I know he was great last year, but giving him a 5 year, ~$5 million AAV deal based on one year seems bananas to me.
It's definitely a major gambler deal.
If he sustains what he was doing later last year, it can turn into one of those great deals where you've just got your goaltending squared away for a very reasonable price for half a decade.
But it
is still just a small sample. Trending in the right direction, but would hardly be the first "small sample" goaltending deal to go belly up when their play implodes. And we've seen plenty of evidence that these sort of ~$5M goaltender deals with that kind of term are next to impossible to move or get out of if they go sour.
Goaltender is just not a position where you can afford to have a "cap albatross" contract. The nature of the position, you've only got two of 'em so the guy is going to have to play. And there's no such thing as "burying a goaltender on the 3rd/4th line" like you can do with a lot of ooopsies deals, and still at least get
something out of them. If they stink...a goaltender is right up there, front and center doing it, any time they start. Or any time they sit on the bench doing nothing.
So when you roll the dice on a deal like this...the payoff is nice if it works. But the stakes are really darn high if you get it wrong. It'll wreck your cap structure completely for years.