LOL, good luck with that! One would have thought he would be signed quickly given that he doesn’t deserve a penny more than his QO. What gives? Jost must realize that he was a poor 4th liner last season.
Lol, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with that comparison. But you never know though; lot's of players (including Danault) only take a big step forward after 22-23 years old.
Jost's comparables are probably guys lik Bennett ($1.95m x 2, and $2.55m x 2) and Lawson Crouse ($$1.55m x 3). Evolving Hockey puts him at $2.1m AAV, and in a normal year he'd probably get that, or just under $2m. But the way the market is right now - with players like Nieto signing $700k 1 year deals just to stay in the league, Jost doesn't really have much leverage, particularly considering that he doesn't have arbitration rights.
It's pretty clear that the options on the table for Jost are to either sign his QO ($875k x 1 year); sign a 2 year deal at slightly higher (eg. $1.25m x 2); or failing that, to get traded.
Given that Lias Anderson brought back a 2nd round pick I would hazard a guess that Jost would bring back
at least the same, in which case we could replace some of the draft capital we lost when trading 2 2nd's for Toews. That would free up a roster spot and ~$1m to go out and take advantage of the cheap UFA market.
The thing is, though fans get frustrated with Jost, based on the noise from pundits like Friedman, Lebrun, etc, there are still some GM's around the league who value him quite a bit. This flat cap only increases the value of cheap young players like him too, and despite his limitations offensively he's still very good defensively and at drawing penalties, and still has potential to improve.