Gibson's numbers ... are what they are. An argument can be made that he had a historically bad team in front of him, regularly facing 50 or more shots per game. However he also started most every season looking like an all star goalie once again. He'd be on fire until the team crapped the bed enough that they once again weren't going anywhere that year (generally Nov/Dec). Then he'd just give up and stop giving a crap (or so it seemed). Individual games tended to be the same, start of really well but then when the team collapsed & got behind by a few goals...he'd stop caring too. And you can't completely fault him for giving up when he was being hung out to dry night after night after night. But giving up like that also destroyed his stats/trade potential.Gibson's a real wildcard for me.
He seems to have this "aura" that he's a good goalie on a bad team... but his numbers have been atrocious for the laset 2, and were below average for the 3 years prior to that. Still 3 years left at $6.4m.
One has to ask a couple of questions:
1. If Gibson was available for free (from an asset standpoint), would another team take him? I suspect the answer would probably be yes, but it would be a team like Chicago, or Columbus, or San Jose -- somebody who figures that he might be better than what they have, and aren't worried about him burdening their cap for the next couple years.
Would a good team in need of goaltending like Toronto or New Jersey do so? I don't know... it screams terrible idea given that if he faulters, he loses all of the aura "of good goalie on bad team", and then he's a lot more difficult to move with 2 years @ $6.4m left.
It's also worth considering that if he returns to something close to "2018-19 form"... which is far from a guarantee, it's not like he's all of a suddent a top 5-goalie in the league. He'd prbably be in / around the 7-12 range... with him currently being the 5th highest paid goalie in the league.
2. Would Anaheim retain on him to generate a decent return?
At $4m, Gibson certainly has the potential to turn into a steal of a contract, in a fairly ideal contract window (3 years) for a contending team. If you're a team like the Leafs, I think the potential of getting "old John Gibson" at $4m outweighs the risks, and of course it'd be a lot easier to dump him if he didn't work out.
A change of scenery would probably do him a world of good. But his fairly solid NMC will potentially gum up any deal that he's not fully behind. Then toss in the media circus of Toronto (or say Montreal) and if he's not consistently great right from the start, it could get ugly.
I'm sure that Anaheim would retain on him, even up to 50%. But as that's closing in on $10 million (3.2x3), they'd want something fairly significant above & beyond the player himself to do so.
In a way he's kind of like Marner. It probably would be best to move on from him, but he holds a lot of power with the NMC, so the team is dealing from a position of weakness. They don't want to/aren't going to give him up for nothing (most likely) & yet the totality of the situation leans towards them not getting a great deal. So it may be that both of them are with their respective teams this coming year. Time will tell