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Originally Posted by Gaudreauvertime
I suppose Tarasenko and Ekblad's agents were also over zealous?
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Tarasenko, yes - bad contract.
Ekblad is a different case. At 15, he was the #1 rated 15 year old and got exempt status. At 17, he was #1/#2 rated prospect and was taken 1st overall. At 18, he played a top pairing role. At 20, he was still considered the best player in his draft class, and had firmly established himself as the top pairing guy he was projected to be.
In other words, he has been one of the top 2 or 3 rated players of his age every year for the last 6 or more years. The risk that he suddenly won't be a top player is very, very low.
Gaudreau was drafted in the 4th round for a reason. He has proven that he can be a star in the NHL, and has 2 solid seasons to back that up. Great. But his future is still less certain. The NHL history books are littered with forwards that hit top 6 in scoring once or twice.
I am not saying that Johnny isn't likely to be a top point producer. I am saying that there is a little more risk, and the likely possible scenarios (distribution of outcomes) for the future are more varied. That means a little more risk and a lower expected mean outcome.
The problem you and the Gaudreau camp are ignoring is that an NHL contract is
guaranteed. The player gets paid, no matter how the future unfolds.
So a long term contract has some risk. And as a result, it has to be balanced. You can't simply say that a player is going to be this good for 8 years, so pay him the best case scenario. You have to factor some likelihood of less-optimistic scenarios.
And Johnny has a bit more risk in that regard than Ekblad does.
Also, you continue to ignore that very real issue that Gaudreau's contract has 5 RFA years, while Tarasenko's and Ekblad's only have 4. Normalizing for that automatically takes Johnny down to maybe $7.2M, just to be equal (ignoring the differences in risk).
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Say Johnny signs a 1 year 2M and puts up another top 10 scoring campaign, what kind of offersheets do you think he'd be getting, considering they'd be for only 4 RFA years? Probably in the 8-9M range for 7 years. Let's say 8.5M to be safe.
So now he'd be getting 1.75M extra over the term of 7 years and (12.25M total) versus forfeiting only 4.75M in year one. That's a delta of 7.5M over the course of the contract (about 5.4M if you discount the cash flows). That's far from "little to gain".
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I could just as easily paint a scenario where he signs a one year deal, has a weak season, or gets injured, and ends up missing out on millions.
You are simply guessing how the future will unfold (and using the most optimistic scenario). I am saying that a contract has to balance more than just the optimistic projection.