Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
YES. This is exactly what I have been getting at in this thread. I think it is becoming apparent that having a player who is so much better at his position than all of his peers could prove to be an obstacle to team-building in the long run.
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I actually think for the most part, for most positions, it's the opposite. It's the "sort of pretty good" players who cost 5-7 million that end up sinking you. You get much more value from Patrick Kane at 10.5 or Ovy at 9.5 than you do from Backes at 6 or Marleau at 6.25 or Eriksson at 6 or Lucic at 6 or (as the Stars will soon discover) Hanzal at 4.75. Of course you still have to take what you can get because there aren't enough Ovechkins for everyone.
To come around to your point, though, I do think it's different for the goalie market simply because it's such a crapshoot as to who will perform well year to year. Sure, we can count on Price to be a top flite goalie next year, and you could say the same about Lundqvist for 6 or 7 years and Luongo for about ten or twelve and... that's it. There are hardly any goalies who fit the bill.
On the one hand you could say "that's why it's worth paying Price that much", but again, it's eight years. Maybe you know when you have a player that's world class, but you can't know when he'll stop being that guy. He might be that guy for four years out of eight, and then what? Even really good goalies like Rinne and Bobrovsky have been up and down throughout the years, and outside of a couple of playoff runs, Quick has been more cold than hot. Which is why it makes more sense to me to aim for league average goaltending for a reasonable price, but most importantly, for a short term so you're not tied down to anyone.
Can't really fault the signing though, in the circumstances. This is basically McDavid 2.0. The GM simply cannot allow the player to leave, and has to take whatever deal he can get.