to more of just an average player, everything that you get from a player has to be from that marginal increase above.

I know a few years ago when I played in the kokkupfle the Keeping Carlson auction, I was in the top tier auction for that, and when I would do my own auction values for that league, I actually specifically use the formula that cranked up the values the further they got from the average, So the very top players, I wasn't just doing like how many dollars per point.

I would say, the farther you get from what I can get on the wire, I'm going to use a formula to artificially increase the value or the amount I'm willing to bid on that player.

Because the truth is, in a roster spot, the value of getting eight points instead of seven points per game is huge because then I can use another roster spot to stream.

Yeah, it is.

It is not as straightforward, I think as just the dollar versus the point.

I think you have to consider some of these other types of things to be as successful as you can be.

Any more thoughts on that.

Victor, Yeah, I think what you just said that's I feel like I've tried to think about articulate that, but I think you said it really well.

And just to reiterate, there is Gaussian distribution or Bell curve to this, and I think that's the key is that the players at the extremes are really hard to get, and the ones who have minimal value you don't care about, obviously, but the ones at the high extreme of high value you do need to assign a higher priority or bid or whatever you want to say, because they're just harder to get, and so you do as you approach that higher value.

It's something that you really need to pay attention to.

And it's actually something that when you look at different players like Connor McDavid with his new contract, not only is he already incredible, but the fact that he took an insane discount to stay in Edmonton, that contract is going to be insanely valuable because of how good he is and what he's going to be making.

So that's an example of ridiculous value.

But then you also have just staying on the Oilers and I know We're going to talk about players later, but you have someone who makes a third of that, and like Ryan Neuten Hopkins and Zach Hyman, you have players who make about a third of the amount, but their production is not a third.

You have to think about it that way in terms of how valuable they are.

But those guys at the extremes, like you have to when you're doing your prep and when you're prioritizing them or thinking about how much they're worth, you have to assign an extra priority or an extra mathematical advantage to them because they are that much more valuable and they are that much more rare to acquire, and you just have to put extra attention to them.

And I think when you're evaluating, it's one of those things where you have to step outside the math a little bit and say, Okay, if it's just a linear progression, you can't just look at it so simply.

You have to say, whoa these guys are like in a special category, and I actually have to think about them a little bit differently.

First of all, Gouss has entered the chat.

I think Gouss actually was a defenseman for the Ducks back in the eighties.

Wait, a minute.

Did the Ducks start in the eighties?

Never mind?

No, Victor said gausting, And that made me excited because I'm studying stats right now.

That's bell curve people.

It's so much more valuable to get the guys at the top end of the bell curve because they can.

It's yeah, you have to consider that it's not a linear model, just like you said the other impact that of course it has.

I mean, it's fine and good for me to say, well, Parker Kelly is making he's getting more points than anybody else on the waiver wire in this league, and he's on a minimum salary.

But what if he stinks in two months and I pick him up and then he's not so good?

It all.

It all goes to heck on us?

Then what do we do?

In many leagues, obviously, when you drop a player, you have to retain that cap hit for the future.

It does not go away.

You have to keep paying that player's salary, and it does change the strategy when you are going to continue some sort of a payment for that.

And there's all sorts of different to do it, all sorts of different ways to do this.

It's generally considered advisable to do something in your league to make sure that you can't just flip guys around willy nilly without any kind of consequence for adding and dropping somebody based on their salary.

So I don't know, Victor maybe riff around that a little bit.

What does salary cap hit?

Due to the way that you view these things.

Personally, if you play in leagues that don't penalize you for dropping a player with the salary, I don't.

I'm not a fan of those leagues.

I have played in those.

I just think it's silly, like it adds an extra layer of complexity, certainly because you have to think about the cap.

But if you can just move guys around without any penalty, it basically just becomes like another streaming sort of league where you have to think about one extra sort of category and as long as you're under the cap at that moment, it's fine.

To me.

That's just not as interesting, that's not realistic.

