Bouma is a hard guy to sign. Not because he is difficult in contract negotions but because of his worth vs his perceived worth. Not a 20 goal guy so don't pay him much, but the guy goes to and through the wall for you. He won't play much past 30 years with how hard he is on his body, so in that aspect he would need to be rewarded for his sacrifices to the team. The problem is how people see the bottom line. For many peoples eyes salary and scoring are the correlation of a player's worth. So a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers would have looked at Bouma's stats, maybe even looked at how he performed in the AHL and WHL and they would wonder why are the Flames bothering to waste a spot on Bouma? Yet, the Flames fans who watch every game (or most) see Bouma's value to the team. Thankfully fans don't assign a players worth or every team would be in cap hell.
So, what is the proper contract for Bouma? I wonder if Treliving tries to sign Bouma for a one year contract at double the annual salary with the notion that it will go up to the 2.5M or more per year range on a long term deal if he can score somewhere within the same range or better, otherwise he'll only get 2.5M at the very most.
From Bouma's standpoint, he's going to want to get as much as he can, and as quickly as he can because with the way he plays his body won't let him have a very long career, and once he has to take it down a notch he won't be the same player any more.
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