The Glencross contract: Comparables

           

 

Curtis Glencross’ recent deal has been met, in large part, with acceptance amongst the fan base, NMC notwithstanding. The Provost native has been a consistent presence in the Flames’ top nine since his arrival from Shelbyville in the summer of 2008, regularly outshooting and outscoring his competition along the way.

His new deal more than doubles his past ticket to a cap average of 2.55M per season through 2015, a figure that did get me wondering if there were any players that seemed to match Glencross’ role and salary in the wider world, and if their contract year performance was analogous to what we’ve witnessed from number 20 this past year.

The first thing I noticed when I was looking at salary numbers is that there weren’t many wingers making a stipend within 250k on either side of 2.55M last year, and of those that were, most really weren’t reasonable comparative figures to Glencross, in that they had either signed as RFA or were players that had signed UFA contracts well into their thirties.

As a result, I really only found two wingers that had signed in the last few years for less than 3M that really struck me as similar players to Glencross. Those players were Dan Cleary and Steve Ott. Two other players that had inked UFA deals for exactly 3M were Colby Armstrong and Radim Vrbata, and they also seemed to fit the profile to a degree. I was really looking for players that had signed multi-year deals as UFA in their late twenties, scored around 40 points and had played decent comp in doing so.

First, a comparison of boxcars is in order to get things started. I’ll use each player’s platform year in the charts, so that will be 07/08 for Cleary and Vrbata, 09/10 for Armstrong and Ott, and last season for Glencross:

  

 

Vrbata seems out of place here, but as we all know, sometimes there are circumstances that boost or depress offensive totals for players. Not every player gets equal PP time, or they may play tougher competition, which often supresses a player’s scoring output. Glencross did shoot a high percentage, which is a bit of a red flag. Still, his past production suggests that 43 points wasn’t out of line.

 

Next, here’s breakdown of time on ice and points per 60 minutes, both at EV and on the PP:

 

 

Glencross stacks up with the best of this group at EV. Armstrong and Ott lag, but in the case of Armstrong in particular, there are some extenuating circumstances that I’ll get to in a bit. The power play time is instructive in its own way. Glencross is routinely a player that gets the dregs in terms of PP icetime and linemates when the Flames are up a man, so his production is understandable. Makes one wonder what his point totals would look like if he got more of a sniff at 5v4.

Armstrong wasn’t a PP regular in Atlanta two years ago, either, while the other three got a boost from being at least semi-regular fixtures on their team’s powerplay setups that season. Ott and Cleary were second unit players, while Vrbata was on the first group most nights. He wasn’t very productive with all that PP time, obviously, although in fairness, that Coyote team wasn’t very good. Hard to score whe you don’t have the horses around you and all that.

Oushooting numbers are also worth a look in this case, so the final table will show the quality of competition each player faced, the relative Corsi figure for the player in question, and their respective ZS numbers, with rankings amongst their fellow forwards. As always, I filter Behind The Net’s numbers for players that average at least 10 minutes of EV ice time and play in at least 40 games.

I also added the EV Fenwick tied numbers from Hockey Analysis, along with the player’s subsequent salaries, both raw and with the first season’s cap hit adjusted for inflation to the salary cap since they signed. As an example, Dan Cleary’s new deal was signed in the summer of ’08, with a 56.0M cap pending. His deal for 2.8M was exactly 1/20th of that season’s cap, so I converted the number as if he was signing it this summer against next year’s possible 63.5M cap number, based on Bill Daly’s remarks to the Sports Lawyers’ Association this past weekend:

 

 

Glencross had a bit of an easier go than Armstrong, so I’m inclined to give the former Rebel a bit of a break in terms of his productivity overall. Armstrong played the other team’s best every night in Atlanta, so as I mentioned earlier, the fact that his scoring offense was down a touch isn’t a surprise. Ott is a mediocrity, and his contract might end up being the worst of the bunch in the end, since his is the only other deal with a NTC.

 

The others fall mostly in line in terms of competition, and you can see the difference decent teammates can make. Cleary was certainly nothing special in tems of outshooting and had a nice cushy ZS number driving his Fenwick percentage. A rising tide lifts all boats, etc, etc. Glencross got a bit of that action this year because the Flames were better in the collective than the 09/10 Stars or Thrashers as well as the 07/08 Coyotes, but he’s been a consistent outshooter for three years running relative to his team, so you can make an argument that he’s the tide, if you will. 

 

I’m not quite sure that Curtis Glencross would have gotten 5 years at 4 million dollars as a few folks have hinted, although it only takes one GM to make it so, but had he been offered a four year deal elsewhere for between 13-14 million, or 3.25 to 3.5 M per season, I wouldn’t have been shocked in the slightest. He’s likely taken a hit to the wallet to stay in Calgary, and in the main, the brass hasn’t done badly based on the past market. His contract is no hardship for the club unless he falls off the face of the planet, and he’s given no hint of that in his time in Calgary, so I’m mildly optimistic that his new deal will prove to be good value over the next four years.