The Matt Beleskey question (Trending Topics)

As a hockey community, collectively, we look at what Matt Beleskey is doing in this postseason and say, “Well, someone's going to overpay him this summer.”

And as is usually the case with pending unrestricted free agents who overperform during deep playoff runs, that belief is correct. Someone is going to look at what Beleskey is doing — and let's be honest, a 7-1-8 line in 14 games really isn't that great — and say, “Yes please, here's a bunch of money.” Almost every year, without fail.

These almost always turn into contracts that are looked upon with regret by fans and team alike; Chicago would certainly prefer to not be paying Bryan Bickell what it does, in much the same way that the early days of Joel Ward's now-expiring deal were, well, not great. Witness also, most of the 2011 Bruins who got new deals from Peter Chiarelli since then. As has long been discussed, the ability to perform at a higher level in the playoffs makes you a “warrior” and a “hero” as long as your team gets reasonably far, which, if you perform well enough, it usually does. Goals are at a premium in the postseason, so anyone who can score more than a handful of them is going to be lauded endlessly. 

But at the same time, if a guy went on a similar 15- or 20-game run in the regular season, even if his competition was reasonably hard, no one would be queueing up to give him at least two extra years and an additional $1.5 million per above what he would reasonably deserve based on what they've done over the previous however-many years of their careers.

Part of that, it seems, is related to old conceptions about player development, and what past performance actually means. For example, Beleskey is an interesting case in that he will not only be coming off the best playoffs he's ever likely to have once July 1 rolls around, but also by far the best regular season. He scored 22 goals this year, doubling his previous career high, and did it in just 65 games. What that does not tell you is that he missed some of those games because he was getting healthy-scratched earlier this season. So between the playoffs and regular season, he has 28 goals in 78 games, which is a good number. But he's 26, basically does little to create offense aside from scoring himself (he has 11 assists in those same 28 games), and is shooting 15.2 percent versus a career average of 10.5 percent across both the playoffs and regular season. 

“Someone's going to overpay for him,” yes indeed, but if we can look at that performance and say it's not something potential suitors should expect going forward, then why do GMs see things that way?

Part of that is the absurd amount of emphasis the NHL places on playoff performance in general — basically: if a guy does well in the playoffs, he's worth whatever you pay him — but also because of recency bias. The last thing you saw a guy do is going to stick out in your mind. This is the “seen him good” phenomenon, but compounded. Not only is a guy Playing Well, but he's doing it When It Matters, and that's worth a lot more than the great many games in his career in which Beleskey has decidedly not scored at anything resembling a top-six pace.

When Beleskey scored on Saturday night, Pierre McGuire said something to the effect of, “He's scoring like he did in junior.” Which is true, but only sorta-kinda. Beleskey was a fourth-round pick in 2006, and in his draft year he put up 20-20-40 in 61 games with Belleville. The year following, he bumped it up to 27-41-68. It was only in his draft-year-plus-two that he really went off, picking up 41-49-90 in 62 games. It isn't hard for 20-year-olds to score a lot in junior; it happens all the time.

But the point is people want to believe that this is the level to which players who overperform on occasion can play all the time if only they're given the opportunity. Observers want Beleskey to be the 90-point junior player at the NHL level, but it's just not feasible.

Beleskey, though, is an exception among those mid-round, low-scoring draft picks in that he at least made it to the NHL in a relatively short period of time (two more years of junior plus one in the AHL) and became a semi-meaningful contributor at this level; as a basis of comparison, a few guys who scored 0.7 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 this year were David Perron, Milan Lucic, and Thomas Vanek, which isn't the worst company, but comes with the acknowledgement that Lucic and Vanek were considered to have very, very down years. That puts them in about the 130 range among forwards. But the 1.32 goals per 60 Beleskey posted this season was sixth in the league, ahead of guys like Steven Stamkos and Patrick Kane (Playoff bum Rick Nash? He was first).

We all fundamentally understand that Beleskey will likely not reach that mark again, or probably anything like it. But he's going to want years and more money because of this performance, as is his right, and whether he's actually worth it is often not so apparent. On the one hand, for most of his career he's a middling player. According to War on Ice's Similarity Scores, the guys most like Beleskey's career numbers (based on his roughly average 2012-13 season) are Brad Winchester, Steve Bernier, Jon Sim, and so on. Guys you wouldn't exactly line up to pay.

Now, all this comes with the caveat that Beleskey isn't always used in the way he was this year. So-so competition, favorable zone starts relative to the rest of his team, and so on.

That's pretty cushy usage this year, and it was the only one in which he didn't get run over (that 2008-09 season was, for him, a total of just two games). That should tell you something. Now, if whoever signs him next year decides they're going to start using him as the Ducks did this season, then that might lead to something resembling this kind of production; not that he'd keep shooting 13.75 percent, but usage matters a lot. 

Take, for example, the previously mentioned Joel Ward. That contract year before he signed in Washington (2010-11) was actually one of the worst of his career before the playoff run in which he went 7-6-13 in 12 games. But for the second year in a row, he was used in a much more defensive role than he ever had been before. During that postseason, the puck just went in for him like crazy.

So the Caps bet on him and maybe ended up breaking even on the deal. They got the best Joel Ward they could have hoped for, but it was because they deployed him as an offensive player rather than a defensive one. They reverted a little bit this year — it also happens to be a contract year in which he played well in the postseason again (3-6-9 in 14) — and his output sputtered again despite a career-high shooting percentage. Doesn't mean he won't get paid, but it does mean teams will probably be a little more cautious, especially because he'll be turning 35 in December.

Hockey is not an easy game to predict. Luck plays such a huge role in almost everything that it's tough to say definitively that, for example, Matt Beleskey won't keep scoring like this. But we can say with great confidence that the odds aren't on his side. 

Smart general managers will recognize that, and won't pay him any more than what the career numbers say he's due. But not every general manager is smart, and someone, we know, will overpay. Fans just has to hope it's not the general manager of their favorite team.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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