Lenny7
Joined: Jan. 2017
Posts: 13,291
Likes: 11,051
+/- is a pretty bad way to judge a player. It doesn't account for a zone starts, quality of your linemates, quality of the opposition, whether you have a sieve in net or Marty Brodeur, whether you're on the powerplay, penalty kill, etc., etc., etc...just a bad, bad stat. For instance, Hughes was -24 last year...his expected +/- was -5.4. That's a pretty drastic difference. Also consider that the goaltenders behind him managed to put up a well-below league average .891 save percentage.
As for the percentage of the cap that a player is worth...10% seems like a pretty foolish spot to draw a line in the sand, and taking a discount to play on a "winning team" seems pretty arbitrary as well. First, there's a pretty significant difference tax-wise between somewhere like Vancouver and Tampa. Second, it isn't the players job to put build a team, it's the GM's. If someone like Benning can't put affordable talent on the ice to surround his star players, that's his own fault-It isn't Petterson or Hughes issue that Benning manages the cap like he has number dyslexia. I get a kick out of people talking about what they think a player is worth dollar-wise. An NHL players earning potential isn't a very long period of time, and they should absolutely grab as much money as they can, when they can.