Those guys you are mentioning that cost around $3M were all free
Yes, as UFAs. And they required multi year deals to land in unrestricted free agency. Which is what I meant when I said "The going rate for a top end backup in UFA is around $3M and
on a 2+ year deal. If you want to pay less than that or
buy only 1 year, you are getting a backup with a noticeably worse resume than Allen.
Any team looking for a 1 year solution to the backup/1B with cap space is going to kick the tires on Allen."
Saving cap space requires purchasing more than one year of term, which is generally how it works at every position. I don't now how much more clearly I could have made it that Allen is a good option for teams who aren't interested in committing cap space to a goalie beyond one season.
You are also leaving out the cheaper options. Hutton signed 2 years at $2.75 while Smith, Elliott, Kuemper, McElhinney all make $2M or less.
How are those signings going?
Hutton: posted a .908 as the 1A last year, is currently posting an .894 as the backup and Buffalo is on the hook for another season next year.
McElhinney: working fairly well as an adequate backup. Also required a 2 year deal that takes him to almost 38. Almost nothing on his resume suggests he is capable of being a tandem/1B/high end backup as he has pretty much always been an adequate backup. This has been a good signing for a team looking for an adequate backup to take 20ish starts from an elite goalie. That isn't the marketplace for a guy like Allen.
Smith: He's posting a .905 and is part of a tandem that is without question providing goaltending in the league's bottom third (6th worst even strength SV% in the league). He's getting outplayed by Koskinen and if Edmonton misses the playoffs and wastes another season of Drai/McDavid, goaltending will be a big reason why. They are spending $3.75M to Smith for this contribution.
Elliott: He's rocking an .898 this season, which has helped the Flyer to 24th in the NHL in 5 on 5 SV%. Philly is in a dog fight for a playoff spot despite being the 9th highest scoring team in the league.
Kuemper: He has worked out super well. But he wasn't free. The Yotes traded Tobias Reider for him, who (at the time of the trade) was a 15 goal, 35 point middle 6 forward with 300 NHL games of experience at 25 years old (plus a backup no one cared about). He had a better resume at the time of that trade than Sunny has right now. He wasn't a major asset, but it also wasn't s low cost price to get Kuemper. Prior to his Arizona days, he had never hit the 30 start mark and was below average in every season but one. Arizona signed him mid season and he didn't play all that well in that first partial season with them. He was not a sure thing. Every year there is maybe one guy who makes the jump like he did and your odds of getting that guy aren't great.
So of these options, you have 1 really good outcome that required trading a young middle 6 forward to obtain, 1 option who has worked out fine in a role that is substantially lesser than the role a team would be looking to fill via Allen and 3 guys who are actively costing their teams by providing noticeably below average goaltending. Of the 4 cheaper guys signed to play the role Allen would be brought in to play (Hutton, Elliott, Smith, and Kuemper) 1 of them has worked out. So using these comparables, a GM has to accept that going the budget route in a tandem/1B role has about a 25% chance of working out. That's not much of an argument in favor of going budget UFA shopping if cap space isn't a concern.
As for a team looking for a goalie to mentor someone, I think Jake would be a pretty piss poor option. He has been critiqued for a weak mental game, and has been woefully inconsistent. Those are the things a mentor should be able to help with. Jake can't even help himself. I'd prefer a less skilled goalie who has outplayed his skill, but time is catching up to him.
This is true so long as you ignore the opinions of all of his team mates, our front office and the rumors that several teams were interested in him over the summer to play in that capacity. Every player in our locker room (especially Binner) bends over backwards to talk about what a pro he is and how much he helps in the locker room. Binner frequently talks about how he is a great teammate, an incredibly hard worker and helped him grow as a goalie entering the league. If you want to claim that is all some facade put on by the team, go listen to Binner's interview on Spittin Chiclets. He is open and honest throughout that entire interview and praised Allen way more than you would expect an open guy to do if he were just selling the company line. One of the biggest "inside the locker room" stories in the Cup Final was about him studying film on opposition goalies and mimicking their style during practice. By all accounts of everyone involved in the Blues organization, he is a fantastic mentor and locker room guy. The fact that he can't hack it as a 55 start guy doesn't change that. He has consistently and repeatedly provided very good on-ice performance when he is in a tandem/backup role, which is exactly the role we are talking about him going to fill.
