Speculation: Justin Schultz's contract

[bone]

Yes he struggled defensively, little offensively? Geez, just trying to build a case to convince us or yourself? "This much" is pretty much on par with what he made last year and on par with what you need to pay a young developing offensive defenseman.


True, I mean look at Taylor Hall or Jordan Eberle, so overpaid and mediocre. I guess the reality I see in this statement is the blind assumption that "well you could just do this instead" without a single hint of reality behind it. The Oilers went with "cheap guys" it didn't go well.




0 value based on what exactly? This is a $6.3M contract, it's a $3.6M contract, that's less then $4M, it is 5.3% of the Salary Cap. Think about that for a second. The contract that you seem to assume is some kind of millstone is 5.3% of the total salary cap.

At some point you can't just squeeze all these guys because they get "sick of this ****" and will leave. Whether you want that or not is your call, but Justin Schultz was the best offensive defenseman and one for top minutes defensemen on the Oilers. This is slight overpay, but the world isn't honestly ending.

If you think he's as "bad" of a player as you're trying to paint, then you're just going to have to deal with having a problem with it.

That's actually a decent way of looking it. 5.3% of cap. If a roster is 23 players, the average player is worth about 4.4% of the cap (or $3M). The Oilers view him as an above average player on the team, so it's certainly in the range being $750K above average.

I may have wanted closer to $3, but reality is that he has been told over and over again that he is above average (often spoke as key to core) by management so why would he ever settle for less than $3M like many on here feel he should have got.

Editted to add:
He also ended up 38th in points by defensemen. As each team needs to dress at least 6 d-men per game, that puts him in around the 80th percentile of defensemen scoring. Granted he defensive part needs improvement, but offense tends to get paid more than defense. Simply put this isn't an awesome deal, but it's certainly reasonable.

 

[Moose Coleman]

How interesting the same argument is made on pretty much every signing the Oilers make. When you have a whole team of guys making a million too much, your team tends to suck.

This is, at worst, $100K too much.

The Oilers do have some bad deals right now. Ference, Nikitin, possibly Pouliot. All these were UFAs, which are seldom bargains. They've got the main part of the roster locked in at extremely favourable terms, so I'm not seeing where the issue is.

It's made worse by this being a 1-year deal on a young guy, because overpayments now tend to inflate further over the next contract or two and they aren't getting any value here. If it was that amount for 3 years, then it would be much more justified, because you hope and expect the last year (or hopefully 2), he's at least worth that and more.

Again, it's not much of an overpay and point producers tend to get paid. Good news is, if he doesn't improve, he'll either face a pay cut or the possibility of getting shipped elsewhere.