They could say we turned down more money/term to stay? Toronto never offered Stamkos 30% more then what he got from Florida. A little more, 500k/1 mill, maybe. The Lucic/Clarkson contracts were overpays, everyone thought that at the time, those weren't hindsight, they were predictable.
Pretty much every free agent signing is an over payment until you consider that multiple teams are offering similar contract, that kinda makes tgem market value. The players routinely don't live up to them. I might have been a bit off on Stamkos going off memory:
Toronto’s top management brass, the city’s Mayor, and several other key figureheads in the sports community, including corporate executives, reportedly met with Stamkos during the last week of June in an attempt to lure him to the Maple Leafs.
According to multiple sources with knowledge of those meetings, the Maple Leafs were preparing to offer Stamkos a seven-year, $73.5 million contract, which would have paid him $10.5 million, per season.