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Former Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli has not been able to get another GM’s job in the NHL since he was fired in Edmonton in January 2019.
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Maybe he’s not looking for that hottest of seats now. He has landed in St. Louis, after all, as vice-president of hockey operations.
But I’m going to suggest that at least in Edmonton, Chiarelli’s reputation as a top drawer hockey man is tainted. Many fans can’t get past his trades and signings that failed to work out, such as bringing in Milan Lucic long-term and trading down from Jordan Eberle to Ryan Strome to Ryan Spooner. Then there was the controversial Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson deal. It still divides Oilers fans.
But Chiarelli also had some good moments, such as spending his draft picks well and building up the Oil’s player development system, not to mention the two big contracts he handed out that have given the Oil good value since they were signed and now represent great value. for the team.
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The eight-year deals that Chiarelli negotiated with his star centers Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in the summer of 2017 are the foundation on which the rising Oilers are built, with McDavid earning $12.5 million per year and Draisaitl $8.5 million, this for the best player. McDavid in the NHL (damn you Hart Trophy voters) and Draisaitl in the Top 5 year in, year out.
I would not go so far as to say that the McDavid and Draisaitl deals are the single best contracts in the NHL, although Draisaitl’s might come close, and McDavid’s would come close if there was not a maximum limit that an NHL player can be paid, 20 percent of his team’s overall cap hit each year. Draisaitl is underpaid $3 or $4 million per year based on his performance.
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That said, a number of other top NHLers are also underpaid.
In my back-of-the-envelope survey of top value contracts in the NHL for this coming season (and this coming season alone) I was looking for a few things: first, if the player was a star in the league at his position , the kind of player who moved the needle big time for his squad in 2021-22, as both McDavid and Draisaitl surely did; second, compared to the other 50 or so top players at his position, how much was he paid. Was there a huge chasm between his brilliant performance and his only so-so pay. If so, I deemed that player to be of the greatest value to his NHL squad.
If I had to pick one player who is off the charts in this regard, it’s Devon Toews of the Colorado Avalanche. If you go by a number of statistical indicators around the player’s time-on-ice usage (essentially a measure of how much his coach trusted him in offensive and defensive situations) as well as point production at even strength and on the power play, Toews ranked as the top d-man in the NHL last year, ahead of Victor Hedman at #2, then Adam Fox, Roman Josi, Cale Makar, Aaron Ekblad, Drew Doughty, Kris Letang, Darnell Nurse and Brent Burns (If you can come up with a better list using numbers alone, I’d like to hear how you compiled it and who it identified as top d-men. I’m content with my own list for now).
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While the relatively unknown and utterly under-rated Toews was clearly one of the NHL’s best d-men last season, he wasn’t paid like a Top 10 guy. If you compare him to other top d-men in terms of pay, his cap hit of $4.1 million this year ranks him 45th overall, a differential of 44 ranking spots.
Toews could be making $9 million a year right now and not be overpaid, I’ll suggest. Best of all for Colorado, Toews has one more season after this one at his $4.1 million cap hit.
Ranking player performance in the NHL isn’t an exact science, but I think I’m getting close here with forwards as well, where I take their overall time-on-ice and overall points-per-60 rates to rank them, then bumping up all centers on my Top 50 list by five ranking spots because they play a far more difficult defensive position than wingers. Under this system, we find Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl as the two top forwards in the NHL, with Auston Matthews third, Nathan MacKinnon, fourth, and JT Miller fifth.
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Works for me. You?
Of this group, MacKinnon with his $6.3 million cap hit and Miller at $5.3 million are enormously underpaid, as is Jonathan Huberdeau of Calgary, ranked 17th for forwards but with a cap. hit of just $5.9 million next season.
The Flames have two other major value contracts this coming year, Elias Lindholm, 20th for performance for forwards with a $4.9 million cap hit, and MacKenzie Weegar, 19th for performance with a $3.3 million cap hit.
As for Chiarelli, he did very well by the Oilers locking up Edmonton’s two superstars. It’s even possible he might still have a job in Edmonton if not for ongoing, then career-ending injuries to d-man Oscar Klefbom.
Klefbom was trending to be one of the best left shot d-men in the NHL, maybe even a Top 10 defender. He sure looked like that kind of star defender early in the 2017 playoffs. Even better for the Oilers, at that moment at least, was the fact that Klefbom had signed in Sept. 2015 kicked in a seven-year deal for the 2016-17 campaign that saw Klefbom with a $4.17 million per year cap hit.
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If Klefbom had kept playing at his 2016-17 level for the next six years of that deal, his value would have been similar to that of MacKenzie Weegar or Devon Toews. It would have represented a grand slam home run of a deal for Chiarelli and the Oilers, a game changer, especially with Darnell Nurse backing up Klefbom on the left side.
But not to be.
Klefbom’s injured shoulder first kept him from playing to the top of his ability, then forced him from the NHL.
The Oil’s defense was never the same after both he and Andrej Sekera got hurt in those 2017 playoffs. It was a nasty price to pay for all parties, Klefbom, Sekera, and Chiarelli himself.
Such is high stakes hockey. Such is the risk of long-term contracts in the NHL.
For now, though, at least Oilers fans can revel in the fact that Draisaitl and McDavid are still locked up at a great price.
At the Cult
McCURDY: Sam Gagner? He might be a small part of the answer, yes
STAPLES: How does Kadri-to-Flames deal impact the Oilers?
STAPLES: Glad tidings on Darnell Nurse’s recovery from injury
Cult of Hockey prospect series:
