[Matt Reeeeead]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Relative to what? How many 37+ year old players with 16M+ left on their contracts have been moved since...ever? There is no relative here. It's not a Kiprusoff or Pronger or Savard or Weber contract where the last year(s) see him making nothing. He'll be making a lot of actual money, unlike previous back-loaded contracts. We're talking millions of dollars. Assuming there is a decline enough to warrant San Jose being forced to move him, they can only hope for a Clarksson-Horton situation opening up for themselves.

Firstly lets talk about the new rules. The reason it hasn't happened much before is because the front/back loading of contracts hasn't been following the same rule book as before. Comparable type of situation such as Parise and Suter were allowed to allocate the real dollars over a different period of time. However, Minnesota gave them a full NMC, making that point potentially invalid. They very well may have no way of getting out from those cap hits if the players want to stay there. They have no control over the situation.

Secondly, back to the cap retention, say at age 38 Burns is completely useless, but healthy. They can trade him and his remaining two years, and retain half the contract, and only ask another team to spend in real dollars, $2.5M a year. In 6 years time, I really, really don't think it is going to be as hard as you make it out to be to convince a team to eat some dead cap room, plus $5M in real money if they are going to get a decent asset back.

Thirdly, one of the larger risks of a player's age curve decline is the risk of injury. With the NHL rules in place for LTIR, and Burn's relatively solid health record, his contract is likely covered by insurance (mitigating the risk of having to spend real dollars and cap on an injured player).

The risk here is that Burns is simply not worth his $5M salary at that time while healthy. Even if he is a $2.5M player when healthy, a team with healthy cap room could easily take that player on, as that is all they would potentially have to pay him each year while getting some asset back.

What I'm getting at, is, there are options available for SJ to play with depending in the scenario.

I've never argued against this. His cap-hit is good for the time being.

You make this sound like a complete afterthought and secondary consideration. Burns' production is elite right now. Compare his cap hit to other elite players that have been renewing such as Kane and Toews... that's his current FMV. To me, it looks like SJ received a discount during his remaining prime years in exchange for giving him long term security and paying throughout his decline years. Perhaps they are going to be overpaying him multiple million dollars in future seasons, but lets not forget that in present day times, they are getting surplus value while they are trying to contend for a Stanley Cup. That is a major provision.

The issue I've taken is your use of "easily" being moved if the Sharks are forced to do so or "insignificant" amount of money

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You seem really stuck on my original verbiage, and I'm admitting I could have worded that better. I'm explaining there are going to be some very realistic avenues to come to terms with the decline phase in this contract that will be likely outweighed by the near term benefits that Burns will offer. Is that a fair enough opinion to hold?