Why not? It's a comparison. Most people just trot out the raw AAV and that doesn't tell nearly the story that percentage of cap does. Making raw dollar comparisons is just less nuanced. Let's use one that's very close: McAvoy's deal, signed about one year by age older than Dahlin, at 11.66%/$9.5M AAV for the same 8 year term and with similar NTC protections (Dahlin has one more full year, starting earlier and no partial at the end like McAvoy does). So if a team is going to value Dahlin a smidge more than McAvoy - and there could be debate based on handedness and actual defensive shutdown ability that there is merit to McAvoy being a more desired commodity - then how do they assign value? They can't use the raw AAV since the overall cap allocation has changed. So they use % of cap as a comp.
Werenski's was similar in age, like McAvoy and Dahlin with a year still remaining on his bridge and goes deeper at 11.76%/$9.583M AAV but for less term (six years) and also a bit less trade protection (a limited NTC in year 6). So Dahlin has more years with full trade protection and I would say has a strong case for being a better player than Werenski and his group likely is use a figure in excess of that value as a point of recompense. They aren't going to use him as a low end comp, so that's up around 12% pretty much right off the bat. They aren't going to ask for this in 2020-21 season dollars ($81.5M), they'll be looking at current and proposed future value. That the league was some up front about growth is cool, taking that into consideration again puts this into the 12.14ish region that seems fair and not outlandish.
My issue is not that it's used for a comparison. It's that it (% of the cap at the time of signing) doesn't tell nearly enough of the story to be used as a direct comparison. There are a variety of reasons why that's the case.
1) An agent isn't going to base his client's future contract on a season it doesn't apply to. He's going to project it forward. % of the cap numbers on CapFriendly are either the year the deal starts or the year before. One matters, one doesn't.
2) GMs and agents are likely to use the range of comparable players as the starting point to guestimate roughly where a player's potential AAV might fall (with projected numbers from coming seasons). In Dahlin's case that range would be about 11% to 14.5%**.
3) RFA vs UFA years. This seems to be overlooked or at least not factored in much. Which surprised me because they've always been big drivers of contract value. Makar is at the AAV and % of the cap he is due, in part, to his contract being 6yrs with 4 RFA vs 2 UFA years.
Makar, Werenski and Fox were likly looking at 10mil to 10.5mil cap hits had they signed for 8yrs. Which is 12.3 to 12.7% of the cap and a very different conversation when comparing it to Dahlin's 8yr deal at 12.6%++.
**I know
@Fezzy126 is not a fan of including Doughty/Karlsson and feel they are overpaid. But they matter as examples of max deals (8yrs) for top dmen that are all UFA years. More UFA years than the other comparable players and why they were able to get as much as they did.
4) The NHL's economics improving/changing quite bit from the 2021 offseason to now. Its transitioning away from the relatively flat cap of several years to positive growth (roughly 5% each of the next two years. One of the impacts of that is Dahlin's % of the cap will be dropping quicker over the early years of his contract compared to those signing in 2021.
Dahlin's first 3 seasons will be 12.6%, 12% and likely 11.4 to 11.6% for the 3rd year. Thats about a full 1% drop. By comparison, Makar's first 3 seasons will be 11%, 10.9% and this year is 10.8%. That's barely any change at all. ^^ The differences between 2021 and now becomes clearer on a speculative 8yr at 10mil per deal for Makar. The first 3yrs would be 12.3%,12.1% and 12%.
Its makes comparing 1st year % of the cap not quite as valuable.
I tried a few times to type out a more succinct response and failed. Sorry you get this long post instead. It's not even everything I wanted to cover.
