The Toronto Maple Leafs have locked up defenceman Jake Gardiner for five more years with a juicy $20.25-million contract, and the news has—to nobody’s surprise—generated a ton of reaction. Nobody ever said Leafs fans were unemotional.
Gardiner, 24, will cost the Leafs a cap hit of $4.05 million for each of the next five seasons.
Since assistant general manager Kyle Dubas is a numbers man, we at Sportsnet are taking a similar approach. Let’s look at the evidence.
This is how Gardiner stacks up against five D-men who are raking in similar dough across the league. Here, we compare their 2013-14 regular-season stats (each played a minimum 70 games, and four of these players—including Gardiner—played 80 or more).
Here’s our pool for comparison, and each player’s age, team and cap hit:
Victor Hedman, 23, Tampa Bay Lightning, $4 million
Cam Fowler, 22, Anaheim Ducks, $4 million
Slava Voynov, 24, Los Angeles Kings, $4.167 million
Kevin Shattenkirk, 25, St. Louis Blues, $4.25 million
Dmitry Kulikov, 23, Florida Panthers, $4.33 million
GOALS
Hedman: 13
Gardiner: 10
Shattenkirk: 10
Kulikov: 8
Fowler: 6
Voynov: 4
POINTS
Hedman: 55
Shattenkirk: 45
Fowler: 36
Voynov: 34
Gardiner: 31
Kulikov: 19
POINTS RANKING AMONG ALL NHL DEFENCEMEN
Hedman: 4th
Shattenkirk: 13th
Fowler: 34th
Voynov: 37th
Gardiner: 45th
Kulikov: 91st
CORSI
Shattenkirk: 55.1% (team ranks 7th league-wide at 53.1%)
Voynov: 55% (team 1st at 57.3%)
Hedman: 53.9% (team 10th at 51.5%)
Kulikov: 51.2% (team 17th at 49.7%)
Fowler: 49.2$ (team 15th at 49.8%)
Gardiner: 46.4% (team 29th at 42.1%)
*Gardiner led the Leafs in this category last season
PLUS-MINUS
Fowler: +15 (Anaheim: +44)
Voynov: +6 (Los Angeles: +20)
Hedman: +5 (Tampa Bay: +24)
Shattenkirk: +1 (St. Louis: +33)
Gardiner: -3 (Leafs: -4)
Kulikov: -26 (Florida: -14)
TIME ON ICE/GAME
Fowler: 23:51
Hedman: 22:26
Voynov: 22:17
Kulikov: 21:41
Gardiner: 21:04
Shattenkirk: 20:34
There you have it, the evidence. Gardiner ranks high in the goals category, but he’s below average—according to this sample size—in every other stat. As is his team.
Now that you’ve seen the numbers, have your say:
[polldaddy poll=8216260]