On August 28, the Dallas Stars inked a deal with center Cody Eakin to extend him for the next four years at a $3.85 million Average Annual Value (AAV). While many Stars fans were happy to have the “Ginger Ninja” tied down, the move raised a lot of eyebrows.

After all, Eakin’s primary role with the team is to be the third-line center. Why invest so heavily in a bottom -ix forward? Is Jim Nill losing his Midas touch?

Short answer: No.

Eakin’s contract is part of a larger trend that’s seeing “defensive” forwards rewarded monetarily, with big “we signed him for what???” deals. I’ve spent a large part of my summer doing a lot of research into salary and contracts over the years, developing what I call “salary bands” that show how a player or team have performed relative to their peers with similar contracts.

As you would expect, forwards who score more points and have better possession get paid the most, but they also tend to spend more time in the offensive zone, as measured by Zone Start % Relative. While not a perfect metric, Zone Start % Rel gives a reasonable idea of how much time a player spends in their own zone — and when used in all situations (versus even strength) can also approximate time spent on the Penalty Kill vs Power Play.

So why does this matter to Cody Eakin, third-liner and future multi-millionaire?

Well, by switching from straight dollar amounts (salary) to AAV as a percent of the salary cap, I can adjust for overall cap inflation and take a look at how contracts are changing over time. And defensive forwards like Eakin are rapidly gaining in value.

This graph shows all the forwards who had negative all situation zone starts, divided by year. Prior to 2012, the large majority of these contracts fell in the 2% or less bands. But since then, the other bands have seen a lot of growth, while the low bands have fallen off.

Still, to say “everyone’s doing it” is a bad idea when talking about getting those really short bangs like Mara Rooney had in the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” or nearly doubling a third liner’s salary. Instead, we need to make sure that it’s not just bad signings pushing up the market for players that barely score but have a lot of “heart.”

To that end, I further filtered the defensive forwards down to skaters who had put up 1.1 Primary Points/60 (goals + primary assists as a rate), and also 49% Scoring Chances For%. This means that even if they did get tough zone assignments, they were very effective with them, turning a defensive situation into a scoring one more often than not. On average, only about 32% of my original sample made the cut.

Here, the effect looks even more pronounced. When looking at the first chart, only 9% of the defensive forwards earned more than 5% of the cap in the last two years. But effective defensive forwards? 45%. And yes, Eakin just so happens to be on that list of “effective” defensive forwards.

This year and next, there will be a ton of new contracts kicking in for players like Eakin. Here’s a quick cross section of some of the contracts he’ll be compared against.

The Expected % of Cap is based on either this year’s salary cap of $71.4 million, or if the contract kicks in in 2016, I added a 4% cap inflator, as that’s the amount it rose over the last year. All metrics are from this past season, in all situations.

As you can see, Eakin’s sandwiched in with some good company — all the highlighted players made the “effective” list. Fehr looks even more like a steal for the Pittsburgh Penguins, but it’s likely the Canucks will regret that Sutter extension pretty quickly. Kesler is an interesting one, as he was great for the Ducks this past year, but will be 31 when his 9% cap hit kicks in — an age which is not kind to hockey players.

Like it or not, players like Eakin will be commanding higher salaries, so to keep effective players, even on the third lines, GMs will have to shell out the cash to make them stay. Eakin’s contract is a bit of a gamble, but it looks like a necessary risk.