When the NHL introduced a salary cap system for the 2005-06 season, it meant teams with previously limitless spending power had to adapt. Gone were the days of throwing money at every roster issue.
Over the past 20 seasons, clubs have had to strategically address their needs without exceeding their allocated budget. This has helped instill parity into the league today (from ‘How Much Parity Has the Salary Cap Added to the NHL?,’ The Hockey Writers – NHL Stuff, December 2024).
The best teams in the NHL almost always have an abundance of star or superstar talent on their rosters. But with the salary cap, how can they afford that, you ask? Well, they must opt for cheaper depth in the bottom half of their lineup.
Related: Report: NHL Salary Cap Could Increase by $9 Million Next Season
This may not seem like a big deal, but I previously concluded that more expensive depth players (below a $4.0 million cap hit but more than $1.5 million) perform at a much higher level than cheaper depth players (below a $1.5 million cap hit). Not being able to overspend makes it a bit more challenging for top teams to fill out their depth (from ‘Should NHL Teams Aim for Cheap or Expensive Depth?,’ The Hockey Writers – NHL Stuff, November 2024).
So, we’ve established that low-salaried players are generally liabilities. To quantify that, I collected the cumulative goal share (plus/minus as a percentage) and expected goal share of sub-$1.5 million cap-hit players through Nov. 6 of the 2024-25 season. At even strength, their goal share was a lowly 43.71%, while their expected goal share was still just 48.16%. Not only do these players consistently out-chanced, but they’re outscored to a substantial degree.
At the end of the day, hockey is about scoring more than the opposition—the cheap players don’t. There is some truth to the fact that basement teams worsen these players’ stats, but it isn’t by much. Plenty of good depth guys exist on otherwise poor rosters, and vice versa. That’s generally not the case here.
The more expensive group’s goal share was much better at 52.38%, while their expected goal share was a tick below at 51.44%. Let’s put it this way: if both of these groups are on the ice for 100 goals, the more expensive one will have an even-strength plus/minus between 17 and 18 higher than the cheap guys. That makes a pretty big difference.
So, teams that have to pay their stars handsomely are making a sacrifice. Their depth is all but destined to be worse, seeing as the sample size was over 200 skaters. However, there’s a way around this. Let’s discuss the impact of penalties and how they make cheaper depth players far more beneficial than they appear.
The Importance of Power Plays
Before getting into the data that shows the importance of penalty differential, let’s talk about penalties anecdotally. When clubs are presented with the usual two-minute opportunity to have an extra player than their opponent, they score just over one-fifth of the time. Naturally, you want to draw a lot of these penalties.
Plenty of NHL games are decided by one goal. So, just one careless rule violation can make all the difference. Special teams decide games from time to time. As a result, staying out of the box is a must.
Most players in the league draw as many penalties as they receive, or come very close to it. There are a select few who are on either end of the extreme. Usually, it’s the star players who have the best penalty differential. After all, they have the puck more often and are a bigger threat to score.
There are a few outliers, however. Even with ice time harder to come by, some inexpensive depth players have carved out a nice habit of drawing penalties. But how important is that? Can this offset the cheap players’ poor actual and expected goal shares?
How Much Does Penalty Differential Mean?
To quantify the significance of penalty differential, I credited the results of power plays and penalty kills to a player based on how often they drew and committed infractions at even strength. Instead of having no statistical reward for putting their team up a man, they got one.
The thought behind it isn’t too complex. Even though the depth players usually aren’t on the ice for these power plays, they’re the ones who made it happen. So, as a result, we can grant them the benefit of said power play. Chances are created and goals are scored—we always forget the guy who made it all possible in the first place, though. Simultaneously, they can be punished for the penalties they cause.
To further explain the method to my madness, let’s say a player has nine penalties drawn and five penalties taken. If a team scores a goal on two of every nine power-play opportunities, we can add those two goals to their even-strength plus/minus. On the flip side, that team allows one goal for every time they’re on the penalty kill. As a result, we subtract one goal. In the end, we can deduce that they added one extra goal to their team. It doesn’t show up in their stats, but that’s the impact—kind of like a quiet hero.
Let’s get to some actual numbers. Using this method, some of the more extreme cases (depth players specifically) present a 3-5% increase in goal share and about the same in expected goal share in a season. However, it’s important to note that a small sample size can skew this. One season, someone may draw 11 more penalties than they take. The next, they’re in the negatives.
To account for this, I used the past three seasons for my data. This is so outlier campaigns had less of an impact. On the topic of the data, I chose 10 players to analyze. They’re all forwards, as defensemen are naturally going to take more penalties than they draw.
To be transparent, the players I chose below don’t align with the average actual and expected goal shares from the cheap versus expensive contracts piece I referenced at the beginning of this article. They’re better than average depth but aren’t being paid like it. Since the 2022-23 season (through Dec. 22, 2024), their cumulative goal share is quite a bit better at 49.76%, while their expected goal share sits at 48.60%.
