Auction Discussion

It was harsh yes, but I hoped the post will generate discussion as well, perhaps some GMs talk about their strategies going in and how they evolved. What they are happy with, what they regret, etc. I'd be curious to hear CHI explain their rationale.

To defend my ranking, if he wants to spend 11M on prospects he missed the boat on the higher quality ones. He has zero players under 26 and a roster that doesn't seem built to win this season and I struggled to come up with three contracts I would want on my team, all that together combines for a low rating. The lucky thing with this league is he can just let most of those players expire and sign new ones next year since it seems we will have a lot of high end guys in UFA again. 

Next batch....

DET – 24 assets 7.0

Not a lot of assets, but with 3.7M left in cap could still grab a few more. Quite a few nice pieces here, young enough and on reasonable contracts that the foundation of a good team in the future seems plausible. A recurring theme for a lot of franchises is going to be depth, obviously not a contender year one, but with a few injuries just making GP for some teams is going to be a challenge.

Best Contracts – Raymond, Ek, Perfetti
Worst Contracts – M Pettersson, Primeau, Bracco

EDM – 28 assets 5.5

Another GM with some extra cap space, but with very little spent on prospects that cap space will be needed if the GM intends to extend contracts. If a GM has spent the majority on NHL assets you have to think they are in it to win and I’m just not seeing enough for that to be the case with EDM. Absolutely nothing wrong with the team, I just don’t see enough to win year one and not enough potential in the minors makes this a team that lacks direction which is probably not an ideal way to spend 90M.

Best Contracts – Labanc, Stromes
Worst Contracts – Keller, Rakell, Suter

FLA 20 assets 6.0

Florida’s strategy of throwing out big $ early was one that led to some GMs scratching their heads. Aho was one of the first bids and at 11.4M was one of the only star players to receive one bid and no one raise. Despite only collecting 20 assets there were things I liked about Florida’s draft. To get the obvious out of the way he doesn’t have enough NHLers, the consequences of this is he will have to trade some of his already limited assets or he might not make GP resulting in penalties. For the positives I think he has some building blocks in place which to me is preferable to blowing your auction budget on older NHL players, not winning and not having much to show from the initial draft in a couple years.

Best Contracts – Bean, Francouz, Kuemper
Worst Contracts – Borowiecki, Aho, Chiarot

LAK 28 assets 7.0

A fairly unremarkable draft, no high paid stars, no focus on the future, just a solid collection of assets that puts LA in a decent spot to decide what direction he wants to take his team in. I had a hard time coming up with three contracts I didn’t like which has been easy for others. The biggest issue I see right now is with the $ spent on NHLers LA has left himself with no wiggle room resulting in having to let a bunch of players he bought in the auction walk after one year. If he’s competitive then no big deal, but if not then it once again brings into question the value of spending auction $s on one year rentals. Trading a bigger contract would give him the flexibility to retain more players so a smart trade could change this team’s outlook.

Best Contracts – Fabbri, Haula, Pinto
Worst Contracts – Fleury, Carlo, Stepan

MIN 28 assets 7.5

MIN’s GM comes across as a bright guy so it’s no surprise I like a lot of the assets he acquired. If I had to nitpick it’s that he is missing high end talent, but when it’s going for 10M+ I can understand why he and others passed on those prices. I do think there are quite a few player that he overpaid for, but at least overpaying youth can lead to fpt improvement year over year. Defence is looking like an area of weakness, if Harley and Liljegren don’t make their respective clubs and Koekkoek isn’t full time there could be a lot of weeks with holes in the lineup.

