Blues offered a shorter term for Backes. Think it was 3 years max, which would have ended last season. But, he opted for the Boston deal. His choice. Blues made the hard tough call that the majority of NHL teams would not have made.
Almost poetic in that they ended up facing off against Backes in the finals and winning. Shows that the tough calls pay off.
Honestly, the structure his contract, front loaded with some SB to reduce the cash payment that another team would owe him should they need to trade him after year 3 and paying the SB. B's were prepared to pay him $25 mill for 3 years of service (includes the year 4 SB of $3 mill). Would have left $5 mill cash for the new team to pay him. But, age caught up to Backes, along with the bottom feeders that normally took on low cash big cap hit contracts going into a new direction. FLA, AZ, NJ spent this off-season expecting to be better, thus were not interested in cap dumps.
Who was the last player wth this type of contract structure who got traded the way the contract was setup for? Let's eliminate the guys who ended up on LTIR. So, only talking about the players who would actually play for a new team in the final 2 years of their front loaded contract. Seems like its a bad idea from the start. You're dependent on the player playing well enough to justify the cash owing, otherwise it will cost a higher asset to move the player.
Excellent post. Bruins idea was to move him after three years. It’s also when his full NTC moved to partial. The idea of selling an over the hill Backes for 2x2.5 in real money (after paying his bonus) should have worked...but he became a sub NHL player instead of “veteran bottom 6 presence” after the concussions.