McPhee isn't God like many local fans believe him to be. He makes a lot of mistakes. Other teams fans are right because he has overpaid and made some suspect player choices. I feel that its worse to overpay bad players over overpaying good players. McPhee has underpaid many core guys yet he overpays scrubs. And Fleury also shouldn't have been extended after the first season. There was no way that he would have another career season so why not wait til this season to negotiate? He did that with Wild Bill and it paid off. I'm sure that Fleury could have been had for $6M or less especially when you point out the difference in tax rates if he signed elsewhere.
I still believe that Patches will bounce back. He did great in the playoffs. He just needs to stay healthy. I think that he gets into a few too many scraps that leads to his hand issues.
Stastny - fair value for a UFA, very good considering the term
Patches - overpayment, but an acceptable term
Stone - fair value for a pending UFA. A bit of an overpayment but he's the best player on the team.
Marchessault - amazing value for a top line talent
McNabb - great value for a Methot-like player that can play on any pairing
Fleury - overpayment on a future HOF goaltender
Karlsson - amazing deal
Tuch - top 6 winger locked up before RFA costs skyrocket.
Theodore - #2 dman locked up long term before RFA costs skyrocket.
Schmidt - #1 dman locked up long term for under 6m.
Reaves - massively overpaid just to not give him 3 years term for some reason
So maybe 6m in overpayments
but around 8m in discounts plus a lot of good prospects on ELCs.
That's not even taking into account how good the Rielly Smith 'cap dump' looks, and Eakin's 3.8m comes off the books next season.
But getting back on topic, you also have to factor in not giving a bad contract to Neal...