Best Contracts – Bratt, Granlund, Merkley
Worst Contracts – Jokiharju, Domi, Blackwood

MTL 38 assets 6.5

First and foremost props go out to Ray for organizing and filling this league and keeping things on the rails so far. I believe his draft was pretty good, but the trade to send out his two best players probably should have returned a little more assets and I’d have him at a 7.5 prior to the trade. I think he was in position to compete year one and we will never know how good his originally drafted team could have been. One issue I have is I think he went a little heavy on the 700K guys, 17 of them ate up 12M in auction $. Would 6 2M top prospects been better use of $ then taking flyers on guys that might go mid-late rounds in the draft that were probably still going to be there in the 7 round post auction draft.

Best Contracts – Klefbom, Slavin, Weisblatt
Worst Contracts – De St. Phalle, Lindgren, Stolarz

NSH 46 assets 8.0

There’s a lot to like about NSH’s draft. No albatross contracts, check. A league leading 46 assets, check. Enough cap space to sign all their players long term, check. With so many asset poor teams, NSH has set themselves up to not have to worry about depth for a long time. As for some negatives, only one player >1.05 fpts/gm last season so this isn’t a roster that is going to win year one. Similar to MTL there is also the question of is there too many 700K contracts that could have been spent on a few higher quality guys? With 16 draft eligible guys NSH will be watching the draft intently, but I don’t expect many of these guys will be hearing their name called on the first day and only a few early on the 2nd. A quantity approach isn’t necessarily a bad thing since if he hits on some he will have depth at minimum contract prices. The big concern will be if there will ever be enough high end talent to transition from rebuilder to competitor.

NJD 26 assets 3.5

You can take a lot of what I said about CHI and copy paste it here. Another GM where I just don’t see what if any strategy was used. They do not have a competitive roster, they have no prospects and they signed a bunch of old guys. They do still have the most auction $ left, but what good is that when the quality of assets has diminished. Still lots of good assets sitting available to salvage some future value, but time is running out to nominate. This team will likely be an active trader too as they have signed 8 Cs and maybe they can grab some assets for their cheap depth guys, I hear FLA desperately needs NHLers

Best Contracts – Simmonds, Pieterangelo, Bailey
Worst Contracts – Pavelski, not signing a goalie, Radulov

NYI 40 assets 8.0

By now it might be clear with my ratings that I’m biased towards teams that avoided albatross contracts and spent enough on prospects to give themselves potential help in the future and keep enough cap to sign their NHLers. There might be a few guys the Isles might not be able to afford on more than a one year deal, but generally this draft fits that model. I see a lot of GMs quote last year’s fpts a player put up like it’s gospel and determines their worth. I think most GMs know that although some players are very consistent, there can be variance from year to year. With that being said if NYI gets repeat performances from their skaters they look like they should field a competitive team.

Best Contracts – Merzlikins, RNH, Allen
Worst Contracts – Benn, Rust, Hornqvist

NYR 30 assets 7.0

Some really big contracts resulted in having to fill out the rest of the roster as cheaply as possible. They could really use their prospects panning out since when you pay Connor, Pettersson, Chabot, Boqvist, Dunn, Petry and two goalies 60M that only leaves you 21.5M to fill 12 spots. With some other secondary guys earning decent coin you can start to see how important near minimum contract guys will be to teams that are top heavy. With what we saw in the auctions I think NHLers will be at a premium in future years without all the top prospects to bid on so filling out rosters with cheap players will be a challenge for the Rags just like it will be for others.

Best Contracts – Ryan, Petry, Hellebuyck
Worst contracts – Boqvist, Kahkonen, Connor

OTT 36 assets 7.5

Another solid draft with a mix of competitive pieces and futures. Goaltending might be a little suspect depending on how big of a net share Koskinen gets next season. A few big contracts, but enough 1-3M contracts to balance it out means this team should be able to compete. Two highest paid players making 8.5M are 21 and 22 so they should be able to compete for years if they make smart moves around the margins and get lucky with a prospect or two. For negatives, one could look at NHL depth, but that problem is going to plague almost every GM. Without making trades all GMs would be looking at holes in their lineups if the injury bug bites.

