How much is Ben Chiarot worth?

Welcome back to our contract evaluation series, looking at what we should expect the Winnipeg Jets’ unrestricted and restricted free agents earn given how statistically similar players were paid.

Using WAR-on-Ice‘s Euclidian Distance application produced by Manny, we will produce a list of similarly aged players who who are comparable in: goal production, assist production, point production, shot volume production, relative Corsi percentage, relative scoring chance percentage, relative goal percentage, percentage of team’s time on ice.

Our next look is none other than the Jets rookie defender, Ben Chiarot.

Once again we are taking a look at a player the Jets have already signed. The club announced the signing of Chiarot to a two year contract averaging 850K a season in salary.

Chiarot was a bit of surprise for many. The player spent the entirety of his entry level contract in the AHL. The first season he could not even make the AHL team and spent much of his career below the few months younger Julian Melchiori in the depth charts.

The Jets’ AHL affiliate depth collapsed though with the movement towards a younger squad, which then increased Chiarot’s usage, chances, and exposure. He impressed management enough to be the first call up once the Jets hit a severe injury bug.

He came up to the NHL and stood by Byfuglien’s side, never to look back again.

Chiarot performed extremely well in his games as a Jet, and posted strong numbers. There is however a concern on how much he was carried by Byfuglien, who was dominating significantly enough to inspire Noris conversations after being moved back to defense.

Chiarot’s numbers are as follow:

The ten closest statistical cohorts are as follow:

The names are a mixed batch, but for the most part are some pretty solid comparisons. The question though is how much of this is Chiarot and how much is Byfuglien…

While some of these players are likely beyond Chiarot’s potential ceiling, there are some players that Chiarot could become. It is early, but evidence suggests Chiarot could be a 4-5 defender; one who can play solid bottom six minutes but fill in the top four if the other defender can carry the pair, a la Byfuglien.

So what does the average statistical cohort look like compared to Ben Chiarot:

There are a lot of unknowns with Chiarot, whether his performance was really him or not, but we see that Chiarot’s total salary over the next two seasons is 200K less than the yearly salary a statistically comparable player would earn.

On one hand it looks like Chiarot is being taken advantage of, but on the other Chiarot did not have much to bargain with, with only 40 games of NHL experience.

Overall it seems the Jets got a pretty good deal if Chiarot can repeat his performance and show that a significant portion of his results were from himself.