It is possible if the right team likes Allen and has a need, he could garner some interest. His numbers are up again this year. That always helps. Hutton earned his $2.75M on the back of a good season with us (unbelievable season really). Allen's #s aren't that good. If he can maintain .920ish save percentage, I guess a team who is in love with his potential might throw a 2nd or more likely a 3rd our way. But several things absolutely have to break the right way for that to happen. I don't have time to chart the goalie movements or look at depth charts, but I concede that there could be a situation where no good goalies are on the move and he nets a positive asset. But it would have to be a perfect storm, and that asset, as you said would be less than a first for sure. Still, I'll begrudgingly concede we may get the a pick back.
He has a .922 so far this season and posted a .922 from 1/8/19 to the end of last season. I pick that 1/8/19 date because Binner's first start was the night before and I think it fairly represents Allen's transition from starter to backup. Allen posted an .824 that night and then only played 2 more games in the month of January, so I'm not just cherry picking a game where he played super well in order to start the sample size. We're talking about 13+ months of him being a .922 goalie at this point, not some 2 month anomaly. He posted a .920 in a timeshare with Elliott back in 2015/16. This is the goalie he has always been when he's not asked to carry a starter's workload. I agree that his numbers aren't as good as Hutton's insane season that earned him a 3 year deal at $2.75M AAV. A huge part of the reason that AAV is so much lower than Allen's current hit is because Buffalo had to take on 3 years of risk instead of 1 year. At the least predictable/consistent position in sports, a 3 year commitment to an outside hire is a substantial risk. Allen's 1 remaining year of term is a big positive on the cost/benefit analysis.
I just don't see Allen continuing to be the goalie he has been for over a year and a team wanting a quality player with a good locker room reputation as a perfect storm. While his AAV is decidedly a negative on the ledger, the 1 year term is a positive compared to the term required to land a comparable UFA.
There are 34 goalies who have played between 10 and 30 games this year. Allen is 7th in SV%. Only 12 of those 34 guys have a SV% of .915 or higher. Even with regression, he's going to be one of the best goaltending options on the market this summer. The better/comparable options (potentially Halak, Khudobin, Francouz, Crawford and arguably Talbot/Greiss/) will be looking for term, similar/more money and/or a starting job. Allen has zero trade protection. Unlike these UFAs, he can't ignore the team who is only offering 25-30 starts if that team won't give them a 3rd year of term to make up for the career limiting usage. What UFA goalie coming off a good season is interested in taking a 1 year deal to go play behind the dumpster fire in NJ, knowing fully well that they see Blackwood as the goalie of the future and playing 2nd fiddle in NJ for 2 years almost certainly either ends your career or vastly limits your next contract?
Also, for clarity, I am refering to Allen with 0 retention. Retaining would absolutely boost his value to a positive asset. But cap space is kingfor us right now. Moving the full $4M+ is far more important to us than retaining to get a better pick. When I said he was a neutral (to low I am now conceding) asset, I meant with 0 retention. Retention obviously makes him more palatable to another team, and less useful for us to move.
I agree that moving the full salary should be a bigger priority than getting a better asset in return. If you move Allen, it is because the contract not because of his play. If you're moving a guy due to his contract, you need to move as much as you can.
With all that said, if I had to put money on it right now, I'd bet that Allen starts next year as a Blue. Husso is looking less and less like the answer. He has a .902 in the AHL this year, which is 36th in the league. I was more than willing to chalk up last year's disaster to injury, but it is getting harder to say that he is ready to back up a contender after 2 sub-par AHL seasons. Barring Husso showing something in the next couple months, moving Allen probably means that we are in the market for a reliable backup if we move Allen. Binner's increasingly lengthy slump is also a bit concerning, although Berube seems unwilling to dial back his workload when he has a good 2nd option in Allen, so maybe we would be content bringing in a guy who can be fine for 15-20 starts. That doesn't seem like Army's normal operating procedure, so I'd expect the team to be in that $2-$3M backup market. At that point, how much of a downgrade are we willing to take to save $1.5-2M? Given how the organizational goaltending has played out so far, I'm starting to think Bozak and Steen will be viewed as more expendable as cap casualties than Allen.
