The long term
contract, it’s become a staple of the NHL for almost a decade now. This is the
way a franchise "beats" the cap ceiling set after the lockout in ‘04/'05.
Circumvention of the cap is in fact, “prohibited” within the NHL. This,
in terms, is supposed to ban teams from handing out Mega-Multiyear contracts to the
top free agents on the market that make them basically irrelevant deals at the
end of their careers i.e- Ilya Kovalchuk.
The New Jersey Devils
were the ones who made the circumvention of the cap relevant in the modern
game. They signed Kovalchuk to a 17 year deal which would pay him $102 million
throughout. Problem with this is no one expects a player to be relevant actively
playing in the league at the age of 44 (which is when this deal expires).
Needless to say, the league did not act to
kindly to this deal and vetoed it. New
Jersey
The trend has
continued. With the likes of Roberto Luongo, Sydney Crosby, Jeff Carter, Brad
Richards, and most recently the Parise/Suter combo (guess we'll refer them as
an item for the next 13 years). We’ve
seen team needs begin to exceed available talent level for market value- Therein lies the problem.
The entire hockey
world came to a standstill while they waited for (in the moment “superstars”) Parise
and Suter to make up their minds and decide they would sign with the Wild. Teams with bids and interest in these two
players would wait on their decisions before seeing if they would have to go
after the remaining free agents.
When you lose out on
the bidding war for the top guys, the domino effect takes place. Parise/Suter are good players, they’re top
level talent, but there is a problem when they receive Sydney Crosby caliber
money without nearly having the same resume or skill-set as their counterpart.
Mid level talents like
PA Parentau, Olli Jokinen, Jiri Hudler, Brandon Prust, Jaromir Jagr (now at 40
years old), Matt Carle etc… are receiving some seriously UNECESSARY big time money for their services. This is not a knock against these guys; they
are good at what they do. The problem is
there is an alarming lack of talent to match the market demand. Teams have big holes that need to be filled,
and the available talent to do so is scarce, causing the pieces to all fall as
they may.
SIDE NOTE: Matt Carle ($5.5 AAV)
& Olli Jokinen ($4.5 AAV) will be making more money next season than the
likes of; Ryan Callahan, Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski, Claude Giroux, Dustin
Brown, Kris Letang, Marc Staal, Dan Girardi, and Ryan McDonagh.
One big talent goes,
over-pay the next best player to make sure you fill your teams need, and on
down the line until the deals being handed out seem worse and worse. This is
what free agency has become. There are
going to be a lot of talks within the new Collective Bargaining Agreement
meetings this summer to find ways to nullify and prevent these massive contracts
from being handed out.
Nothing can be done
about a team needing a player, and putting a high bid on the best ones that are
available. It’s the nature of the game,
and explains how teams get stuck into bad contracts (Wade Redden, Ville Leino,
Scott Gomez) these deals handicap teams and set them back competitively in the
future.
It truly makes you think;
@NYRCenterIce
