Buffalo Sabres - Contract Projections

Buffalo Sabres - NHL Player Contract Projections

Team: Kiersten Kochanowski, Jiani Liu, John Uihlein

Sports are the perfect arena for analyzing strategy and performance. Leveraging publicly available data on National Hockey League (NHL) player contracts and performance statistics, our goal is to create an automated system that models the following:

  • Predict player contract values in three different contract scenarios:
  1. For players aged 27 and older 
  2. For players younger than 27 who are eligible for salary arbitration
  3. For players younger than 27 who are not eligible for salary arbitration
  • Project player contract values for upcoming free agents by identifying comparable players.

The system will routinely scrape data from various web sources in order to maintain accuracy and relevance. We will model unrestricted free agent salaries using regression and tree-based models. Additionally, we will model restricted free agent salaries based on their arbitration status: Players eligible for arbitration will be modeled using clustering and distancing models based on similar NHL players, while players not eligible for arbitration will be modeled using regression and tree-based models. These models will help inform the Buffalo Sabres with insightful evaluation of player contracts.