Best Contracts – Elvenes, DeBrusk, Terry
Worst Contracts – Niederbach, Sutter, Koskinen

Nice work on the grading Matt. Thanks for the contribution.

I agree that it was a better move for your future. The reason I lowered the grade is you traded 9.9M more in auction $ than you received. I dont think a late 1st and 2nd is worth 10M so IMO your auction would have been better for your future if you just bid on Kotkaniemi and Kunin or similar players then used the extra 10Mish to add some blue chip prospects that are more valuable than the two picks.

I also realize that it's easy to say this in hindsight and at the spur of the moment maybe you thought you would compete this season and Stamkos and Malkin would help.

Thanks for the generous rating haha.

Last entry, hope you guys enjoyed the read. Was a fun exercise to get more familiar with everyone's teams. If you feel I was mean to you then go out, do well and prove me wrong!

PHI 49 assets 8.0

This team reminds me a lot of NSH’s and they are the new leader in most assets. Both teams went with the quantity over quality approach which can definitely pay dividends if you consider prospects lottery tickets the more tickets you have the better chance you hit. Most of the lottery tickets PHI owns are ones that have longer odds as they aren’t a collection of high 1st rounders. One thing I do prefer with PHI’s approach over a couple earlier teams with a lot of cheap prospects is PHI honed in on the guys that have already been drafted and have been performing well. Perhaps the ceilings might be a little lower than an undrafted guy who could explode in their D+1 season but PHI’s prospects are closer to being NHL ready. The biggest issue facing PHI is the same one facing NSH and that’s will they get enough elite talent to transition to a competitor?

Best Contracts – Zucker, Konecny, Sissons
Worst Contracts – Hart, Sanheim, Cousins

PIT 31 assets 6.0

This is a pretty good roster and I could understand the argument it deserves a higher rating. These ratings are my opinion though and I see another team that has one maybe two years to try and win some $ and then they will be in a real rough spot. The youngest skater on their team in 27 and they have four prospects, one being a likely 1st round talent. With 18 of their 31 assets over 30 this team is definitely in win now mode. I would expect picks and their few prospects to be leveraged for immediate help since most of their skaters are declining assets. Teams like this one seem to have two outcomes. They win $ and make a rating like this look stupid since the point is to win $ not constantly rebuild or they don’t win they have little hope that prospects will save the day and have to rely on free agency with no cheap contracts to offset the high ones. I just hope we don’t lose GMs if they are staring at the reality of option two.

SJS 32 assets 7.0

I went back and forth on this rating, I think it’s a strong team in the West and they have some young players so even though they seem to be all in this year after trading their 1st and 2nd and Kravtsov and Wiesblatt for immediate help there is still some core pieces for the future. One reason I docked the score is it seems like their depth is going to mostly be all one year deals and that’s a lot of auction $ spent on rentals. Will they be able to replace that depth next year at similar low prices? This team needs to at least win their division to make it worth the gamble and it should be a battle between them and VAN. 46M on 4 players is a lot of $ tied up for next season and I’m interested in how these teams will operate in year two when players might not be available in the 1-2M range like they were now.

Best Contracts – Jones, Eller, Chiasson
Worst Contracts – McDavid, Bouwmeester, Williams

