Sweet Leaf
Registered User
He was paid in proportion to his closest comparables. People just for some reason want to pick and choose those comparables, like looking at only the best contract (Ehlers) or the superstar that exploded after signing (Pastrnak).
He was a two-time 60 point RFA, and that was what he was paid like.
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.