Do you have anything to back up the bolded? I find it odd that you think this because most calculations in the CBA use percentages, e.g. revenue sharing between teams and players, minimum and maximum annual values for contracts, variance in salaries between years, bonus allocations, just to name a few.
The part you bolded in my previous post is referring to what I posted before it. Which is, I don't see GMs/agents getting so far into the weeds that they are looking at the tenth or even hundredth place when working on deals.
What I was trying to say with that is, I don't see a GM coming into talks saying I want your client at 11.67% and the agent counters with 13.67%.
Building on that point.... They are going to look at comparable players % of the cap. But it's going to be a range and a starting point. In Dahlin's case the range would be roughly 11% to 14%. Then the parties involved will work through things like how he stacks up to these players, RFA vs UFA years, length of deal, age, etc. to see where he'll fall in that range.
All those factors matter because they're what determined where the comparable players fell in that range. Actual salaries, AAVs and how the comparable players' contracts are structured become part of the discussion at this point as well.
I would say percentage of cap at the time of signing is one of the most predictive measures for player value. That's not to say it can't evolve, which we've seen this year with the Matthews and Dahlin contracts, but that doesn't make it less meaningful as a metric to be used in discussion and setting expectations.
They're not evolutions. They're products of the same process I discussed above. The results aren't surprising.
Matthews % on his new deal is roughly the same as Mack's and both are below McDavid's. About what you'd expect.
Dahlin's % falls roughly where you'd expect as well. Below the two 8yr deals that have 8 UFA years (Doughty/Karlsson) but above those with fewer UFA years (Werenski/Fox/Makar). McAvoy is the outlier.