But he's getting paid 9M now...it's not a hypothetical.
In your hypothetical, you have him making 7M on his second contract. That's an absurd number.
Subban was the beneficiary of his bridge contract. He jumped huge. He went from a 36 point defensemen, to a 38 point defenseman...in 42 games. He won the Norris on the first year of his bridge contract. If you go through the two Subban threads discussing his contract on this forum, you'll see many people arguing that Subban was worth 8.5M or more
http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...ghlight=subban
His actual contract was not that surprising.
On the other hand, if you look at his holdout thread, you'll have many people agreeing with the Hab's 2.75M offer. Certainly people thought he would make higher on a longer term but no one was advocating for 7M.
http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...ghlight=subban
I mean it's all hypothetical, but there's no doubt in my mind that Subban made 10M because of the bridge contract. He jumped hugely, and cashed in on an absolutely huge contract after winning the Norris. There's not many players who are going to jump as much as Subban did, so I'll somewhat agree with your point, just Subban was a terrible example.
You gave him a 56M contract to prove your point, when the Habs probably would not offer him 40M.