You're missing an important wrinkle. Yes, he would not be paid any SALARY in the event the league locked out the players prior to the start of that final season. But he would be paid the BONUSES due to him earlier that summer. Which is why, if you look at the deals that guys like Lucic and Eriksson signed, they get paid significant portions of their pay in the form of bonuses each year - agents have figured out that it's a good way to insulate their clients with lockout protection, thus ensuring that they get the vast majority of the pay for that year, even if the teams don't play.
Which is why if I were Chris's agent, I would have advised him to go for one more year at $5.5MM or so. In event of a lockout, that could be the difference between getting, say, $4.5MM in guaranteed cash, and getting nothing. And would it really have made that big of a difference? Eriksson just got 6 x $6MM at 30 years old vs. the 7 x $6MM given to both Lucic and Okposo at 28. If Kreids gets paid $5.5MM for the fifth year of a deal with the NYR, sure he might be sacrificing $500k-$1.0MM in upside, BUT he could be locking in a floor of $4.5MM - which in the face of a possible lockout and ZERO dollars, would be a lot more attractive to me...
I mean, I guess they're anticipating that he'll re-up during the year, or that the FA period that summer will proceed normally in the face of an impending lockout or simply that there won't be a lockout at all - but personally, I wouldn't have risked it.
