To who?
Not to the team. Not to the player wishing to sign a contract next season..
If gets cleared to play, it's definitely in the best interests of the player and team to confirm if the knee holds up and can handle NHL training.
If he's shut down - the best Rodin can hope for is maybe min wage from a team willing to gamble..
The Canucks or some other team would be taking a financial risk in blowing real money on an unknown knee. (cuz you know that contract isn't getting insured)
For Rodin, its risk vs reward. He's out at least another 1-6 weeks and could be longer if the MRI shows additional damage. Realistically that means he'll likely be out until the all-star break. I guess its possible he goes on the road trip on 25/26th but its probably unlikely.
So the earliest he'll likely return is Feb 2 with 32 games left on the schedule. There's no way he'll be in game shape right away after missing another month of action/playing 3 games total. It'll probably take at least 2 weeks till he's close to "game shape". That leaves at most probably 25 games @ 100%.
Given we aren't likely to make the playoffs, he isn't going to make much extra money playing those 25 games. He will still get a 1 year "prove it" contract for likely 1 mil or less. He would end the season playing just over 30 games (at most but realistically he'll miss some even in an ideal situation).
Unless you have an example of someone with less than 40 game experience as a UFA coming off a major injury getting a huge payday or any payday for that matter...
Again that's in the best case, its not very likely he'll only miss a week and that would farther reduce the number of games he can play. That means regardless of how he does (unless he scores like 50 points in 20 games
), he will have a prove it deal.
For him, is it really worth risking coming back so soon for basically nothing? He'll still likely be given an invitation/min contract/sub 1 mil contract next season even if he doesn't come back to finish the season. At most the difference might be from min salary to 1 mil or say 450k difference.
On the flip side, he's risking his long term health by risking back too soon. If you want to believe the fact he was never 100% to start with, then all these problems he's having now was due to the fact he came back too soon (or at least it got worst due to the Jan. 6 game) and it'll cost him even more time. Not to mention if he rushes back, isn't productive at all, it only hurts his chances of getting another opportunity next year. Let say he comes back, isn't 100% and scores 5 points in 20 games... he would have a lot fewer suitors in that situation than if he just sat out.
Also Rodin likely wouldn't have any issue going back to SEL and getting a decent contract. After all he won the MVP award last season while missing quite a few games. Any team that feels like he could regain that form would be more than willing to sign him to a short term deal. So really the risk vs reward factor would favor him not coming back unless he's sure he's 100% (and put in a situation to succeed... aka not playing on the 4th line/with AHLers).
As far as 'nucks goes, there is a lot fewer risk. If he isn't going to resign, there's nothing to lose with him playing so it doesn't matter. If he's willing to resign, then it might be better for the team to have him @ 100% (or at least closer to 100%) @ the start of next season. Realistically we aren't likely to make the playoffs this year considering our schedule after the all-star break. Add to that, even with our "light" schedule right now, we're basically 10th in the West (Nash has 2 games in hand and only 1 point behind). We also have a lot of road games and are horrible on the road (5-13-3). So if he's in our long term plans, its better to just shut him down and target a Sept/Oct return instead of rushing.