That's not how the NHL operates.

And I like to model my leagues as much as you can the NHL and how leagues actually function.

And so you can't just drop a player, you can't just buy them out or terminate their contract, you can buy them out for a cap hit.

So I think that it has to have some sort of teeth.

Your decisions have to have, they have to matter, they have to have some sort of consequence for it to be interesting and relative.

I think now some leagues use actual NHL buyouts, and that's cool, but sometimes that can be a little harsh, so I'm fine with leagues who modify it a little bit.

I've also been in leagues that are way too lenient, like the buyout amount is a quarter of the actual salary, and to me, that's just not enough because people can just have too much flexibility.

I've also seen leagues that have unlimited buyouts that also seems too flexible, Like I think you have to have a limit.

I think the NHL is at seven that's what we usually use, and so.

Just you have to make it.

You have to make it so that people have to be a little more restrictive in their decision making, so that it just.

You can be a little more careful and calculated.

Otherwise, people just change thing all the time and you can just add and subtract willy nilly, and it just becomes in realistic and it's not as fun because then people aren't held to a standard for their decisions, and it's just they can just on a whim change their mind.

And I think that makes it a little bit harder to make the league interesting and make it challenging to win.

Otherwise it's just you just grab the flavor of the month and cut whoever that isn't that isn't as interesting and not why I'm in salary cap league.

There's pently a redraft leagues that are like that, So I think if you like that flavor, you should probably just go for those kinds of leagues, is my opinion.

Yeah, part of the appeal why do a salary league?

Part of it is, look, what are we all trying to do here?

We're all trying to mimic in some way the experience of earning a sports team, right, And one of the big things between our normal fantasy leagues and any professional sports league is pro teams aren't streaming, They're not just adding and dropping.

There are rules, there are limits that the guardrails that they have to deal with that your average fantasy team does not.

And the neat thing about a salary cap is it does add an additional layer of realism.

Is it perfect realism.

No, there's always a balance between realism and playability.

You want it to be a fun game.

Maybe it's you want it to be more fun than it is for some NHL gms.

So yeah, having those things in place, I think gives us a slightly closer experience to what an NHL GM might be dealing with in terms of I can't just cut this guy.

We're paying him money, The owner doesn't want me to cut this guy.

Plus the league is going to make me continue to pay part of his salary whether I cut him or not.

Yeah, I think there is a real value to that.

Of course, this is yet another way in which players who have quote unquote real life value are going to be penalized compared to players who have the fantasy game.

Some of your defense first defensemans, I'm looking again one of the top, ironically, one of the top guys on the free agent wire again in the four supporter is Alexander Windberg, who comes off to me as a classic guy who is never going to be worth in fantasy what he's going to be paid in reality, because he's a centerman who doesn't really generate stats, but he does things that NHL teams like from time to time.

Yeah, that salary is never going to want to flip onto your books.

Vladislav Gabrikov is getting seven million dollars a year.

He's not very likely to be appealing in a dynasty fantasy salary league because he doesn't get many points, he doesn't get many shots, and he doesn't even take a whole lot of hits.

But the Rangers are probably glad to have him around, and other teams have been too, So it does become, it does become yet another way in which these players real life values or real life values teams actually can be diminished, because not only are they getting fewer fantasy points than some other players, but now the high salaries that NHL teams value them for are also being another reason that you have to hold against them.

But I like what you have to say about the cap pits Victor, because there has to be some kind of balance.

My thinking in a dynasty league a lot of times, because I'm usually thinking as a guy who helped design the league or as the commissioner of the league, is I also want to think about the possibility that what if somebody is incompetent and takes a whole bunch of cap hits on and does all kinds of damage to a team, and then they disappear because partly they were really not doing well, or are they stop being attention or are they flaked out or whatever, And now I've got to sell this team to somebody else.

Sell in the sense of I've got to convince somebody else to take this on.

And part of my thought process with cap hits and all this stuff is, I don't want it to be too restrictive if there's somebody new who comes along to run it.

