Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
You might be the only person on the planet (excluding Koskinen's agent) that thinks that's an at all appropriate number. Just look a few posts up for a comparable.
Rittich isn't getting anything near $4.5M - never mind the $6M you think he should get.
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I never said he’d get $6M. At the time, Rittich had one of the best sv% in the league and was trending similarly to Connor Hellebuyck who actually did get $6M+. Did you or anyone else anticipate him getting that? Definitely not.
For me, the fear of him going on a potentially long Stanley Cup run and getting
Vezina votes to add to his leverage was what I was getting at. I was actually hoping that he’d actually sign a deal mid-way into the season at $2.5M-$3.33M.
Lastly, I get that it’s Peter Chiarelli making the deal so it’s easy to laugh and poke fun. But this kind of deal isn’t actually out of the norm. I mean the Flames did something similar 5-6 years ago with Karri Ramo. We gave him a prove me deal for something like $3M, then we bumped him up to about $4M after he proved he belonged.
Teams all over the NHL sign goaltenders to comparable deals. Think Martin Jones, Peter Mrazek, Jonathan Bernier, Anti Niemi and etc. This kind of contract isn’t out of the norm. If your scouts think a guy can be a starter, you hedge your bets and you pay them. Whether it works out or not for the Oilers remains to be seen.