It’s a complicated balancing act and is Eklund even a core piece yet? Best case scenario is Celebrini, Smith, 3rd forward, Dickinson/Other D (1st ‘25?), Askarov. Eklund can be a great complimentary winger, but not necessarily a core piece. Especially considering he’s battling with Musty for that 3rd core forward spot and Musty has a distinct size advantage, which is more important given that neither Celebrini nor smith are particularly tall. Using Tampa as an example, the core was Stamkos, Point, Kucherov, Hedman and Vasilevskiy. The complimentary players like McDonagh, Sergachev, Killorn, Gourde and Palat were important but paid a more market friendly amount and inevitably not retained. To be fair though, they were moved after winning cups, so if they give Eklund 7 I won’t be upset.
Speculation: 2023-24-25 Sharks Roster Discussion
- Thread starter WTFetus
- Start date
As of now Eklund is the ONLY core player on the entire team that’s proven he can play in the NHL.
spintops
Registered User
- Sep 13, 2013
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I get what he is saying. Eklund has proven he's a NHL player. He hasn't proven he is a core piece.
weastern bias
worst team in the league
If Eklund breaks out and scores over 60 points this year he's going to get between $7M and $8M on a long term 7 or 8 year extention
The market has spoken, promising young talents coming off their ELC get overpays in the hope it is a steal later in the contract, Jake Sanderson got $8.05Mx8Y after playing a single season of 77 games, if you belive in the player you take the risk on the big deal, if it doesn't work out you weren't gonna win anything anyway so you reset and move on with the next young player to emerge afterwards
The market has spoken, promising young talents coming off their ELC get overpays in the hope it is a steal later in the contract, Jake Sanderson got $8.05Mx8Y after playing a single season of 77 games, if you belive in the player you take the risk on the big deal, if it doesn't work out you weren't gonna win anything anyway so you reset and move on with the next young player to emerge afterwards
Juxtaposer
Outro: Divina Comedia
If Eklund breaks out and scores 60 points this season, then I'm perfectly happy to give him $7M long-term.
Frankly, I'd be disappointed if he didn't. He was on a 68 point pace last year in March and April once there was chemistry formed with the Lunds. It's not as if he was doing most of his damage on the PP either so the worry he'll lose time on PP1 shouldn't affect his totals.
I think a lot of people forget that the cap was essentially frozen for a few years and now that it's going up pretty substantially for the next few years so too will salaries.
Jargon
Registered User
I have high hopes for Eklund. My production at the top of last season was that Eklund would have a steep improvement in the latter half of the season — I think he’s a little robot that processes the game at a high level and adds skills to constantly get better. I predict he’ll hit 60 this year.
Even if Eklund isn’t a core piece, it still makes cap sense to commit. Plenty of wingers that aren’t core to their team make around 8 mil and that number is going to go up as the cap goes up. The way you stay ahead of it is to throw long contracts that keep wingers for cheaper in their prime.