So like I have an amnesty program in one of my leagues where if you're new coming in, I will give you more buyouts to clean up a mess potentially that you were left.

But yeah, it's always that balancing act between the amount of the amount of consequence, the amount of accountability you want to hold people too, in the amount of flexibility.

Yeah, it's always a balance of those.

And know that I've been in leagues that felt super restrictive and you feel like you can't do anything because it's the cap is tight and the penalties are tight.

And that's probably pretty realistic to how the NHL is but at the same time, it's also I understand that you want to be fun, so I know some leagues don't make it quite so restrictive.

I think you just have to try to find that middle ground there, but also just be aware of what kind of league you're in.

And as I mentioned in this the episode last week, when you're asking for advice or you're talking about it, you need to put all this in the disclaimer of the question that you're asking because it completely changes the context of the question.

If you have a very restrictive league with in terms of ads and buyouts, like some leagues have only like maybe ten or fifteen ads per year or something like that, that completely changes it too.

So you're really or like the Diesel leagues where you can only basically acquire players through trade or through draft or if you're adding them minor players, that is, if you're adding them, they can't go into your minor system.

So there's always some interesting nuance to different league rules, and you have to really understand those, and if you're asking for advice, you have to relay them, which I know we're talking about real salary leagues, but it's another reason why I always advise people when they're asking about joining a league.

If the settings are really complicated to the point where every time you ask for advice you have to like write a dissertation, maybe you don't want to be in that league because it's just so complicated that I've had people ask me this and I'm like, Okay, wait a minute, what is this rule and what is that rule?

And then they'll show me the constitution and I'm like, I'm not going to read this whole thing.

You need to like summarize it for me.

So if it's that difficult, then either you dive all into it and really learn it well, or you just like don't join.

That Like, yeah for sure, Okay, Victor, I think we've warmed up.

We've talked about some of this.

Right after this, we're going to talk about a couple of players.

This lead too Excellence, our serious injury.

When back from break and before we get into our players, Victor, why don't you tell people some of the cool things that I don't know about.

Yeah, if you want some extra advice, we were talking about DM advice.

We were talking about roster doctors or any kind of personal advice.

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Let's talk about some of our top value real cat players.

Who is your first nominee up for discussion.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of players that I could mention, and I'll just go over some.

I try to pick some in different categories, like some of the top players middle value.

We're not going to talk too much about the value contrast because everyone knows, like Jesse, you mentioned Maclin celebraty who's more value him right now in.

A cap league like nobody.

It's pretty obvious, but yeah, there's some really good ones, especially with the cap going up.

The first one I was going to talk about is Brendan Hagel.

Hegel is just an absolute beast, and it's funny because everyone is sometimes down on him.

Because of his lack of power.

Play time, and it's true he doesn't always get the best opportunity.

This season, he's.

Gone through phases where he has been or hasn't been on the top power play But one of the things I like the most about Hegel is that it doesn't matter, like he doesn't really need the power play he's in terms of if you go back and look at top five on five producers, he's always in there.

And he had a career high of thirteen power play points a few seasons ago.

That's not a lot for someone who's the top end producer, and he's basically been around or above a point per game.

Plus he provides pretty decent peripherals and so he's amazing.

Dom decision at the Athletic does his like top contract kind of thing, and Brendon Hagel.

Is near the top at one of those.

So he's really an excess value type of player, Like his value is more than double basically what he's actually making six point five million.

The other thing that I love and I like to look for this is players who are locked in for years, if you know that you have that contract set for a long time.

Those are my favorite types of players because I don't have to think about what I'm gonna do with him later when he gets a raised or whatever.

He's just locked in for six more seasons at six point five million, and especially with the cap going up, like that contract value is going to be absolutely insane.

Yeah, I like hegel.

It doesn't matter if he's on the power Play.

Of course I want him to be on the power Play, and he has been recently, but he offers so much production even away from it.

