☀️ Good morning and welcome back to The Nosebleeds.

🦄 Hard to follow that Ohtani newsletter from last week, but we’re going to give it our best shot.

🤓 So here goes nothing—building a salary cap-compliant NHL superteam, only using existing forward lines and defensive pairs. Let’s do it.

☝️ Forward Line 1

Zach Hyman - Connor McDavid - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins

xGoals % (xG%): 77.1%

Minutes: 117.4

You aren’t serious about starting a hockey team if Connor McDavid isn’t your first pick. McJesus’ line with Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins has been the best of any line that has played at least 60 even-strength minutes together—boasting a 77.1% xG%. I personally think Nuge is one of the most overrated players in the sport, and constantly gets carried by McDavid and/or Draisaitl, but the numbers don’t lie—this is an easy choice for L1.

✌️ Forward Line 2

Nikolaj Ehlers - Mark Scheifele - Gabriel Vilardi

xG%: 70.1%

Minutes: 61.2

This line was our inspiration for this whole newsletter. In the five games since Vilardi was put with Ehlers and Scheifele, this line has outscored their opponents 9-2, outshot them 48-22, and are routinely scoring beauty goals like this one ⬇️ 

These three have Jets fans everywhere like ❄️ ⛷️ 

Winnipeg is good, baby.

👌 Forward Line 3

Martinook - Staal - Fast

xG%: 63.6%

Minutes: 288.7

Maybe (probably) the best shutdown line in hockey. This Canes trio controls nearly 2/3 of the chances while matching up with their opponent’s best line on a night-to-night basis. In true Moneyball fashion, they’re cheap too—the entire line costs $7.1 million. Kevin Hayes also makes $7.1M himself… I know what I’m picking for that price tag.

🍀 Forward Line 4

Carrier - Roy - Kolesar

xG%: 66.1%

Minutes: 155.1

Cup pedigree, strong physical, dominant, etc.

As much as I hate the Vegas Golden Knights, 4th lines don’t get any better than this.

☝️ Defensive Pair 1

Ekholm - Bouchard

xG%: 64.9%

Minutes: 409.2

These two play every game together, and they are far and away the best defensive pairing in the NHL from an analytics standpoint. Add in the fact that Bouchard is on a cheap $3.9M bridge deal, and this pair of Oilers was an easy choice to anchor our blueline.

✌️ Defensive Pair 2

Heiskanen - Harley

xG%: 72.6%

Minutes: 80

What does this pair bring? Well, you’re getting one of the league’s elite defenseman in Miro Heiskanen, and you’re getting a talented young player in Thomas Harley who is still on his entry-level contract (this is the only ELC I included in this whole thing so I don’t want to hear anyone say that’s cheating). They’ve been great in their short time together.

👌 Defensive Pair 3

de Haan - Raddysh

xG%: 62%

Minutes: 207.3

Lots of you are probably asking… who? Darren Raddysh and Calvin de Haan have been surprisingly excellent in a fair amount of minutes together this season. But here’s the real kicker—they cost a combined $1.5M.

Cheap, yet effective—what’s not to like?

☝️ Starting Goalie

Thatcher Demko

Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx): 15.8

Demko has been the NHL’s best goalie so far this season with 15.8 GSAx to date. We’re writing an analytics piece here… we have no choice but to select the leagues best goalie according to the fancy stats.

✌️ Backup Goalie

Jonathan Quick

GSAx: 11.5

We could have chose other effective NHL goalies on cheap contracts to be our backup, but that would be against the spirit of the whole thing. For that reason, we selected a legitimate backup goalie in Jonathan Quick to be our #2. Quick has been an extremely pleasant surprise for the Rangers so far this season.

🥶 The Roster

Not bad right?

And here’s the kicker—this roster leaves us with ~$4.8M in cap space. We have plenty of room to add a difference maker to our roster at the trade deadline 😉 

Data does not include Thursday evening’s games; courtesy of MoneyPuck

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