This is a bit of a cheat – we try to give you Fresh Original Content every day, dear readers, but sometimes there isn’t a lot of hot takes out there for the Blue Jackets, so I pull out some old ideas.
In this case, I’m dusting off something I did a few years ago – taking the results the Jackets received from their players, and breaking them down against that player’s cap hit.
It’s a little harder now in a post-CapGeek world, but NHLNumbers is still out there, so I’m leaning on them to help accomplish this.
t’s actually probably worth noting that the team as a whole did pretty good on the “bargain” front, having completed this season with almost $6.25 million dollars in open cap space, though obviously a portion of that will be consumed with new contracts and free agent extensions this offseason.
The one slight tweak I made to the last time I done this, owing to the injury bug that ravaged the season, is cutting the numbers off at players who dressed for at least 10 games this season.
That means, for example, that I won’t be taking a look at the dollars to points for guys like David Clarkson or Rene Bourque, but there are a few names that slip in there a bit unexpectedly. (Adam Cracknell, anyone?)
The Super-Savers
It won’t surprise anyone that Marko Dano, as a rookie on a very cap friendly ELC, was a huge steal in terms of dollars and cents. With 21 points in 35 games (a 0.6 PPG pace), that worked out to $20,238 for each point.
Next closest would be another player on his ELC – but Kevin Connauton’s $28052 had to be just a little bit sweeter since he came as a waiver pickup.
Rounding out the top three? Cam Atkinson, who delivered his 40 point season at a cool $28,750 per. That’ll obviously go up with his new contract, but I suspect the FO will still be getting good value from the BC product as he continues to develop.
Honorable Mention: Tim Erixion ($36,000), David Savard ($36,111), Nick Foligno ($42,465)
The Basket-Busters
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s a few names you’d expect to see, and one real surprise.
If you had to guess who was the worst player on the Blue Jackets in terms of dollars to points, you’d probably say Jared Boll, right? You wouldn’t be far off – at $340,000 each, he’s pretty close – but the tin crown this season goes to Ryan Murray, mostly thanks to how much of the season he lost to injury. Managing just three points in 12 games on a $3.5 million cap hit, that works out to a whopping $1,165,000 for each one.
The others who come close in that bracket are Jordan Leopold, with a $333,333 per, and Fedor Tyutin, who rang in at an even $300,000.
Dishonorable Mention: Adam Cracknell ($290,000), James Wisniewski ($147,931), Dalton Prout ($134,375)
Curious to see the breakdown? Check out this handy-dandy spreadsheet!