And he's one of these players that it doesn't matter where he plays or who he plays with, He's going to get value.

And I love that.

I love that I just don't have to think about him.

He's just going to produce.

He's going to by tremendous value.

And yeah, he's awesome.

And I should put one more caveat So, yeah, our discussion here we're not going to talk about entry level contracts.

I don't even think we got any bridge contracts here necessarily, although no, I don't think we do, and we are talking about av I think that's victory.

That's your my favorite way to do these.

If you actually look at Brandon and Hegel's contract in some places, it will show he's making nine million dollars this year, but that's because his cash is going to decline a couple of years at nine million, then six point five and a bunch of five point four fives.

In any terms, it's six point five million a year for the next eight the next seven years, six point five million a year for the next seven years.

Yeah, So keep in mind if you're doing this at home and you're not familiar with some of this stuff, that's where we're competing.

But yeah, Brandon Hegel absolutely huge.

My first nominee here, Victor is an extremely foolish one for me to make because I was trying to extract this player from you in in a salary league relatively recently, and that's Tage Thompson.

So me saying that I love his contract is probably just a terrible idea on my part.

He is making an aav of seven point one four two eight five seven million.

I was trying to decide if that was some multiple pie for a while, but I don't think it is.

I think it's just the way you divide.

And he's getting six point three seven tidy points per game, which again it's way above that minimum he is on that contract.

Like I said, five more years, seven point one four even on the Sabers he's producing, which tells me that if he were to get to a better team or the Sabers were to get better, those numbers could very well go off.

But the amount of points per game that he's getting in terms of Fantasy points per game would be very acceptable for a guy making ten million dollars and he's making seven.

And I think his game is going to age fine.

He's huge.

I think he will be durable and be able to keep going out there.

That's definitely even though five more years, I think in some of our nominees, I think you've got some guys who have more years out five is probably on the thin side, and I have some other guys who are a little bit on the thin side of it.

This won't be as amazing a contract, probably as Brandon Hagels will be several years from now, but it's going to be a very good one.

So I like Tate Thompson a lot.

Yeah, Tate Thompson.

I think he was my first pick in the Diesel League.

Yeah, he's got great value.

And I think that year too that I picked him, he had a bit of a down year.

I think that's always good too, when you can get someone on a bit of a down league.

Yeah, I love Tage.

I think also looking at what he did in the World Championships, that was great.

So you love to see the trend up.

I don't love the situation in Buffalo.

It seems to always be that way, but I think that he's going to produce no matter what.

So I love him.

All right, Ready for my next one?

All right, So Logan Cooley is going to be my next one.

And this is an example of one of these situations where I think you're comfortable sort of buying high ish.

Obviously he just signed.

He's on an entry level right now, so his value is bonkers.

And this kind of relates back to a point I wanted to make, like sometimes people almost discount the entry level contracts.

Oh, it's only for this amount of time.

I think as long as you can factor the rays that they're going to get into your window, I think that's the most important thing.

Just don't assume that's going to continue.

As long as you're not assuming that entry level amount is going to continue for an ornamate amount of time, you're fine.

Logan Cool is going to start making ten million a year as of next season, and I think if you think about that, it has to fit your window, because the first season or maybe two of that window is probably not going to be great because he's a great young player, but he's not quite making or he's not quite producing at an elite level.

You see it.

It talked about on a recent episode how he basically won me a week and you see the skill like he can absolutely be amazing, but also he's still young and figuring it out, and he goes through phases and weeks.

Right now recently since I mentioned that he's didn't do anything last week, he was a total bum.

So you know you're going to have that with young players, And so the first season or two of that ten million is probably not going to be great, So you're not going to necessarily want that, But long term I would bet on Logan Cooley.

I think that long term, two or three years from now, when Dom does his next iteration of that, he's going to say Logan Cooley is probably valued at sixteen seventeen plus million, and he's making ten so I think that he's going to far exceed the value of that contract.

It just might take a couple of years.

