NHL: The Best NHL Team That Money Can Buy
Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
It’s that point in the summer when NHL teams have a majority of their roster set in stone. From here on out, NHL general managers will have an extremely easy job until the season begins. Must be nice to have most of the month of July and all of the month of August off! That got me thinking – what if I were a general manager? It can’t be too hard, right? Hey, Mike Milbury was a general manager once (and a really awful one at that)! Why can’t I pretend to be one?
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Going off this idea, I formed my ideal NHL team going by the salary cap ($71,400,000). There are some qualifications. First of all, I get anyone in the league who I want. If I want Alex Ovechkin? Sorry Brian MacLellan, he’s mine! Sorry, should have read the fine print in the hypothetical CBA. It explicitly says “in hypothetical GM scenarios, you can hypothetically lose your players”. Secondly, I picked my team in a unique way. I leaned heavily on a new stat called “dCorsi Impact”. Here’s a really good site that defines it. If you want the Cliff Notes, dCorsi Impact (or dCI) determines how much a players exceeds his “expected” possession value. Since dCI would be very inefficient at determining how good a goalie is, I used War On Ice’s Goals Above Replacement for 2014-2015. I also used other stats which I’ll note when I use them.
I actually got this idea from my friend Sean, who created his roster using GAR. Too Many Men On The Site also did something very similar. The latter decided to be bold and limited himself to zero entry-level contracts. I thought that was too far, but I did like his idea of imposing a limit of ELCs. I decided on three (FWIW, I defined an ELC as any deal below $1,000,000 in AAV). Dear goodness did I need those three.
I’ll break down my 20 player (12 forwards, 6 blue liners, 2 goalies) by line and position, as well as give you some insight into my logic. Fall asleep with me as I introduce you to my NHL Dream Team.
Next: First Forward Line