Why did he accept a lowball contract?
the only way this is a lowball contract is if you accept draisailt contract as anything other than a bad deal. In my own effort to build a case for 7.5 I was looking forward to the possible deals that laine/mattews/eichel/marner were possibly going to get
there was no historical deals to base a 7 million dollar deal on other than draisailt.
of course, if boston had bowed down like I did and had given pastrnak 7+ then the down hill rolling stone would have gathered more momentum and who knows where things could have ended up for the league?
pastrnaks deal is still high above where I was origionally analyzing the market before the draisailt contract but the structure of the deal is interesting. if we believe he wont ever get paid for the 1 season during a lockout then the deal only pays out 37 million dollars over the next 6 seasons which is pretty damn close to the 36 million I was viewing to be the right number... and very close to the 36 million that the team was reportedly offering all along.
the difference where pastrnak benefits is of course the lockout protection. without any lockout protection he would be getting around 30 million instead of 37 million... so his agent did great for him
the structure of the deal isn't all about salary bonus... theres some front loading as well. but the overall intention of the deal remains the same. pastrnaks camp clearly wanted to make sure they got their money as dom was the first to tell us months ago. Jacobs clearly didn't want to just hand over gigantic signing bonus... but ultimately the deal was structured to pay pastrnak his 6 million even if the season is lost
and if the season isn't lost... then the extra 3 mill kicks in and the average jumps to the 6.7 which is the highest end to what second year contracts have been in the past. this is the same money that Calgary gave johnny hockey. so there is a precedent for it.
all in all the deal is very logical for both sides and gives both sides what they wanted as much as is possible anytime that both sides have to compromise. there was compromise but they both still got the lions share of what they were both after.
I found it fun to guess what was going to go on... never for one second did I believe there was any intention to not get a deal done. I never for one second thought there was any possibility of a trade. I might have made a trade personally depending what was offered, but never did I think the team was going to. it never had any of the feeling to me that past deals with Hamilton/kessel had.
the reality is boston has had multiple superstars needing new contracts in recent years and there has been almost no problems getting them signed. even seguin and thornton and wheeler all signed... signing them wasn't a problem. Bergeron, marchand, lucic, rask, Thomas, chara all signed... it hasn't been a problem signing anyone really except Hamilton who we offered the money too... and kessel who wasn't fitting in.
I hope our own fan base can start to accept the reality... for at least the past 15 years this has been a well run organization that keeps the players it wants to keep and builds a competitive team within the limitations of the cap world and the reverse draft system.
this isn't our father's bruin team under the management of sinden where they deserved the cheap reputation
