I love couture but that's a high price for what he is. That Kane deal is going to haunt us. Kane should have came in at around 6-6.5, couture 7-7.5. These are 2 not so good contracts.
If the cap continues its upward trajectory (no reason to think it won't at the moment), these hits become a lot less daunting in a couple of years.
Even if the cap held steady for the first year of the extension's life, the AAV is about 10% of the cap figure.
Comparatively, Cooch signed his current deal of $6m per in 2013 where it was 9.33% of the pending 13/14 cap. And as of the final coming year will be 7.5% of the cap. I recall people saying it was too rich at the time, and now it seems eminently reasonable.
Unless NHL revenues tank in the next 3-5 years, the actual impact on the team's financial structure should scale to be wholly manageable and only improve with time. And yes, it means the Sharks bought into his age 35-37 seasons when he's likely going to start deteriorating a little bit, but that's generally a cost of doing business with good players in their primes across the league. Hell, it'll be a cost of doing business with Tavares too if the team manages to go that direction. The hope will always be that either a) the player remains reasonably productive in that period so that the hit isn't
that bad, or b) it times with the team's window/fortunes waning at that point and having some of your cap tied up in dead(er) weight money isn't a big deal since you're transitioning into a cheap young rebuilding model.