Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
It's a huge price and you do it anyway because he's that good. Look at the Oilers with McDavid on the ice vs off over the past two seasons. They're terrible when he isn't playing. When he is, they range from "very good" to "2008 Detroit Red Wings good". There are very few teams that would balk at that price. You'd have to be pretty terrible. Ottawa, Montreal, maybe Buffalo, Detroit, Vancouver, that's about it. And some of those probably take him just for the marketing value.
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I don't really agree with you that you do it anyway because he's that good at hockey. Judging by pure hockey skill or counting numbers or whatever I don't believe that McDavids contract is that great by any means. Unavoidable due to hype and politics of course, but not great. The perception of McDavids market value is furiously inflated by the hype, and even if someone would hypothetically pony up 14 million per year for him doesn't mean that they should, and certainly not from a pure hockey perspective.
I do agree with you that you might very well do it for marketability though, because McDavid is a fantastic asset to garner exposure for your team, and also because it's a great luxury to build a team around that one coveted centrepiece. However, as Peter Chiarelli has hilariously provided us ample evidence of, that can be one hell of a trap if the people running the team are complete morons.