In that case, pretty much every UFA contract is a necessary evil. The Martin contract, the Ward contract, etc....so will be the potential Karlsson contract.
As fans, it is easy for us to bemoan contracts because we imagine all the other great things we would do with all that cap space. Sign all the top players, make all the great trades...except those are not at all guaranteed.
I've seen people talk about how DW should have not signed Kane, Couture, Jones, and Vlasic and instead saved up money for the 2019 and 2020 UFA classes...where the Sharks should go and target the likes of Duchene, Panarin, Skinner, Karlsson, etc. Yet what are the chances the Sharks could nab those players? How happy would you be with a 7 year, 77 million USD deal for Panarin or Duchene, players just as susceptible to decline and with numerous question marks? Heck, the chances of Karlsson signing sight-unseen in San Jose were practically zero!
In short, surely there were ways the Sharks could have more optimally used their cap dollars. But, one must weigh both sides of the opportunity costs of that 20+ million in unused cap space.
I don’t...disagree with any of this. The Martin contract and Ward contracts
were necessary evils. Both of them were great in 2015-2016 and contributed to our Stanley Cup Finals run. Both of them were pretty bad by the final years of their contracts and we had to buy out Paul Martin. And yet, they were still
good contracts. I would do them all over again without blinking.
The difference between contracts like those and that of Burns, when compared to Kane/Vlasic/Jones and possibly Couture, is that
year 1 is getting ugly on those deals. That’s the point I was trying to make. Sure, you can sign a big contract and take the good at the first few years along with the bad at the final few years. It is a
necessary evil. Ideally, you wouldn’t have to buy out Paul Martin, you wouldn’t have to handle Burns making $8M in the playoffs at the age of 40, etc...but that is not reality.
You know a guy I like from the UFA class of 2019? Joe Pavelski. Yeah, he’s not perfect, but he’s got 18 goals in 29 games this season, and we’ve got the inside track on signing him; he said he wanted to sign an extension here and hadn’t been contacted about it, so we know he would be willing. He is probably going to be the opportunity cost of the Kane contract. If you sign him to a $7M/4Y contract, it probably ends up looking hideous in years 3-4, but at least he’s absolutely worth that money right now and will probably be worth that in year 1 at worst. That’s a whole lot more than I can say for Kane, Vlasic, and Jones.
Even if you don’t want to retain Pavelski, the point is that the opportunity cost of the $19.75M spent on those 3 is not just Duchene/Panarin. It is comfortably retaining our own core players, it is having the space to pounce when a desperate team puts a player on the trade market and we have the assets. What if, in 10 months, Evgeni Malkin and Pittsburgh have a falling out, Pittsburgh’s ownership burns a bridge, and Jim Rutherford offers us Evgeni Malkin for Suomela, Ryan, Chmelevski, and a 2021 1st? Zany hypothetical, I know, but that is also exactly what just happened with Erik Karlsson. We had the space to make it happen, but we won’t if that type of situation arises again and we might not have the flexibility to make that space in time because of those contracts and the NTCs attached to them.
On top of that, Panarin and Duchene are both currently playing
much better than any one of Couture/Jones/Kane/Vlasic have in their regular season career. In 2018, Duchene has 77 points and Panarin has 79. Couture has 62 and Kane has 36. Jones has a .909 SV%.
I can pull up point shares per year of age, Point shares per 82 per year of age, points per age, points/game per age, and make charts to compare them to the guys we signed. They’re all going to say that Duchene/Panarin are currently showing a better aging trend than the guys we signed.