[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Actually if you go back to the 2016 offsesaon and look at contracts $8M or greater for guys that could have been expiring to UFA and it actually leans more to people getting to the period where they at least have the threat of UFA.

Signed Prior to end of last season: 13 - Hertl, Barkov, Zibanejad, Nurse, Jones, Josi, Seguin, Wheeler, Doughty, Couture, Ekman-Larsson, Price, Burns

Signed Post-Season but Before UFA: 6 - Forsberg, Karlsson, Skinner, Stone, Stamkos, Carlson

Went UFA: 8 - Gaudreau, Hamilton, Pietrangelo, Hall, Panarin, Duchene, Bobrovsky, Tavares,

So 13 re-signed between July 1st and the end of the season with one year left on their deal, and 14 made it to the end of the season with their contract technically up - 6 stayed with their team, and 8 went to actual UFA. And sure with 115 points Gaudreau is a bit of a step ahead of some of these guys, but if you look at the last 4 years a whole I think it's a fair comparison.

So the split is much more equal than people think - because generally it's the RFAs like in Tkachuk's situation that get re-signed early avoiding this whole UFA risk altogether.

I'd say one thing does stand out with that list above though...of those 27 contracts only a handful have aged well. Just proves that signing guys to 7+ years when they are 28 or older is risky.

Thanks for this. I would say in the case of Hall, Duchene and Stone the team they started with at the start of the season made the call during the season to get assets for them. For both teams, they did not really have a realistic chance at the playoffs (even from the very start of the season, the Devils and Sens were always expected to suck those years). Not sure what all that means, other than to say Arizona, Columbus and Vegas never had a chance to sign them before the season started.

Even Karlsson is in the category of the team trading him rather than losing him for nothing and he was traded in mid September. I guess the Sharks could have signed him before the season started but they would have had a shorter negotiating time compared to if he was their player the year before.