Danton Heinen has signed a new contract with the Boston Bruins.

Almost 3 times as much as Labanc lol ... good signing though.

Who would you rather have Heinen or Lebanc

At least right now i'd take Labanc.

Heinen last season: 11G, 34 points. Labanc: 17G, 56 points. How does Heinen get paid 3x as much? Labanc is also younger than Heinen. Labanc is much better and it's not close.

I agree with what you say, I would also have Labanc over Heinen, BUT Labanc's contract is an abnormality. Heinen's seems like a "normal" contract for point productions of such.

It's a solid signing by Boston from a team perspective as well as reasonable from the players side. They get Heinen, an up and coming NHL'er that has not yet reached his ceiling, IMO, at a rate that is pretty fair market value, whereas the player will come up for resigning at the same time that Backes comes off the books and the cap is projected to rise significantly with the introduction of Seattle and the new US TV deal. Smart on both sides.

For all the talk about how much defense matters when you discuss Erik Karlsson (who’s still v good defensively) or any offensive minded player, people seem to not consider that when talking forwards unless they are elite at it. The thing with Heinen is that he looks like he could become that. He had a very solid year this year, and should’ve had Selke votes last year. Labanc had how much pp-time? The only thing I struggle to understand is why Heinen didn’t get to play any PK this year. Also they’re both born 95 iirc

Selke votes? Heinen is better than Labanc defensively, but don't get carried away. He's not even one of the best defensive forwards on his team let alone the entire league. He's a solid all-around player for his age...that's it.

That's just incorrect. He has one of the best defensive sticks in the game. He's average at offense but great at defense, Labanc is good offensively but straight up bad defensively. I have no idea what Labanc's 2 year deal would have looked like, so it's hard to compare their contracts exactly, but I honestly don't think Heinen is a worse player

Labanc > Heinen

As player and the contract right now

He's younger by 5 months lol

Labanc was also ranked 6th in PP TOI per game for SJ, while Heinen was ranked 12th for Boston. Close to 40% of Lebanc's production this year came the way of the power play.

Ok. He's better than Labanc defensively. I agree w/ you. But he's not top 50 in the league in Selke...not close. You need 2-way stats to win the Selke. Hence Bergeron, Kopitar, Datsyuk, etc...

Actually, Labanc totaled 36 points last season at even strength (56 points overall). That's 2 more points than Heinen had TOTAL (34 points).

Yet Leblanc gets a 1 year 1 million contract... doesn't make much sense.

Anyone from the blues.

One of the better ways to determine how involved a player actually is in the play is to remove secondary assists. At 5on5 Heinen has 10 goals and 12 primary assists, Labanc has 15 goals and 12 primary assists. Heinen is a massive improvement defensively, I'm actually leaning more and more towards him being the better player

I'm not really sure what this post has to do with my post. Did you quote the right person?

It was meant for melonvk...LOL. But my point was that despite 40% of Labanc's points coming from the PP he still scored more points at 5on5 than Heinen scored in all situations. But that doesn't make Heinen any less valuable. It just makes Labanc's 1 year deal that much more confusing.

It's not a bad deal for either. Heinen played 14 minutes a night. He's clearly no more than a 3LW there in boston, and probably anywhere else for that matter.
I think the real issue with him is there is no real offensive upside to his game. His even strength goals are 13, 11 that past two years. It's not really lighting the world on fire. In todays NHL, it also doesn't help that he's not really a hitter or play a lower line physical game as a 3rd liner. But that is what it is. Average player, average pay.

I don't think his deal is confusing. He's basically taking a 1-year prove it deal. If he can replicate or improve then he'll get a bigger deal. If he takes up less money for this 1-year and they can put some better players around him and he can improve, it'll improve it next contract.

I think the right value for heinen after last year was 2.25-2.5 range. 2.8 is high but he would have gotten 3+ in arb. so in relation its a good deal but i wish it was lower.

I totally understand the one year "prove it" deal for Labanc. William Karlsson did the same thing last summer w/ Vegas. The difference being Karlsson didn't take a 66% discount in doing so. The dollar amount of this contract makes zero sense. It's not like Doug Wilson is gonna pay him $2M extra next time around to make up for this time.

Who knows, maybe that money they save from his low hot allows them to give Labanc a better linemate. Maybe thay leads to 60+ points and he cashes in even bigger.

You can't really use the insane steal that Labanc's contract represents to undervalue Heinen. $2.8M for his contract seems like solid value. Similar signings this summer were Kerfoot, Johnsson, and Kapanen. All outscored Heinen last year, and got more term for higher AAVs, but all are considered fair contracts. Maybe Boston could have pushed to get a bit more term on say a $3-$3.1M deal, which might have been better in the long run, but this seems like a completely fair deal given the market and his contributions.