Confirmed with Link: Petr Mrazek re-signed, 2 years 4m/year

[Winger98]

Are the positives of doing it the other way worth the negatives?

Both of those approaches offer different benefits and drawbacks.

Depends. When you do that two or three times you're also asking 'If this player is worth a million or two more, is doing that two or three times worth having those three players instead of three guys with long term deals with lower AAVs plus a fourth we can add via the yearly cap savings?'

Nah.

17, 11, 8, 5. That how many guys are under contract through next year (meaning 17-18), the year after, the year after, and the year after. In terms of population it's not bad and that includes the Franzen deal (which was a bad break) and the Zetterberg deal (which he won't finish out).

As far as the individuals getting the deals, there's a case to be made that there are some flaws. I don't like the Helm deal, for instance, and most (all) people don't.

People are also complaining about the Abdelkader deal, right? '7 years is too long' yadda yadda yadda. Ok. The way the salaries break down is that 7 year deal is really a 4 year and a 3 year deal signed simultaneously, to run consecutively. 4 years @ 20.25 mil and then 3 @ 9.5. There's a clear break in compensation levels which expresses this intent.

So, had Holland signed Abdelkader to a 4 year deal it would have been a 5+ cap hit. By rolling up the "second" 3 year deal into this one he saved 1.25, 750k, 750k, 500k in cap in each of the first four. That's the good news. The bad news is he A) costs himself 750k, 1.25 and 1.25 on the last three years caps and B) buys into the long term risk of Abdelkader's health status.

If Holland's primary concern is maximizing the teams' playoff chances in the immediate term (and obviously it is) you like that tradeoff more because it gives you some more flexibility up front, and you can figure out the back end later on. For the posters here who have different objectives, their evaluation of the deal will vary according to those differences.

After doing that a few times you're congratulating yourself for not having guys locked up into deals you don't want to honor the back half of, and and trimming players from the team when their cap hits won't be matching what they are giving you on the ice.

With Gator specifically, I think $5m would be a fair number for four years, and after that, take the lower cap hit. At that point we'll likely be entering the meat of the careers for guys like Larkin and Mrazek (and a few others, if we're lucky) and will need the extra cap space.

Have to point out that with the year we have eleven guys under contract, over $50m is wrapped up in those guys. The following year with 8 guys, there's over $36m tied up. And a we're looking at a lot of poorly managed cap space in those years. Franzen will be on ltir, Z won't be worth the $6m he counts against the cap. Ericsson won't be worth his deal. Gator, Helm, and Nielsen will be coin flips. I'd rather deal with a tighter budget now than have that sort of wasted space down the road. And judging by how long term deals work, at least for the Wings, it's going to be a lot of wasted space.