Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulie Walnuts
He is on pace for 22 goals and 50 points.
Slafkovsky signed a 7 year extension 7.6 AAV after scoring 24 goals in 121 games.
We are buying his prime years, that doesn't come cheap.
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This. Last rebuild, we did not go max term with any of the young core pieces. It ended up cutting the competitive window short by at least 2 years. That was done to hedge the bets on what the players projected to be and to save cap space in the short term.
This time I would rather trust what the player is projecting to be. And the cap is going up. Barring something unforeseen (like COVID), in 5 years time, a $7.5 million cap hit player will be equivalent to what a $4.5 million cap hit player is today.
Zary, Coronato and Wolf all look like legit core pieces going forward. It’s a gamble of course to pay them early but I’d prefer that gamble as to potentially signing bridge deals that effectively walk them to free agency.