Leclaire and other thoughts

At long last, the Columbus Blue Jackets have come to terms with RFA goaltender Pascal Leclaire.  According to the Columbus Dispatch, the deal will pay Leclaire $3 M this season, $3.6 M 2009-10 and $4.8 M in 2010-11. 

 This, to me, is a pretty good deal both parties.  I look at it like this; Leclaire can be a great goaltender when he’s healthy – the problem is that Leclaire has never logged more than 54 games in a season (yes, that includes his career back through the QMJHL!)  For the Jackets to give Leclaire a big raise based off of a 1 near-complete season would have been loco.  I figure that the Jackets got a decent discount on Leclaire based on his injury history. 

 To see how close I was, I took a look at some of the “number one” goalies around the league and noted their salaries.  Now, I will be the first to admit that a lot of the salaries around the league are straight highway robbery (both from the team and player perspective) – so take this with a grain of salt.

 Miikka Kiprusoff (CGY)             $8.5 M

Henrik Lundqvist (NYR) $7.75 M

Roberto Luongo (VAN)            $7.0 M

Turco (DAL)                            $5.7 M

J-S Giguere (ANA)                         $5.5 M

Tomas Vokoun (FLA)              $5.5 M

Evgeni Nabokov (SJS)            $5.5 M

Brodeur (NJD)             $5.2 M

Manny Fernandez (BOS) $4.75 M

Jose Theodore (WAS)             $4.5 M

Rick DiPietro (NYI)               $4.5 M

Vesa Toskala (TOR)              $4.0 M

Ilya Bryzgalov (PHX)              $4.0 M

Martin Gerber (OTT)              $3.7 M

Martin Biron (PHI)               $3.5 M

M-A Fleury (PIT)                $3.5 M

Niklas Backstrom (MIN)  $3.1 M

Dwayne Roloson (EDM) $3.0 M

Kari Lehtonen (ATL) –             $3.0 M

Cam Ward (CAR) -                       $2.5 M

 If I take this sample as a statistical representation of what a number 1 goaltender is worth, then I come to an average salary of about $4.8 M per year.  If we also hold true that a healthy Number One plays between 65 and 70 games (an average I found), then we can come to a pretty good conclusion of what a Number One is worth for a full season.

 Let’s run the numbers.  Leclaire’s average salary over the next 3 seasons is $3.8 M.  That figure is 80% of the average salary.  Interesting.  Let’s take his games played (53) into consideration.  53 games out of an average of 65-to-70 games is roughly 81%.  Also interesting. 

Without doing a bunch of additional number crunching – comparing goaltender stats, trying to figure in the talent of the defense, as well as a whole host of others – I think I can safely say that the Blue Jackets management paid a pretty fair price for a guy who very well could lead them to their first playoff birth (or could play 23 games and watch the rest from the IR list).

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Tags: NHL Goalies, NHL Salary, Pascal Leclaire

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