I think Steen’s final deal is a good Buchnevich comparable situation.
Steens deal was signed in 2016 at 5.75aav and took him to his 36 y/o season. I feel if dollars were adjusted for years then It’s pretty much the same deal with Buch - Buch signed his a year earlier so team bought a more expensive year so aav slightly higher plus inflation - and I’d guess he has the same role. Steen did not have any offensive resurgence after that deal and I don’t know that Buch will either. Steen was reliably steen and I think Buchnevich is the quality of guy where he will reliably be Buch.
I doubt Buch is ever a liability. I think us fans will probably be geeking out over Dvorsky or whoever scoring and we won’t care that Buch is like .6-.75ppg. It’ll be easy to hit a losing streak and say 8 mil player not producing!, but it won’t be his role to do that really - we’d want the young guys taking the risk and getting a lot of opportunity. I mean, he should contribute and if he isn’t that’s a thing - and it’s totally fair to look at a game like the recent Sabres and have a real complaint - but our team won’t hinge on it. Like I don’t say “the Sabres won because of Buch; instead: sure would have been nice to get a little more in a game like that. And there’s a real chance his playstyle really helps some combination of our future and he lights it up again.
For some contracts it maybe isn’t about the performance for the dollars, it’s about there only being a dozen total humans possible to fill the role and the price is set by comparable contracts, so you either sign up for it - the good and the bad - or you don’t. Since we’re pending about 6 forward elc contracts we get to avoid the cap pain entirely - which is the biggest part of “the bad”. The good is that he and his agent won’t be blowing up Doug’s phone when he’s moved down the depth chart. He got his bag.
Bonus side note:
There’s a small chance that the cap rises really fast. Inflation hits player salaries long after inflation hits the general population due to the cba. If the outcome occurs that 3-4 years from now the cap is surging up aggressively - every term deal will be a little jackpot. A team can have too many for sure, but now is not the time to be afraid of having the right amount.
It gets really similar if you compare the Buch contract to Steen's last 2 contracts. Frankly, the Buch contract is a bit more team-friendly than Steen's age 30+ contracts if you view them as comparable players.
Steen got $5.8M x 3 starting in his age 30 season. That was 8.41% of the cap that year. Buch's $8M will be 8.66% of the cap in year 1 of his deal which starts in his age 30 season. The cap percentage will be lower if the NHL and PA agree to increase the cap more than the CBA-mandated amount. Pretty damn similar to Steen's starting cap percentage.
Steen then got $5.75M x 4 starting in his age 33 season. That was 7.67% of the cap in year 1 of the deal. Buch's AAV will match that cap percentage when the cap hits $104.25M.
That is going to come pretty quickly. The league is projecting $6.6B in revenue this season, which would equate to a roughly $100M cap for 2025/26 if we weren't still using the COVID recovery formula. League revenue needs to hit $7B for the league to see a $104M cap once we are done with the COVID recovery formula (2025/26 is the final year of that). Barring a major change in the way the cap is calculated, we are loikely going to see a $104M+ salary cap by either 2026/26 or 2027/28.
Buch's cap percentage is going to be right in line or better than Steen's cap percentage and his deal ends when he is 1 year younger than Steen's.
