The NHL regular season ends on April 11th, and with all teams having between 13 and 16 games remaining, it is an opportune time to begin talking about individual awards.
The New Jersey Devils, not usually involved in high stakes deals, got themselves one of the most prolific goal scorers of the last decade in Ilya Kovalchuk.
The Reina Value is a valuation system which quickly determines how players are performing in relation to their contracts throughout the season.
With the NHL now using a salary cap, general managers must work within the confines of a strict budget and big market teams cannot afford to write off big-contract mistakes like they once did.
I created a ranking system called the ‘Floor Impact Counter’ for basketball, for baseball, it is renamed the ‘Field Impact Counter’ and for ice hockey it is called the ‘Ice Impact Counter’ or the IIC.
There is never a be-all and end-all in any ranking system (particularly in a sport like hockey where intangibles are exceedingly important), but I believe the below formula is equally fair to forwards, defensemen and goaltenders.
IIC Formula For Forwards
(3 Regular Goals
+ 2 Power Play Goals
+ 4 Shorthanded Goals
+ 4 Game-Winning Goals
+ 5 Overtime Goals
+ 2 Assists
+ Plus/Minus Total
- .25 Penalty Minutes
- .33 Shots on Goal)
IIC Formula For Defensemen
(5 Regular Goals
+ 4 Power Play Goals
+ 6 Shorthanded Goals
+ 5 Game-Winning Goals
+ 6 Overtime Goals
+ 3 Assists
+ Plus/Minus Total
- .25 Penalty Minutes
- .33 Shots on Goal)
IIC Formula For Goalies
(.7 Wins
+.2 OT Loss
+ Shutout
+ .17 Saves
+ .25 Shootout saves
- .25 Losses
- 1.23 Goals Against
- .35 Shootout goals against)
Season IIC Rankings for 2005-06
1. Joe Thornton: 232
2. Jaromir Jagr: 194
3. Nicklas Lidstrom: 193
4. Sergei Zubov: 192
5. Daniel Alfredsson: 188
6. Pavel Datsyuk: 174
7. Lubomir Visnovsky: 173
8. Jason Spezza: 165
9. Dany Heatley: 162
10. Mathieu Schneider: 161
11. Miikka Kiprusoff: 153
12. Tomas Kaberle: 151
13. Roberto Luongo: 148
14. Joanthan Cheechoo: 147
15. Andy McDonald: 145
Season IIC Rankings for 2006-07
1. Joe Thornton: 193
2. Sidney Crosby: 186
3. Martin Brodeur: 176
4. Dany Heatley: 175
5. Pavel Datsyuk: 169
6. Thomas Vanek: 168
7. Roberto Luongo: 165
8. Martin St. Louis: 164
9. Jason Spezza: 162
10. Daniel Alfredsson: 161
11. Scott Niedermayer: 160
12. Nicklas Lidstrom: 158
13. Teemu Selanne: 156
13. Kimmo Timonen: 156
15. Vincent Lecavalier: 152
15. Chris Pronger: 152
15. Thomas Kaberle: 152
With some context given to the statistic we use to rank NHL players, here is the crux of what the Reina Value actually is:
Players are ranked from highest to lowest by the total IIC for the season, not per game, which I decided to do because players are only valuable when they are on the field.
Beside each player’s actual salary, we slide in raw salary figures, ranked highest to lowest, which determines his ‘deserved’ salary.
The player who has the highest IIC receives the highest ‘deserved’ salary. The player with the second highest IIC receives the second highest salary. The player with the hundredth highest IIC receives the hundredth highest salary.
I then calculate the percentage increase or decrease from the actual and deserved, and that becomes the Reina Value or RV.
Season IIC Rankings for 2007-08
- Reina Value is listed in parenthesis
1. Nicklas Lidstrom: 137 (+32)
2. Daniel Aldredsson: 130 (+113)
3. Mike Ribeiro: 117 (+257)
4. Brian Rafalski: 115 (+39)
5. Dany Heatley: 114 (+45)
6. Jason Spezza: 107 (+56)
7. Pavel Datsyuk: 106 (+13)
8. Sidney Crosby: 105 (+782)
9. Joe Thornton: 104 (+12)
10. Ryan Getzlaf: 100 (+1,103)
11. Roberto Luongo: 98 (+10)
12. Jarome Iginla: 97 (+2)
13. Mike Richards: 95 (+653)
14. Henrik Sedin: 94 (+96)
15. Sergei Gonchar: 92 (+27)
16. Vincent Lecavalier: 91 (-2)
17. Martin St. Louis: 91 (+13)
18. Paul Stastny: 90 (+885)
19. Andrei Markov: 89 (+17)
20. Henrik Zetterberg: 88 (+148)
21. Thomas Vokoun: 88 (+26)
22. Sergei Zubov: 86 (+63)
23. Martin Brodeur: 86 (+25)
24. Marc Savard: 83 (+25)
25. Pascal Leclaire: 83 (+346)
26. Tim Thomas: 82 (+525)
27. Evgeni Malkin: 82 (+518)
28. Alexander Ovechkin: 81 (+510)
29. Brian Campbell: 78 (+243)
30. Kristian Huselius: 78 (+329)
Unlike the NBA and MLB, there are very few negative RV's amongst the top-30 players in the NHL through the All-Star break. Only Vincent Lecavalier has a negative RV, though a -2 is hardly significant.
But because so many top players are actually undervalued, many of the top paid players are overvalued.
Daniel Briere, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury, three of biggest free agents during the summer of 2007, have RV’s of -60, -65 and -65 respectively.
Eastern Conference 2007-2008 All-Stars (based off IIC)
F: Daniel Alfredsson
F: Dany Heatley
F: Jason Spezza
D: Sergei Gonchar
D: Andrei Markov
G: Tomas Vokoun
Western Conference 2007-2008 All-Stars (based off IIC)
F: Mike Ribeiro
F: Pavel Datsyuk
F: Joe Thornton
D: Nicklas Lidstrom
D: Brian Rafalski
G: Roberto Luongo
