[SuperMatt18]

His effort and skating is improved this year.

He's played a very strong defensive game and almost shows too much attention to defense at times.

He doesn't cheat to create offense at all and that is for sure impacting his total production (often high man in the ozone, first man back on backcheck, short shifts, doesn't leave the d-zone early).

And then what is compounding that is his puck skills have clearly declined a little bit, either from age or lack of confidence and he's having a hard time making those plays when given the opportunity.

I do think the team's offensive approach (which seems very slow and based on cycle) doesn't really work well with what he does best (counter attack off the rush), and it's the combination of all these things that have led to production decline.

Sometimes with how safe he is playing the game and with his attention to the team structure I almost wonder if he's listening to the coaches too closely - offensive players generally produce because they take those risks that coaches don't always love and he's not taking those risks.

If he was making $6.5M I think he'd be perfectly fine - so to Bingo's point he's about $4M overpaid right now - it sucks but for a team with $20M of cap space it's not the end of the world.