Quote:
Originally Posted by howard_the_duck
The examples I'm referring to include Chicago, LA, and Pittsburgh, which all won with ELC/below market second contracts for their star players in their initial cups.
In many of the situations where the top picks became high paid, they took (often significant) discounts along the way to help the team build around them. So yes, some cases of these players being high paid when they eventually won a cup, but the strength of the team around them was related to their concessions along the way.
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Well, no, you’re talking about a couple teams from 15 years ago which I’m not sure is totally relevant any more.
Even the second contracts for guys like Kane, Toews, Doughty, etc were not cheap by any measure, this is a time when the cap was also 20 million lower than today. A player making 10 million when he wins the cup wasn’t helping his team build a contender because he made 6.5 million a few years proper. Teams operate on a yearly cap, so making less 2-3 or even just 1 year prior doesn’t help a team add anything unless they can keep it when the player is making 10.
I get the sentiment of what you’re saying and I actually believe that a team’s best chance to win a cup is when elite players are on their ELC (if they can build around them fast enough) but unfortunately for both of our beliefs the last ten years of cup winners don’t tell that story.
EDIT: to put it into context, those second contracts at the time would have been comparable to Bedard making 8 million during his next contract instead of 10. And given the way second contracts have kind of gone out the window, it’s probably moot anyway.