Seattle 41 assets N/A

I’m not going to rate myself since obviously I’m biased. Overall I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. With 31 other GMs it’s hard to predict how things would play out since not knowing how others would bid is a huge variable. I went into the draft thinking I wanted to rebuild in hopes most GMs would view the auction as their chance to get star players and would talk themselves into thinking they can build a winning team. My thoughts were that would leave all the future star players available at under market rates and I could scoop up a bunch and have a dynasty in a few years of star players making a fraction of what the current stars were going for. I started bidding on 1st round talent early and saw huge contracts for stars I thought would end up being regrettable deals especially if GMs weren’t thinking how quickly salaries escalated for multi-year deals. Then I started seeing prospect bids creeping into the 3,4,5 range and started second guessing my strategy. I thought if you start spending 10s of millions on prospects and a few of them didn’t pan out into 1fpt+ players then that’s a lot of wasted auction $s. I knew I still wanted to focus on years two and beyond and punt on year one, but I looked at my team consisting of Karlsson , Rinne and Markstrom and thought fuck I need NHLers and prices seem to be what they are so I should just jump in and I can always trade them for futures if they are on reasonable deals. I then foolishly bid 60Mish on guys I thought were undervalued not keeping track of my cap thinking I had sooo much that I was good and went over by 10M and lost my 3rd haha. Biggest regret of my auction since a bunch of bids were beat in the next hour making me legal. I did land Grubauer, Couture and Palmieri on decent contracts so it wasn’t all bad. I’m definitely rambling on and most of you probably don’t care, but I’m really interested in how others game planned their auctions so I figured I’d share my thoughts. I also knew there was a salary floor so I couldn’t just fill out my roster with 700K 4th liners spend everything on prospects and then buy new players next year. We will see if my strategy pays off in the long run and I wish I went even more aggressively on some high end guys like Stutzle, Raymond, Perfetti, Zegras, Caufield, Kaprizov to name a few off the top of my head who ended up in the 4+ range which I still feel is preferable to 10M for a proven guy. My only other regret was I wish I spent a few mil less on NHLers and saved money until the end. Some of these guys going for cheap right now and others still available I’d love to add. Give me 10 more 700K contracts and take 7M off my NHLers and I’d be thrilled. Oh also people hated that I bid late on some guys, I could write a ton more on that and had a good chat with MIN about it, but all I will say is I had my reasons, it was perfectly legal and I wasn’t targeting any GMs or doing it out of vengeance or to piss people off. I wanted to bid the way I wanted to bid and someone whining about it was never going to change my strategy, the only time I deviated from it I lost a 3rd. Acting like I was the only GM who made a late bid was really annoying though, but so is losing a guy you thought was going to be on a great contract in the last hour so I get it.

STL 23 assets 4.5

Well if I didn’t make enough enemies in the auction with my bids then I might as well make a few more by rating other teams poorly. STL what are you doing!!! Signs some big $ contracts early then went on vacation or something in the middle of the auction signing one guy between the 12th -20th. Now he has left over $ to spend and has been grabbing cheap depth which is actually useful for his team, but why stop winning players for a week. His roster composition is actually pretty decent and should be a half decent team this season, but loses major points for not spending his auction $ to grab more players early and for having one prospect on a team who isn’t going to win this year.

Best Contracts – Edmundson, Letang, Binnington
Worst Contracts – Draisatl, Bjugstad, Gerbe

TBL 34 assets 7.5

Pretty good team, checks a lot of the boxes that I’ve been looking for when I give the higher rankings, which just to reiterate are just one GM’s opinion, who maybe is a bad judge of talent and potential, who knows! Enough cap to sign his players to term, enough talent that he can be competitive year one, but with some prospects that hopefully can slot into his lineup in the future to keep costs down. Really close to ranking this an 8.0 like a few others, but not quite as strong of a lineup as some and not quite as strong a prospect pool as some made me land on 7.5. Only four prospects Id consider top tier so a lot riding on him hitting on those guys if he wants to continue to be a strong team as I expect he will be this season.

Best Contracts – Lee, Matheson, Smith
Worst Contracts – Johansen, Heinen, Hinostroza

TOR 34 assets 7.0

The Leafs have a good team that was likely the goal for many GMs coming out of the auction so he succeeded there. He also built a good team with no contracts over 7M so it’s impressive he managed to collect eight skaters who put up > 1fpt/gm last season. What I would regret if I were in his shoes would be he seems to have fallen into the same trap a lot of GMs who wanted to build a competitor fell into and that is not saving enough cap space to sign your players long term. Looking at his Docs he is over the 81.5 cap which makes the trade he made adding 1.7M a little confusing, but there’s still a ton of time before the season to make trades and get cap compliant. A few good players are looking like they will be one year rentals without another trade though. Wasn’t easy naming worst contracts which is always a good sign, goalies aren’t necessarily bad, but I felt 10.5 for two goalies that are still unproven was a bit of a gamble.

