I'm not disagreeing with any of that but your reply literally has nothing to do with what I said. My post isn't about who gets the attention or credit for wins. The point is, teams win the Cup very often with goalies who aren't considered elite and aren't getting paid $7m+ a year while the same cannot be said for forwards. All you need in net is a solid/good goalie to get hot at the right time. The The fact that 7 of the 10 most productive players of the past decade have won a Cup says it all. This is the first season since the Devils in 2003 that you can argue that the Cup winners didn't have a superstar forward even with ROR scoring nearly a PPG and winning the Selke. Holtby is the only star goalie to win a Cup since Thomas in '11 and even Holtby had a poor season the year they won and almost lost the starting job heading into the playoffs. The point is, teams are smarter to spend big money on forwards, not goalies.
A lot of what you say is true, however, it's not often that you have one of the best goalies, one of the best wingers, one of the best centers, and one of the best defensemen in the entire league all on one team. Sure, Vasy might be a little pricey for a goalie but it's more than made up for by the contracts of the others...
The good news is we'll have several years of having the best core in the league to try to make up for that choke job.Well, that turned out well last season.
I think lost in the shuffle of my posts is the fact that I do think Vasi is an awesome goalie and I don't see any reason why he can't or won't win a Cup. The fact that they have Kucherov and Hedman locked up for $17.4m when they're really probably worth $20-22m helps. I think what I was trying to say from the beginning is that teams need big chunks of cap to pay their elite forwards and defenseman and can usually get by with a good but not great goalie as long as he can get hot at the right time. It doesn't look like this deal is going to handcuff them too much and you're 100% right, they had to resign him. I don't know how they would be able to sell to their fanbase the idea of letting go of a Vezina winning goaltender just entering his prime when their Cup window is as wide open as it's going to get.
We're signing him long-term because he's young and as he matures I expect him to get "Carey-Price-in-his-prime good" and this deal, after the cap rises several million over the life of this contract, will look fantastic.
Nope, I don't consider Quick an elite goalie. He's a product of the teams he plays on IMO. He's been great in the playoffs for the most part but that's kind of my point. He's played on a great defensive team for his entire career. A team who has won him two Jennings awards (that's strictly a team award). In '14 when they won it he had a 2.07 GAA and .915 SV% which sounds pretty good until you see that Jones and Scrivens combined to post a 1.88 GAA and .933 SV% and in "18 when they won it he had a 2.40 GA and .921 SV% while Kuemper and Campbell combined for a 2.18 GAA and .930 SV%. Most years his backups had similar or better numbers than him and none of those goalies were young guys that have gone on to have great careers elsewhere. That LA team brough Budaj back from the dead and he put up numbers similar to what we've seen from Quick. That's not to say that Quick isn't good, he is. He's just not an elite goalie.
When Quick last won a cup was the first year of that $5.8m cap hit contract which was 9th in the NHL among goalies which isn't bad. It's also important to note that although they did win the Cup in the first year of that contract, they haven't won a single round in the playoff and have missed the playoffs completely in 3 of the last 5 seasons. I guess you're right though, I shouldn't have used the word star, instead I should have just said elite or something but I didn't want to confuse being elite in the playoffs (which is basically a necessity to win) with being considered elite because of regular season play.
It's tough and goalies are starting to make that push for more money which is funny considering starts seem to play less than in the past. It used to be routine for top goalies to play 70+ games but it's extremely rare over the last 5-6 years. I think it all comes down to the fact that goalies just don't have that huge gap in talent or at least in results. The 5 highest paid goalies going into this season are Price, Bob, Lundqvist, Rask, and Fleury while the 5 best goalies (my subjective opinion) around the $5m mark are guys like Rinne, Andersen, Lehner, Bishop, and Dubnyk. The 5 highest paid forwards are McDavid, Panarin, Matthews, Tavares, and Kane while the best guys around $5m (again, my opinion) are guys like Marchessault, Tyler Johnson, Lindholm, Galchenyuk, and Trocheck. There's definitely a gap in ability between the top goalies and the $5m guys but when we look at the gap in forwards it's much larger which tells me that the money is better spent on top end forwards rather than top end goalies.
So if it was $9 million for 8 years then its fine? Any long term contract regardless of value has the risk of a player getting injured.
