Bahl signed an extension to remain with the Calgary Flames long-term.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

The Calgary Flames signed defenseman Kevin Bahl to a six-year contract extension, which carries a $5.35M cap hit. The last four years of the contract will come with an eight-team no-trade clause, per PuckPedia.com.

Below, we examine what kind of value the Flames are getting with the contract.

Player Overview

Selected in the second round of the 2018 NHL Draft by the New Jersey Devils, Kevin Bahl made the jump to professional hockey in 2020. Then after spending parts of two seasons primarily in the AHL, the defenseman joined the Devils for the 2022-23 season, before playing all 82 games with the team in 2023-24.

Last summer though, Bahl was dealt to the Calgary Flames as part of the Jacob Markstrom trade. In Calgary this season, Bahl took huge advantage of the change of scenery and grew his role substantially. His ice time increased by over four minutes per game, with Bahl averaging 21:23 per game, which ranked third amongst all skaters on the team. He also took on some of the toughest matchups of any defenders on the team, per the Frozen Tools’ player usage chart.

At 6-foot-6, Bahl can play physically and be very effective in battles. While he won’t add much offense, he’s reliable in his own end, and at just 25 years old, his deal with the Flames should take him through the prime years of his career.

Comparables

Below we take a look at comparables for Bahl’s six-year deal, to get a sense of whether it was an overpayment, an underpayment, or a fair deal. Comparables will generally include defensemen who were between 23 and 27 years old in the first year of their contract, with Bahl now 25 years old.

The table below includes the comparable defenders’ production and ice time in their signing year, and over their career. It’ll also include their cap hit in the first year of their contract, and their adjusted cap hit on an $95.5M salary cap.

6 YEARS

While six-year deals were much more common for players around Bahl’s age a little while ago, we’ve seen a bit of a shift away from this in recent years. Regardless, available comps are listed below with adjusted cap hits ranging between $4.8M and $6.8M.

In terms of the defensemen higher on the table, Bahl doesn’t compare overly well to the comps from Kaiden Guhle ($5.5M cap hit) and above. He was lower it at least three out of four statistical categories than just about every one of the comps above that range.

At the same time, he does compare quite a bit better to the comps below that mark. At the bottom of the table, Bahl has better numbers in all categories aside from career ice time than all of Connor Murphy, Mattias Ekholm, and Brandon Carlo. As a result, there’s a good argument Bahl should be at least above the $5.04M adjusted cap hit from the Connor Murphy contract.

Comparing Bahl to the defensemen with adjusted cap hits between $5.05M and $5.35M, Bahl doesn’t compare that well to John Marino, Damon Severson, and Olli Maatta, but does have slightly better signing year numbers than Brian Dumoulin, along with the the same career production.

Meanwhile, though he did have slightly lower production than Rasmus Andersson, he also had higher signing year ice time, and similar career ice time.

As a result, we can point to the fact that Bahl’s numbers likely put his value somewhere in the range from about $5.05M to $5.35M on a six-year deal. So while his cap hit did come in at the upper end of that range, it still represents relatively fair value.

Final Analysis

A six-year contract for Bahl is a bit surprising, only in the sense that we’ve seen a shift away from defenders around Bahl’s age taking six-year deals. At the same time, his numbers do align with a lot of the defensemen who have signed six-year deals around his age, since 2015.

A $5.35M cap hit also represents fair value for Bahl. While there wouldn’t have been any comparables that would project Bahl above that mark, the comparables do generally put his value somewhere just north of a $5M cap hit on a six-year contract.