In our third annual look at professional hockey, Canadian Business Online assembles the stats and crunches the numbers to find the players that offer the greatest bang for the buck. These are the best value players. They're not necessarily hockey's most skilled in absolute terms — nor are they always the cheapest monetarily — but it's the dream team for fans and cash-strapped owners.

Naturally, no such list would be complete without taking a look at the players who are providing less than stellar value. These guys don't produce many points or stop many pucks, and they’re not all that cheap either. But it can be an entertaining exercise in schadenfreude to talk about them anyway. So, armed with your stats, have at it.

If you want to get at some of the key stats quickly, see the Top 10 page for a ranking of skaters and goalies. And if you're on the go, take our hockey podcast with you and listen to features editor Andy Holloway's take on the best and worst in the sport.
 
New this year is our Fan Value Index where we rank teams by the entertainment value they provide relative to the hit they put on your family's wallet. In this economy, it's must-have information.

How to use the tables

The hockey salary and performance tables can be emailed, printed out or downloaded into a spreadsheet. Players and teams can be ranked by any of the data categories in the table simply by clicking on the column name. A second click on the same column name will reverse the display order. Custom views can be created for selected data categories.

Compensation is in U.S. dollars and is sourced from the NHL Players' Association plus applicable portions of the rookie bonus in NHLnumbers.com. Additional data is from the NHL and HockeyBuzz. Data is current to April 12, 2009.

For more details about our stats and how we used them, read our methodology.