from Phil Curry and Mark Drummond at the Toronto Star,

With a new NHL season around the corner, we’re bound to hear commentators talking about which players have contracts coming up next season and whether they’ll “step up their play” in order to get that big payday. But does this actually happen?

Martin LaPointe is the poster boy for this phenomenon. From 1996-’97 through 1999-2000, Lapointe was remarkably consistent. He scored 16, 15, 16, and 16 goals those years, and earned right around $1,000,000 per season for his solid productivity. The next season, 2000-’01, was his “contract year”: After that season Lapointe became an unrestricted free agent. Mr. Consistency somehow managed to score 27 that season, nearly double his career high in goals, and also managed a career high in assists. His 57 points was almost 40 per cent higher than his previous best of 41, and a point shy of double his production from two years previous.

Now before we start jumping to conclusions about players shamelessly playing their hardest only when they know their paychecks depend on it, let’s keep in mind that all players have year-to-year fluctuations in their productivity, which means if we look at enough guys, some are going to get lucky and have that big year when they most need it. So was LaPointe just lucky, or is his story representative of how players routinely up their game at just the right moment so they can cash in when free agency rolls around?

To find out, we looked at what every NHL forward who signed a new contract during the past seven seasons did in: (i) the two years before his contract year, (ii) his contract year, and (iii) the year after his contract year.

continued