And that's the kind of player that I want to invest in, especially if it fits your window.

If it fits your window where you're planning to be competitive in a couple of years, then Logan.

Cooley is perfect.

But if you're if you're in that competitive window right now, this is exactly the situation where you have to modify based on where your team is at.

If you're a competitive team now and you have Lowan Cooley on your roster, you're absolutely going to keep him this year, but you might try to find another person to want them after this year if you don't feel like you can weather that first year or two at that ten million, because that is probably not going to be the best value per dollar for that year or two.

Me I would rather keep him if you could get Brandon Hagel contract for half the amount of money almost and twice the production.

Then maybe you do that because right now, at least in our settings, Hagel is certainly producing more in the Tidy.

But I don't think it'll be too long until Cooley catches up to him.

Jesse, Yeah, I was initially going to joke that the best contract was going to be whatever Leo Carlson's next contract was after he got it, even if they pay him an insane amount of money the way he's been going this year.

But yeah, I think that it's entirely defensible.

It's going to be a lot to live up to, and you're betting on the combs, so to speak, but Logan Cooley certainly is worth investing in at this point.

My next player, I'm gonna go this is probably the lowest amount of future term of anybody who we're going to discuss in this half of the show, and that's gonna be Josh Morrissey of the Winnipeg Jets.

How do you turn down a guy who's thirty, he's got three more years at six point twenty five, and he's averaging about six Tidy points per game.

That's insane.

He's the power play one quarterback for the Winnipeg Jets, who last I heard, are pretty good NHL team with the decent power play.

I think he gets lost in the shuffle from time to time.

But considering that this is the amount that you would be paying in terms of a salary for like a Colton Pareco or something, there's a lot of defensemen around six million dollars at Gavrikhov who are making a whole lot fewer points for you in fantasy.

Considering the value by the position, Josh Morrissey is a really good value right there, especially if you have to start a lot of defensemen your league.

I know we play in some leagues where you have to start six defensemen in relatively deep league, those get rough.

Those are the roster spots you're always trying to extract something out of, and the guys on the waiver wire are not much.

Josh Morrissey's definitely a guy who's got my eye in many of those leagues.

Is a prime player to fit in my salary structure.

Yeah, Morsey is definitely underrated.

He's if you look at like tiers of top defenseman, he's typically at the bottom, but still really useful, and I have him in several leagues because of that, including the cup full where he's just chugs along and produces and cap leagues.

That's an insane value because he is really good.

So I like that, And we're going to go from one defenseman to another because my next guy is Jake Sanderson and he's not mole too where yeah, he's a little bit more expensive, but I just I love the cost control.

What I really dislike in a lot of these leagues is uncertainty, uncertainty in what the player is gonna get because sometimes teams do crazy things.

Players decide to bridge or not bridge, or do a short term really expensive contract, and then that's brutal for you to keep under your cap.

So I like just knowing that Jake Sanderson is going to be a little over eight million for several more seasons and his production is already fantastic.

I think he's gonna do even better in our tidy settings.

He's one of the top defensemen out there because he bangs and gets a lot of points.

So I just I love the ability to know that I can lock him into my roster and not have to worry about him.

And he's a cost controlled asset.

Yes, he's a little bit on the high side, but the value per dollar is definitely there.

He's not someone who's a problem in terms of costing too much or anything like that.

Yeah, he's fantastic.

I love I love Jake Sanderson.

I think he's a really fun player to watch too.

But it's just so dependable, like he's not going down.

DOM has him valued at almost twelve million, so you know, he's four million or whatever surplus there.

So I think that's important too.

I know we don't I know it's not real NHL value that we're looking at in fantasy, but I think it's helpful to know that this player on the market, the NHL would view him as a value, and I think that is helpful to look at in fantasy too.

It's not everything, but it's good to know that, yeah, he's more valuable than probably what he's getting paid, and so that can translate a little bit to fantasy.

Do you look at that all just.

Oh, for sure.

