I'm a big fan of Treliving and have been for a long time. He won this trade.
He's built a good team and when Monahan and Lucic roll off the books next year and are replaced with another star forward, the team should be a Stanley Cup favorite. Within this context, the Huberdeau signing makes sense. It gives the Flames a 2-4 year contention window to win now. For at least the 2023-24 season, the flames have no bad contracts while many players provides value at or above their cap-hit (including Huberdeau). This probably continues for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 season.
That said, outside of the above context, this signing is an overpayment. The UFA market this year implies that $10.5 million x 8-years is expensive by around $1m-$2m per year relative to market value. And towards the back-half of the contract, this signing will look increasingly worse. The silver-lining is that the flames will have likely entered a rebuilding phase by this time, which means a few overpaid players and bad contracts won't matter.
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