The Clarkson contract was quite a bit worse than the Neal contract simply because Neal had 10 straight 20-goal seasons before he became a free agent. You could probably guess a drop-off was coming based on his age but with Clarkson, he was what he was for the most part: a 20-30 point third and fourth liner who could grind it up. Problem was, he had one 30-goal outlier season and then followed that up with a lockout-shortened year where he had 18.
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