Weak FA Market Helped Calgary Flames Re-Sign Mark Giordano at Bargain Price

It’s impossible to analyze Mark Giordano’s surprisingly reasonable new contract with the Calgary Flames without first considering context.

It’s been an odd summer for NHL free agents, with many forced to accept less money or fewer years than they had originally expected, and many more still out there looking for contracts. That context is a key reason why the Flames were able to extend Giordano at such a reasonable price point.

Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reported the details:

This contract stands in stark contrast to the rumoured starting point of talks. On July 1, Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos suggested that discussions were beginning at a much less favourable place for the Flames:

Measured against that starting point, Tuesday’s deal is obviously a massive bargain. However, most contracts end up looking like bargains if only compared to the player’s original asking price, so it’s worth looking at this in more detail.

Writing for FlamesNation.ca, Thomas Drance acknowledged that the contract looks good compared to market rates on top-end defencemen but also noted that there are some unique, complicating factors in Giordano’s case:

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Giordano, after all, won't suit up for his first regular season game under his new contract until he's 33 years old, and he'll be taking up $6.75 million in cap space at the age of 39—during a season in which all of Calgary's projectable, elite core (Sam Bennett, Sean Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau) will be getting paid at unrestricted free-agent rates.

It seems highly unlikely that Giordano will be the player he is today during the latter stages of the contract.

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It’s rare for a defenceman to even play at the age of 39. Skills start declining rapidly at that point. Zdeno Chara is still playing big minutes for Boston at the age of 38 and Nicklas Lidstrom remained freakishly good at age 40, but for the most part, players trend downward in a hurry at that age.

Declining skills aren't the only issue, either. Chris Pronger was still a good defenceman at the age of 37 when post-concussion syndrome ended his career.

Giordano has missed 18 or more games in three of the last four seasons, including 2014-15, with a range of complaints. The 31-year-old may well wear down over the course of his new deal.

Age and injury are significant risk factors here, but that was always going to be the case with any Giordano extension. Realistically, the Flames did as well as—or perhaps even better than—could reasonably be expected, and there are a lot of points in their favour here.

The main one is that Giordano is an awfully good hockey player.

We could look at offence. Giordano has scored 1.02 points/hour at five-on-five over the last three seasons. That’s a top-20 mark among blueliners in the NHL.

He’s scored 4.19 points/hour on the Calgary power play over that same span, a figure which puts him right between Victor Hedman and Duncan Keith despite the fact that the rest of the talent on the unit lags somewhat behind that of Chicago and Tampa Bay.

Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

We could look at the minutes he plays. Giordano’s quality of competition over the last three seasons in Calgary is comparable to that posted by Chara, Ryan McDonagh and Shea Weber, and it comfortably leads the Flames over that span.

According to Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com, he also started 330 more shifts in the defensive zone than in the offensive zone.

Most incredible, however, is the Flames’ performance when Giordano is on the ice versus when he’s off it.

Over the last three years, Calgary has narrowly out-chanced the opposition with Giordano on the ice. With him off it, the Flames have owned only 44.5 percent of scoring chances. Goal figures are even more compelling. Giordano is even at five-on-five over the last three years, but Calgary has claimed only 42 percent of goals scored with him off the ice.

Giordano is an elite NHL defenceman and likely would have won the Norris Trophy last season if not for injury. He plays the toughest available minutes, makes his team undeniably better and even plays a high-end offensive game.

Even if his game declines with age, he’s so good now that there’s a reasonable chance he’ll still be awfully impressive at age 39.

Calgary signed a franchise cornerstone on Tuesday for six years, committed less than $7 million per season to do it, and if the worst happens, the team can still get out of the deal because it was signed before Giordano turned 35.

This is a very good day for Flames fans.

Statistics courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com and war-on-ice.com.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.