Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
No, Hall was not anywhere close to the highest RFA. Excluding pre-salary cap era (of which he gets obliterated by dozens of players like Fedorov and his 28M in one year poison pill five year contract or Sakic and his 1997 offersheet) there's still Ovechkin who signed his 124M contract 2 and a half years into his career that's still going (until the end of this season).
Also Eberle signed his contract after posting a 0.97 PPG season, good for 12th in the NHL. He was the least controversial of the signings really.
I also somewhat disagree with your premise that top tier UFA's are making more. That's not quite the case. Iginla was making 7M when the cap was 39M, 18%. Today that would be 15M, and no one is making that. Gaborik made 14%, Kovalchuk 16%. McDavid signed at 16% of the cap.
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Did I say he was the top paid RFA? I still say using extreme outliers like Fedorov or Ovie who were obvious phenoms to compare to guys who looked like really good young players but not generational is not apt. And like I said, it was more the “we’re not even gonna negotiate - we’ll just hand them contracts” that people were surprised at IIRC.
% of cap means nothing to players. They care what other guys are making.
ETA: I may be misremembering, but weren’t the Hall and Eberle contracts over a full year away from their ELC expiring? That was part of the surprise IIRC.