Ten Players Who Are Sneaky Steals
In particular, 10 different forwards are contractual steals (all previously unrestricted free agents or waiver pickups) due to their discipline. Those are the following: Christian Fischer, Cole Schwindt, Derek Ryan, Hudson Fasching, Jesper Boqvist, Jimmy Vesey, Joey Anderson, Mitchell Chaffee, Nick Cousins, and Victor Olofsson. Combined, they average out to a $865,000 cap hit, which is just barely above the league’s minimum.
Now, we can attack this in several ways. For starters, these 10 athletes have drawn 215 minor penalties and taken 135 of them since 2022-23. By himself, Cousins drew three more major penalties than he took—this is 83 extra power-play opportunities in total.
The league-average power play over the past three seasons is operating at 20.61% efficiency, so we can expect between 16-17 goals generated in these 83 attempts. We have to account for shorthanded goals allowed, but that’s only around two. So, in the end, around 14-15 goals could be added to these 10 players.
With these added goals, the players have a 50.40% goal share and a 49.33% expected goal share—boosts of about one percentage point. It’s not much, but it gets them on the positive side of even-strength plus/minus.
We can take this a step further, though. What if these players were inserted on a contender? Specifically, one with an elite power play and penalty kill? The Carolina Hurricanes will be used here.
This is a similar but tweaked process to the section where we looked at players under league-average power plays. Only, we’ll look at how the 215 minor penalties drawn and 135 minor penalties taken affect these 10 players under the Hurricanes’ units only. Please note that offsetting penalties aren’t being accounted for. Also, I removed five-minute majors for simplicity—they don’t have much of an impact on the numbers, anyway.
Since the Hurricanes have had one of the best power plays over the past three seasons, the 215 penalties drawn do wonders. Accounting for both power-play and shorthanded tallies (subtracting the two numbers, that is), these players theoretically would’ve helped generate an excess of 45.62 actual goals and 48.38 expected goals in those 215 attempts. If we also look at their 135 penalties taken, that amounts to just 14.11 actual goals and 23.11 expected goals in the red because of Carolina’s remarkable penalty kill.
Ultimately, that’s a boost of 31.51 actual goals and 25.27 expected goals. This gets these cheap players up to a 51.14% goal share and a 49.70% expected goal share on average. This is basically the best-case scenario, but elite rosters have elite special teams—after all, that’s what stars are for.
Let’s put these numbers in a chart. With the 10 cheap forwards’ penalty differential added to their on-ice metrics, how does that look in comparison to the expensive players?
| Stat; Even Strength* | Ten “Steal” Depth Skaters** | ”Expensive” Depth Skaters*** |
| Goal Share (GF%) | 51.14% | 52.38% |
| Expected Goal Share (xGF%) | 49.70% | 51.44% |
| Average Cap Hit | $865,000 | $2,539,179 |
**Fischer, Schwindt, Ryan, Fasching, Boqvist, Vesey, Anderson, Chaffee, Cousins, and Olofsson if their penalty differentials are applied exclusively to the Hurricanes’ special teams. Their stats include the past three seasons (starting with 2022-23) and are accurate through Dec. 22, 2024.
***Skaters who signed for less than $4.0 million average annual value (AAV) in the 2024 calendar year but greater than or equal to $1.5 million. Their stats are from 2024-25 only and accurate through Nov. 6, 2024. No signings after that date are included, either.
Even in this favorable scenario, the expensive players still have better on-ice numbers. They should, to be fair. But guess what—it’s not by much. For every 100 goals scored, the expensive guys are only generating 2.48 actual goals and 3.48 expected goals more than the cheap ones. At even strength last season, only 24.47% of all forwards in the NHL were on the ice for 100 goals. In reality, the advantage for the expensive players is even less, since that 100-goal mark doesn’t really apply to anyone here.
However, the pay between the two groups is very different. On average, those 10 “steals” have a cap hit of $1,674,179 cheaper than the expensive guys. This, evidently, is a huge deal.
I chose specific players and made the best-case scenario apply to them. That’s not to say it’s an unrealistic one (how many contenders struggle with special teams?), but it’s meant to highlight the cheap players’ impact to their fullest potential. At the same time, the juicy savings here cannot be ignored, even if these are the cream of the crop depth options.
For contenders, it makes a ton of sense to hunt down cheap depth. They may get first dibs, too, since players of this caliber are willing to take pay cuts to have a chance at the Stanley Cup. Not only is their likelihood of achieving their childhood dream higher, but more teams across the league may take notice of their play and give them the money they deserve.
The Florida Panthers are one of the masters of signing cheap depth. General manager Bill Zito replaced Cousins with Boqvist, who are both on this list, potentially for their penalty differential. When you have superstars like Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, and Sam Reinhart to pay, sometimes creativity is required. The team is tied for eighth in penalty differential (plus-9) through the NHL’s 2024-25 Christmas break.
Now, this isn’t to say contenders should spend as little as possible on their bottom six with forwards like the ones I mentioned and leave it at that. However, getting a cheap player here and there is a must for every team. To rise above the masses, it’s important to pick the right ones. It may not have a tremendous impact on the surface, but with how much parity exists in the league today, enhanced attention to detail can make a difference.
Advanced stats courtesy of Evolving-Hockey, basic special teams data (like conversion rates) courtesy of QuantHockey, contract data courtesy of PuckPedia
