from Sonny Sachdeva of Sportsnet,

In today’s NHL, money wins titles. Not the most money, not money simply splashed haphazardly in all directions, but the best-managed money, the most wisely spent.

Such is the reality of a hard-cap league, where winning requires the ability to navigate that salary cap in such a way as to stockpile as much talent as possible within its limits. Where overextending to land a star player means one fewer valuable contributor elsewhere in your lineup, and where bargain-bin players who outperform the money invested in them can have a season-altering impact.

The 2022-23 season brought a mixed bag of results on this front across the league. Last week, we looked at some of the best bargain point producers from the season, the players who chipped in offensively while costing their clubs next to nothing relative to that offensive contribution.

This week, we look at another aspect of that financial picture — the contributions from the game’s top earners.

While this off-season’s seen clubs around league take a cautious approach to filling their cap space, amid another summer of minimal salary-cap movement, teams are simultaneously working around the hefty deals handed out in years past.

With that in mind, we took a look at how the highest-paid players in the league lived up to their price tags in 2022-23, and how that list overlaps with that of the players who earned MVP votes at year-end.

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