What is Surplus Value?

How much value a player produces relative to what his team pays him in salary cap.

What this tells us

When a player is producing at a high level on a cheap contract, he generates surplus value — his team is getting more performance than the cap hit suggests they should. When a star player is in the final year of a long deal and declining, or when a mid-tier player is overpaid, that's negative surplus value: the team is paying more than they're getting back. Over a multi-year contract, PuckLab projects each remaining season separately, accounting for typical aging patterns at each position, then stacks those projections against the actual cap charge.

Limitations

Surplus value is only as good as the projection model feeding it. Contract value also depends on context we don't always see: trade protection, signing bonuses, escrow, or whether a player's role might shrink due to team changes. A player with high surplus value might also be trade-bait, which can shift team strategy. And the model assumes the player stays healthy and doesn't relocate — injuries or trades mid-contract reset the calculation.

How PuckLab calculates this

PuckLab's v2 surplus value model uses cap-percentage-based projections with position-specific aging curves derived from historical contract outcomes. Each remaining year is projected independently, then compared to the actual cap hit. Full methodology will live on the /methodology page.

Example

A 28-year-old winger on a three-year deal at $4.5M per year, posting 0.75 points per 60 at his position's typical level, might be projected to produce value worth $5.2M in cap terms across the remaining term, yielding a cumulative surplus of roughly $2.1M — a win for the team that signed him. Conversely, a 32-year-old on the same contract declining to 0.55 points per 60 might project to $3.8M in total value, resulting in negative surplus of roughly $1.7M.