And again, a six to eight million dollar contract is pretty average for one of the top defensemen in the NHL.

What's not average is the type of production you get from Jake Sanderson.

Again, the value over what you can get as another defenseman coming off the wire six tidy points per game.

I bet you there's a ton of defensemen on your waiver wire who are getting about out two and a half tidy points per game if you were to if you were to average all those together.

So Jake Sanderson is very much worth it at that contract.

He's going to be He's going to be cemented in to that role on that team for a long time.

He's already surpassed Thomas Shabab and he is he is absolutely exceptional.

Yeah, I'm all for that.

I'm all for that Jake Sanderson contract.

Echo and applaud that decision.

Is this our Is this the fourth straight player playing in Canada that we've discussed here.

We've we've done our run through the lower forty eight, and now we're onto Nick's Zuki of the Montreal Canadians, who I'm going to highlight for the next one A Sazuki at five more years, a seven point eight five million.

That's really a great contract.

Seven point two to three tidy points per game so far this year.

I think that's Yes, that's the tops of any of the players we're talking about today in terms of their production so far this year.

Yes he's a centerman, and and yes, only five years left on this thing, but he is absolutely killing it for his production right now, and I definitely this is one of the guys that I would want filling up my roster.

Suzuki is an exceptional player, and making under eight million dollars for all those years coming up is going to seem like an absolute song by the time this is done.

And personally, I think Montreal continues to head up upward.

I think the offense around him is probably only going to get stronger, and so Suzuki is definitely a guy that I would be targeting in a salary league at this point.

Yeah, he's someone who I think we weren't sure could he truly be that first line center for a while there, But I think those questions are fully answered now and he's a tremendous value for sure.

So that's a great one.

The next one I wanted to highlight is a goalie, and I think just the reason I wanted to mention Coralvimelka is not necessarily for him specifically, but just how I think you should value goalies in general, because I'm not the kind who wants to pay whatever ten million plus for the top goalie.

I think that his four point what is he at?

Four point eight million per year is plenty to pay a goalie, and it was plenty in the previous cap.

It's going to be even better in the rising cap.

But I think.

That that's a perfectly reasonable salary.

If you could get your goalie for four to six million, that's great, And some teams are paying two or three times that for their goalie tandem, which is just bonkers.

So I think that, of course, there are some goalies who are worth that.

I'm not saying that they're not.

I think that Egers just Strikin is an amazing goalie and I think he probably is worth that amount of money.

And I think that.

Connor Hellbuck is amazing and worth every penny in terms of for them.

It's just if I was putting a team together, I would not want to invest that much in the goalie position.

I would want to invest it more in some of the other key positions because there's so much variability there in goaltenders and all the things we've talked about fading goalies.

And when you look at the value, go to your league and look at what the value is for goalies, and you'll probably I doubt you'll see the most expensive ones are the best.

That's just generally not how it works.

I'm just going to take a peek at my league and see what the goalies are, what the situation is, and a few of the top goalies are the ones that I have.

Lucas destaal right now is a top goalie and he's on my roster at six point five million.

Have you do have some Jake Our, some Migercius Jerkin, and some Sergei Raboski there in the top ten, but it's also littered with other guys that are making four and a half million.

Scott Wedgwood at a million and.

A half that's a bit of an outlier, but Joey Tocurd at five millions.

It's definitely not the case that the more expensive they are, the better they are.

And I think that if you look at value per dollar, there's definitely a case to be made that you want to have a little bit of a lower.

Cap hit or AV.

I also think though, that there is something to be said for you want the guy who's clearly the number one.

If you're in a deep enough league like this is a twenty team league.

But if you're in a deep enough league, you want the guy.

You want a significant enough cap hit that your guy is clearly the starter.

You don't want to have a situation where you just have two tandem guys and you're struggling for starts.

That can be challenging in a really deep league, and then you just might not get any starts.

So like in my thirty two team league, we have Ilia Sarrokin, and part of the reason for that, even though what I just said about not investing too much in goalies, but you need someone who's starting.

