The Blue Jackets landed in an unexpectedly strong spot in Dom Luszczyszyn’s latest NHL contract efficiency rankings, and the number jumps off the page: Columbus checks in 15th overall, two places better than it did a year ago.
Luszczyszyn of The Athletic uses his model to compare a player’s market value with what he actually makes, then rolls that up into a team-wide look at how efficiently salary cap space is being used. By that measure, the Jackets come out looking better than plenty of people probably expected.
Kirill Marchenko leads the way among Columbus forwards, and he does it in a big way. He ranked first on the team with 100% positive value. Marchenko is earning $3.9 million per year, but the model pegs his surplus at $6.6 million, which pushes his projected value to $10.4 million per season.
Val Nichushkin, Kent Johnson, Dmitri Voronkov, Sean Monahan, and Mathieu Olivier were the other forwards Luszczyszyn marked as positive-value players.
On the other side of the ledger, the negative-value forwards were Cole Sillinger, Isac Lundestrom, Charlie Coyle, Miles Wood, and Conor Garland. Sillinger and Coyle stood out as the surprising names in that group.
The blue line also produced some eye-catching results. Zach Werenski checked in at 99.7% positive value, with his model value soaring to $18 million per season. Damon Severson and Jake Christiansen were the other defensemen on the positive side.
Dante Fabbro and Ivan Provorov were listed as negative-value defensemen, though Provorov’s number landed very close to his current AAV.
Luszczyszyn offered this note on Provorov: "He’s not all the way up to $8.5 million of projected value yet, but it was an incredibly encouraging sight to see him actually play at a top-pair level last season. Ditto for Damon Severson."
For a team that usually doesn’t expect to show up this high in a cap-efficiency ranking, the result is a notable one.
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