I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I made my thoughts fairly well known in the Berglund thread that was up prior to the signing. By and large, I completely agree with Easton. In terms of market value, I think this is a very fair contract. He very likely would have done better on the UFA market, so it is hard to say that the terms are bad.
However, I completely agree with Easton that it is idiotic to allocate fair market value to Berglund gven the financial reality of this roster as constructed. This contract doesn't address any of the 2-3 glaring needs on this roster and instead ties up term and money in one of the few redundancies we have: bottom 6 centers.
If we can't get rid of Lehtera, this contract is a complete disaster. It prevents us from any hope of getting a top 6 center and might even make it difficult to just give Parayko the long term deal we should be giving him. This contract makes it absolutely mandatory to move Lehtera to have any hope whatsoever of addressing the top 6 center spot. If we can't find a taker for that contract, then we are looking at the exact same center group as this year. Even if we clear 100% of Lehtera's salary, we still don't have a ton of flexibility to get that top 6 center. Assume Parayko at $6 mil per and a total of $2.5 mil to fill 2 D spots and a forward spot (which is the rough cap hit of Barby and 2 in system D-men). That leaves less than $5 mil in space to find this elusive top 6 center. As Easton pointed out, most good players become available when teams can no longer afford them. Teams in cap crunches likely will want to move their overpaid center, not the one coming in under $5 mil.
Absolute best case scenario, this signing means we can only address 1 of 2-3 actual needs on the roster (and it limits our ability to do this). If everything goes perfectly, we will be able to lock up Parayko and get a top 6 center. We will still be weak at LD and we won't be able to upgrade RW at all. Barring movement of another top 6 forward, we enter next season with largely the same roster (addition of a top 6 center and subtraction of Lehtera/Shatty). I don't see how this is a great vision, considering the top 6 center will almost certainly be a 2C since our best-case-scenario budget is now under $5 mil.
Worst case scenario, we can't move Lehtera without holding on to tangible salary, so we enter next year with Stastny-Lehtera-Berglund down the middle again. And basically no cap space.
I just don't get this contract. Barring 3-4 fantastic moves by Army in the coming months, this contract essentially means that we are counting on Berglund to be our 2nd line center next year. In order to get a top 6 center for next season, we are going to have to spend significant assets because we just removed any and all cap flexibility we had. We just made ourselves even more desperate to move Lehtera's awful contract and we still don't have much cap space if/when we accomplish that. How many assets will it cost to shed Lehtera's salary and acquire a top 6 center that a team doesn't need to move based on cap constraints? Unless we are comfortable gutting the prospect/pick pool completely, we probably need to send Schwartz or Steen the other way. So now we are in a situation where we sacrifice Schwartz or Steen in order to keep Berglund, which is just baffling when we could have replaced Berglund with Sobotka or Barbashev for much less money.
In my opinion, I only see 2 possible realities based on this contract. Either Army doesn't have a vision for the roster moving forward or his vision is that the top 6 center issue will be solved from within by some combination of Barbashev, Thompson, or Kyrou. I'm not sure which is more concerning, because either that seems like a colossal waste of 1-2 more years of Petro, Fabbri, Tarasenko and Parayko.
I love Berglund as a fan. I'll still root for him, I'm excited that he may wind up as the longest tenured Blue, and I think he has been underrated a lot of his time here. If there was no salary cap I would love this move. But as a fan of the business side of sports, I despise this contract. It goes against every bit of intelligent cap management and severely limits the team's ability to address very real needs. For the first time in a long time, I don't think the Blues have a Cup window in the next 5 years. I just don't see how we are going to address our very real needs with the salaries we currently have on the books. It isn't just this contract, but this is the final nail IMO.
