Salary Distributions: A Look Around The Division
By: Mackinaw Stats
Tags: Toronto Maple Leafs, Plotly, Hockey, Analytics, Sports

My past two articles have illustrated the impact of recent salary negotiations on the Toronto Maple Leafs cap situation, and their ability to avoid handing out bad contracts. Now I’ll take a look around the salary distributions in the Atlantic Division, which are useful tools for describing the evolution of a team. The main chart is interactive, so feel free to hover above data points of interest for details on the player and their cap hit.

The Atlantic Division

The Atlantic division was notably last year for its lack of parity down the stretch. Tampa Bay, Boston, and Toronto quickly claimed playoff spots, and the remaining failed to claim one of the two wildcard spots.

Boston has done a great job at locking up their core for below market-value, to the chagrin of many Leafs fans. They don’t have any players making above Krejci at $7.25 M, which should help them extend their cup window with some additional depth like they did at the trade deadline this year. The team will be without Noel Acciari, who signed with the Florida Panthers, and Marcus Johansson, who paired with the Sabres, but otherwise the team will look pretty familiar when they beat the Leafs in the first round again.

Buffalo has had to pay slightly more for their top end talent, where you will find Jack Eichel and Jeff Skinner, the latter of which signed an 8 year deal for a $9 M cap hit. They take the #6 and #8 largest contracts in the division, as the below chart show. They were also the team that claimed the aforementioned Marcus Johansson for 2 years at $4.5 M. You would ultimately like to see more up front from a team that was second to last in the conference in Goals For last year, but the front office has been praised for the acquisitions of Colin Miller and Henri Jokiharju, to a backend led by Matt Hunwick. Goaltending is still a bit of a question mark as well, with Carter Hutton leading a pretty average tandem.

Detroit doesn’t appear to have many players worth paying large sums, as the more compact salary distribution illustrates. Anthanasiou and Mantha should be up for raises next year, but the defense remains depleted, and the departure of Gensen and Nyquist won’t help things.

Florida claimed Bobrovsky for a $10M cap hit in free agency, which should help replace below average performance between Luongo and Reimer (both had ~.900 save percentage last year). The Panthers also signed an aging Anton Stralman and previously mentioned Acciari, both of which seem to be minor improvements to the roster. Joel Quinneville will take the helm for the Panthers in 2019–20, which will be an improvement on Bob Boughner.

Montreal is paying a hefty sum for Carey Price at $10.5 M, with Shea Weber trailing next at $7.86 M. The Habs had a great start to last year, and an ultimately solid season, but trailed off towards the end of the year. The team has some solid young players, but lacks top-end skill that would propel them to contender conversation.

Ottawa is not a very good hockey team, but did improve substantially with the additions of Ron Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev, two mainstays from the Leaf’s blueline. Bobby Ryan will continue to make $7.25 M, despite scoring less than 20 goals in each of his past three seasons, but given their proximity to the cap floor, they shouldn’t mind too much.

Tampa Bay has a pretty similar makeup to the Leafs, albeit they’ve managed to sign Kucherov, Stamkos, and Hedman to friendlier deals that make their roster less polarized. Without knowing the intricacies of their cap situation, they do appear a bit crunched as they continue to negotiate with Point. Other fans in the division shouldn’t be shocked when he signs a team friendly deal and Tampa take another run at the cup in 2020.

Toronto claims two of the largest salaries in the division with Matthews and Tavares, and Marner will likely join at a similar figure. I’ve already discussed their roster at length, but I’ll draw attention once more to what is a pretty stratified lineup: they pay a lot for their stars, a few dollars for good players between $2 M and $5 M, and have a bunch of contracts at the league minimum. The big question mark continues to be Mitch Marner, who will try his best to out-drama Nylander and sign his deal a mere seconds before the deadline.

-Mackinaw Stats

-Data from HockeyReference.com