We can all pick and choose things to suit our arguments...like basing the comparable on Pastrnak's last 2 years instead of Pasdtrnak's most recent year heading into RFA? And also failing to consider one of those years was when Pastrnak played onlt 51 games.
Or not considering there was no production jump from year 1 to 2 which showed a clear lack of progression curve that would indicate a big point jump was certain.
The Bruins don't "project" very much. Neither does the Lightning. There are many comparatives where the Nylander salary was out of whack and we've discussed them ad nauseum. I think the Larkin deal at 5.1 was probably the most infuriating for me.
But forget all that... You get deals for as low as you can sign them period. It's not the Red Cross. The big failing, regardless of arguments over comparables, was we never had to give him that money. He was never going to burn an entire year only to be in the same exact position. It was irrational to give him more money than they initially thought he was worth and deserved when they had all the leverage.
This should have been a Reilly/Kadri type deal where if he developed we would be laughing. Instead, due to market pressures, we baked in that improvement and paid him more than we wanted to. This is terrible negotiating/rationale.
Anyway it's no big deal since he's earning his contract now but this could have been a team/executive wrecking deal because it would have been very hard to make a "It made sense at the time" argument.
You can pick and choose whatever you want, or you could research what kind of factors drive contracts and judge based on them. I prefer to do the latter. And there are comparables where Nylander's contract looked bad, and there are also the opposite. That's why his contract ends up being average.
Are you honestly arguing that our "big failing" was that we didn't take unprecedented measures, which would likely alienate a core player on top of us losing him for a year, just to avoid giving him an average contract? No offense, but I'm glad you're not management in that case. It's not irrational to give him more money than they initially wanted, because that happens in every negotiation. Every team starts low and then make concessions, and no other team takes the measures you talk about.
I'm also not sure what you're talking about with Kadri. He got a short bridge out of his ELC as he didn't have a case for anything else. His current contract was a result of him walking into negotiations with three straight seasons in the 40-50 point range. Just like Nylander, he got his contract based on what he had done up until that point. Just like Nylander, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. He was cheap because he didn't have a case to get more.
And no offense, there's pretty much not a single second contract for a player with Nylander's resumé that has ever been a "team/executive wrecking deal". It doesn't happen. Second contract RFAs are the most sure bet you can make on the market.
In essence: You're overthinking things, talking about market pressures and so on. Go read studies about what drives contract value, and then take a look at how the market looks. You'll find that it lines up very well. The primary exception is Tampa Bay, and there are a few outliers, but the same basic rules govern contracts across the league, for almost every team and in almost every specific case.