Best Contracts – Perreault, Smith, Klingberg
Worst Contracts – Trouba, Demko, Samsonov

VAN 23 assets 7.0

Just to reiterate this is auction rankings and not power rankings. If this were power rankings there would be a strong case to have VAN as the number one team. This ranking is probably on the generous side based on VAN having no prospects and a few long term injuries away from being in trouble with not a lot of trade capital. He gets the score he did since if you are going to go all in year one I feel he did it in a more successful way than some others who I gave low scores to. He can still give some players term and although Matthews will be a huge hole to fill next season he at least gave himself a legitimate shot at taking home the grand prize this year. If it fails he will be one of many GMs looking at his assets year two and thinking did I make the wrong decision, but if he walks away with $900 next year I’m sure a 7.0 and a shittier team year two isn’t going to bother him.

Best Contracts – Goodrow, Toews, Hedman
Worst Contracts – Danault, Duclair, Coleman

VGK 40 assets 8.0

I was selfishly hoping I picked a division with a bunch of weak GMs to make things easier on myself. Still way to early to pass judgment, but I think this division will be competitive in the future and Vegas is likely going to be a strong team in the future. His auction results are similar to my original plans and he got a lot of young high end talent and even though he paid high prices I’m jealous of some assets he got for the cost he paid. Silver lining is I don’t love his prospects, but with the young talent he amassed in his starting lineup he will be a team who could be competitive for a long time. It seems like half his assets were players I bid on and debated raising again and wish I did with some. If he had a goalie he probably would have been the sole 8.5.

Best Contracts – Chytil, Kakko, Puljujarvi
Worst Contracts – Toews, Drysdale, Kuokkanen

WAS 26 Assets, 7.0

Another GM who didn’t seem the most active during the auctions. There’s 32 of us though so I shouldn’t be too harsh on these GMs, maybe real life got in the way at certain times and they weren’t able to bid and missed out on players. With that being said I hope these GMs continue to not spend their $ so the player pool for the draft is stronger haha. Definitely some assets to work with here, some productive players and only a couple 35+ guys with some quality prospects so the future isn’t bleak, but year one is definitely not going to be a big success. Some veterans here I expect to be trade bait, it will be interesting to see how the trade market shakes out since the majority of contenders will likely be right up against the cap so teams will need to be creative to improve.

Best Contracts – O’Reilly, Jenner, Thompson
Worst Contracts – Dillon, Raanta, Cernak

WPG 28 assets 4.0

I originally put 4.5 when looking at this team, but then went and compared them to CHI and couldn’t justify rating them higher. When your highest paid player at 8.2M is the 2nd highest paid goalie in the league without ever playing a game you know you might have made a mistake, when your 2nd highest paid player is tied for the 14th highest paid Dmen with Hedman, Provorov and Jones and they also haven’t played an NHL game you know you’ve really fucked up. I know WPG had $ left, but when Pieterangelo, Karlsson and Doughty were signed for less maybe don’t be a slow horse and make bids on good players. WPG also won no players for about a week in the auction so maybe life got in the way as well, but unfortunately his roster is pretty rough. The one advantage he has is at least he didn’t spend a ton of $ on older players. One 32 year old and then everyone else is 28 or younger so there did seem to be some semblance of a strategy. There’s definitely some salvageable contracts long term and a handful of decent prospects so the rating might be a little harsh, but I can’t give a passing grade to a GM that spent 15.4M on two guys that weren’t top prospects, the last two first overall picks went for less than that combined.

Best Contracts – Howden, Gourde, Lindholm
Worst Contracts – Sorokin, Lehtonen, Girard