Mike Chen's Hockey Blog
What is Marian Gaborik’s Market Value?
by Mike Chen on 10/27/08 at 11:35 AM ET
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If you told any GM that you’re willing to move a 40-goal/90-point guy just hitting his prime, you’d think that said GM would jump at the possibility—even in the salary cap era.
Tell that GM that it’s Marian Gaborik that you’re talking about and suddenly everything changes. It’s like trying to play matchmaker for your good-looking, smart friend…that is, the one everyone knows as having a really annoying laugh and a propensity for drinking way too much. That friend’s a good person and means well but given the wrong circumstances, things might turn into a total disaster.
Such is the life of one Marian Gaborik—so fast and talented, yet so damn injury prone. Is the worst over for Gaborik’s health? Or will it haunt him for the rest of his career, like Pavel Bure? In any case, the challenge is in gauging what Gaborik’s market value actually is.
From a pure talent perspective, you have to look at points-per-game, and also where those points came from—using a playmaker a la Marc Savard isn’t a good comparable. Let’s look at Gaborik’s last few seasons:
05-06: 65 games, 38 goals, 28 assists, 66 points (1.02 PPG)
06-07: 48 games, 30 goals, 27 assists, 57 points (1.19 PPG)
07-08: 77 games, 42 goals, 41 assists, 83 points (1.08 PPG)
Adding in the Jacque Lemaire defensive-system factor and let’s peg Gaborik as a 1.1 - 1.2 point-per-game player. He’s just hitting his physical prime at age 26, and he’s got other intangibles like speed and a wicked wrist shot.
With that in mind, someone like Dany Heatley ($7.5 million cap hit) might be a good stat comparable. However, Heatley’s always been regarded as a strong locker room leader, and his durability is notable (complete 05-06 and 06-07 seasons). What about the player Heatley was traded for, Marian Hossa? Hossa could have easily claimed $8+ million on the open market; instead, he opted for a $7.4 million/one-year deal to go for a Cup in Detroit. Like Heatley, Hossa has shown to be far more durable than Gaborik, missing a total of 12 games over the past three seasons.
The problem is that on talent and potential, comparisons to Heatley and Hossa might be appropriate. The injury factor is a cloud that muddles everything.
With all that in mind, the most reasonable comparable for both the player and the situation might require a little flashback: recall the situation of Martin Havlat, then of the Ottawa Senators. Havlat, the immensly talented and equally brittle left winger currently in Chicago, doesn’t quite match up to Gaborik’s numbers. Still, they’re in a similar situation—the possibility of a big contract, remarkable talent, and a checkered health history.
Havlat, if you’ll recall, was moved in a three-way deal involving a dance between Mark Bell (the young 25-goal guy, not the lost soul waived off Toronto’s roster), Tom Preissing, and a few other interchangable parts. Havlat wound up in Chicago with a three-year/$18 million contract. Hawks GM Dale Tallon admitted to overpaying Havlat when it came to dollars and cents, but addressed it as a necessary evil considering the rebuilding state of the Hawks.
Let’s take a look at the facts surrounding the Havlat deal as it might give a little insight into what it’ll take to trade Gaborik and what it’ll cost to sign him. The final deal was Havlat and center Bryan Smolinski (salary cap move) for Preissing (coming off a career year), middle-of-the-road prospect Josh Hennessy, and a 2nd-round pick. In essence, the Senators were looking for a young roster player to help pick up the slack from Zdeno Chara’s departure, a relatively high draft pick (remember, a 2nd rounder out of Chicago at the time was close to the 1st round), and salary cap relief.
In terms of compensation, Havlat’s $6 million a year starting in 06-07 has to be viewed through the distorted lens of the NHL’s crazy inflationary scale. In 06-07, the cap was at $44 million and the maximum a player could make was $8.8 million. The top cap-averaged player salary was Brad Richards with $7.8 million, or about 20% more than what Havlat got. Compare Havlat’s deal to Richards and you’ll see that Havlat’s points-per-game at the time was just slightly below Richards; had Havlat been known to be durable, there’s a good chance he would have gotten around $7 million on the open market. Projected into today’s terms, a durable Gaborik could probably command about $9 million but a fair market value considering his injury history would probably be around $7.5 million.
That, as much as anything else, might provide the best context for who will try to get Marian Gaborik should a team try to acquire him early in the season and give him an extension upon getting him.
The other scenario is if Minnesota tries to hold onto Gaborik until the trade deadline. That situation comes with a risk as teams will probably approach Gaborik as a short-term mercenary. In that case, Minnesota might hit the jackpot or they could wind up keeping Havlat and hope for something at the deadline. The annual deadline arms-race extravaganza could have teams overspending on Gaborik or it could have them shying away from a risky proposition.
Based on the Wild’s MO, chances are the team will play it conservative, meaning that it’ll aggressively (yet quietly) explore the first scenario. It might produce less in terms of what the Wild ultimately get, but it’s a more stable situation and comes with more options ranging from Cup contenders to also-rans looking for a new cornerstone player.
From Gaborik’s perspective, it’s in his best interests to not get too greedy. If he waited until he got out into the open market, he might find that other players are higher on teams’ priority list, and all that available cap space could get taken up before Gaborik gets the contract he wants.
The other unpredictable variable in all of this is the world economy—the thing that’s casting a shadow over everything from international trade to presidential politics. Simply put, there’s a good chance that the salary cap will drop next season (just look at the Canadian dollar’s value to try and predict how much). Ultimately, that will affect things from Minnesota’s perspective as well as Gaborik’s contract demands.
Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Marian+Gaborik,
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