All the time that you can depend on.

That because our the goalie is Kevin Lancinan, who's great goalie and good contract.

But he just doesn't play enough.

So you need someone in a deep enough league that you can rely on because there are just no goalies, and there's no goalies at all.

Even guys who might sniff the NHL in two or three years are not available in that league.

So you're just not going to get any starts.

If it's a if it's a shallower league with not as many teams where you can grab someone if one of your guys gets injured or something like that, then it's a completely different situation, and I would not invest as much in goalies in those situations, but if it's hard to find them, you go ahead and pay a little bit more.

And the reason I likes Broken in that league is because with the points league, and he's great, and he's only making in a quarter million, so he's several million less than Shasirkin, even though he's probably about as good at least in this format.

And that's what you need.

It's so hard to lock in a position for the long term, like that part of me.

Almost if Aiden Hill weren't hurt all year this year, I would be tempted to call him a decent value contract at six point twenty five million, not as good as grow By Melka, but considering that he's under contract to twenty thirty.

But now he's been hurt a whole bunch and it's more difficult probably to make that case right now than it has been at times.

Yeah, but life comes at you fast.

Some of these goalies look really good today and then they don't look so good tomorrow, and so you have to decide do you want to sign on for the long term with them?

But I do Bamilka as a good investment for the long term, Victor, I like you there.

My final one of these guys I to do is another guy who's been that that middle range.

We're gonna go Matt Boldie.

Matt Boldie, he's on ESPN commercials Now, people, that's how you've really hit the big time playing for the Minnesota Wild.

He's getting five more years of seven million dollars a year six point three to one tidy points.

You could say this is a bridge Is it a bridge contract?

He's on a seven more year deal or a seven year deal, five of which are left and seven million per is seven million per So I think that it's fair when somebody's contract is going that far into the future to call it to call it a value for the long term.

So yeah, I don't think you can do much better than that in terms of of your production and your production per value than Matt Boldie is right now.

Imagine if you was coming on the market right now at age what twenty four that he is right now, if he was in the same conversation for getting a contract right now, I would have to think you'd get like eleven million or something like that.

As opposed to the seven million he's signed on for the long term a couple of years back.

Yeah, but Matt Boldie definitely somebody who you would want to grab a hold of at this price if you could in the league.

Any last thoughts on this salary fun that we're talking about today, Victor before we get out of here today.

Yeah, I think just to reiterate what I mentioned in this strategy episode last week.

I did talk a little bit about salary cap, but just know your settings, Like it's so important to know, like how many buyouts you have, what is the cap hit penalty, how many teams you have, what is the value over replacement?

As we talked about, what is the value of your players relative and free agency compared to what you have on your roster, Like you just really try to to research and understand what the value is per team and where you're at and where the players are because it is just not standard.

It's very different league to league, even the several cap leagues that I'm in, it's very different whether it's a fourteen or a twenty team or thirty two team league, what the buyout structure is, what the ad structure is, Like it's just always a bit different, so you can even amongst those I'm in I think five different cap leagues, even amongst those leagues that I'm in on my own, like, the value of each player is very different, so I can't imagine all the other different settings that you might be in your league.

So just really understand that, I think is the key.

And when you're asking a question, make sure you preface with all that information, or at least much as you can, because it completely changes the answer.

And if someone doesn't ask you for all those details when you ask of this first player versus that, you probably shouldn't be listening to them because if they give you a flip answer, if they say, oh, definitely this guy without asking you how many teams or what the settings or I don't know how you can trust that.

Quite frankly, yeah, you definitely, you definitely want to.

People are in the business of giving glib answers because it's a medium where people want to hear something and you don't want to have to solve a math problem every time to be able to follow what's going on.

But that's just the truth about fantasy is there's the devil's in the details all the time.

That can make the whole difference.

Great stuff, fixture, great stuff from you.

We'll be right back out a reminder of our shows.

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