[SuperMatt18]

Here is my take on it, I've been digging into this a lot over the last couple days and here is where I've landed.

Pros:

- Markstrom has improved each of the last three seasons and could be on the upswing, had a great season last year.

- Over the last three seasons as a whole he's a top 15 starter in the league that you can count on for 50+ games, that can't be overlooked

- Had a good playoffs and showed he can step up when the pressure goes up, which is big for a goalie

Cons:

- He only has one truly great (top 5) type of season in his career and the risk is this is the outlier when you look back at his career

- He's on the wrong side of the aging curve and it's possible this contract looks bad as soon as two seasons from now

- 6 x $6M is a little much but you always need to overpay by $1M and by at least one year on term to get a UFA.

In the end you need to commit yourself to a goalie long term and the Flames have been able to do that with this move. IMO whether he's just great or average it's likely that Markstrom is our starting goalie for at least the next 4 seasons now. The big thing now is that he just needs to live up to that contract. He doesn't need to be top 5 in the league again, but he needs to be a top 15 goalie that we can count on in the playoffs.

That timing might work out okay because if Wolf can establish himself as a true starter it doesn't hurt to be paying Markstrom $6M for the final two seasons of this deal to be a backup/tandem if Wolf is still on his ELC or 2nd contract.