That whole 2019 season though is hard to judge. I'm not trying to diminish what Point did but it's difficult to say if that year was an aberration or not. Like I don't say we can realistically expect Kuch to hit 120 points again. And that's why a bridge deal is needed. Another year or 2 would help give us a better idea what player he is going forward. Is he closer to a 60 pt guy or a 90 pt guy? What will be his norm? Like I said before though too, I have zero problem with moving up from $5.7 M. I doubt we're drawing a line in the sand at 5.7.
It is diminishing what he did though. When has a player said, "I scored 90 points, but scoring is up, so pay me like a 60 point guy." Not in the history of never.
But here's the thing about Point. All the talk about him being on Kucherov's wing... Well, he put up exactly 7 more 5v5 points this year than last year. Kucherov's 5v5 points, playing with Point, jumped 16.
Point was our 2nd best 5v5 scorer last year, 3rd the year before (without Kucherov).
In the past TWO seasons, he has 73 total goals (for context, Stamkos has 72), and 45 goals at ES, which is second behind only Kucherov in both cases.
The big difference is we played him on the PP this year, and that's where most of those extra points came from. But it's not like this is a player who doesn't deserve PP time and won't be getting it from here on out.
The idea that this season might be a fluke is kind of crazy, considering the big difference is PP time, not Point's performance. (His performance improved a little, but not massively--he just got more opportunity.)
That new culture though is made off of bad moves. Like Hose said, there's no reason we need to be apart of a trend that doesn't make sense. One bad contract has led to others for Dubas because of where he set the bar in Toronto. I understand where Marner's camp is coming from because if I'm Marner, I'd argue hard too that I deserve to be paid in comparison to Tavares and Matthews. But Point can't really do that here in Tampa.
Let's forget Dubas, because this didn't start with him. It started with Draisaitl and Eichel, both of whom signed for bigger money than Point after seasons that weren't as good. We can't just pretend it's not happening, not if we want anybody to play for us.
You can consider the moves bad if you want. Unfortunately, they're becoming the norm. We're lucky that we don't have to follow the trend completely, but it's silly to think we're going to be the one team that ignores it altogether and just forces our RFAs to play for a fraction of what their peers are making.
