Compher can use his speed to play with a lot of intensity in his game and be hard on pucks, but it remains to be seen as to whether he can sustain his production to work out as a long-term, second-line center. He’s coming off a four-year deal, which paid him $3.5M per year.

What We Know

• Compher is reportedly not expected to re-sign with the Avalanche.
• The Chicago Blackhawks are reportedly interested in Compher, but there is also interest around the rest of the league, according to Jay Zawaski.

Comparables

Below, we take a look at what Compher’s deal could look like at different lengths. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page.

For the comparable contracts, we’ll be looking at centers who were between 26 and 30 years old by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

6 YEARS

Six years would likely be the maximum term given to Compher. Typically, centers getting seven or eight-year deals would have much higher production, and Compher just doesn’t fit into the same category.

That said, six years is possible.

We know Compher won’t be up as high as Danault’s deal would project, given Danault was entering free agency at the time of signing where he was coming off a Stanley Cup Finals appearance and had established himself as one of the best defensive centers in the NHL.

At the same time, he wouldn’t be as low as Marchessault’s payment rate would suggest. Marchessault had a massive singing year which would skew his production mid-point and as a result, the payment rate is lower than it typically would be for others. Meanwhile, Kadri’s contract also projects a deal for Compher that’s lower than almost any other comparable would suggest.

From the other five comps though, we get a range of $5.12M to $5.89M. It does get a little bit more difficult to determine exactly where Compher would fall within that range, though. I would predict him to be on the lower end of the range, given players who have a much better signing year production than their career production typically aren’t paid at the same rate as players who have had consistent production.

Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Mikael Backlund each had the same production mid point as Compher and their deals had the projection on the middle-to-low end of the range, at $5.12M and $5.62M respectively. This seems to be the most likely range, likely to come in somewhere between the figures.

5 YEARS

Five years may be the most likely term for Compher. If you look at centers around his age who have signed five-year deals in the past, the majority have similar production.

From the five-year comparbales, we get a range of $4.2M to $6.8M for Compher’s next contract. However, there are visible outliers, with Sutter’s deal as a clear overpayment, projecting a deal that no other comparable is, while Lars Eller and Ryan Strome would both have Compher too low, below $4.5M.

Four of the seven comps would have Compher between a very defined range of $5.43M to $5.71M, and this seems to be realistic. Specifically, Andrew Copp’s deal from last summer acts as an excellent comparable.

Copp was the same age, had similar NHL experience and had very similar production, where he posted much larger numbers in his signing year than over his career, but both totals were quite close to Compher’s stats. His $5.63M deal, projecting a $5.45M contract for Compher, is a solid range.

4 YEARS

Four years is likely the shortest term we’d see for Compher’s deal, and there really aren’t many comparables for it, in terms of centers of his age and production signing at that length.

Of the four comparables, we see two slightly different ranges. Stastny and Bonino would have Compher right around $5.4M on a four-year deal, while Zacha and Jenner’s deals would put Compher at $4.8M.

On one hand, Bonino was coming off back-to-back Stanley Cups, so his payment rate was likely inflated. Plus, Compher didn’t have anywhere close to the same production as Stastny. At the same time, Compher would likely be offered a five-year deal (even if the cap hit isn’t as high on that term as projected), so if he’s going to take a four-year contract, the cap hit would have to be high.

While a four-year deal may not take Compher up to that $5.40M mark, I’d still expect him to be on the upper end of this range.

Projection

Five years remains the most likely outcome for Compher’s next contract.

That said, we could also see the deal go as long as six years or as short as four years.