Girardi is good. He's just not great. Everything else is just exaggeration.
A real apples to apples comparison of Right Side League wide defenders who signed a contract including just their UFAs years, who have a similar cap hits
Everything else, all the other comparisons, they just are not direct comparisons. Either they play less minutes, they are on a contract with a lower cap hit because they have non UFA years in it, they play the left side, they play against lesser competition. How are those fair comparisons?
Player and Cap hit
Letang 7.25M
Boychuk 6M
Burns 5.76M
Niskanen 5.75M
Wisniewski 5.5M
Girardi 5.5M
Petry 5.5M
Wideman 5.25M
Bieksa 4.6M
Garrision 4.6M
Stralman 4.5M
Michalek 3.2M
Klein 2.9M
Gilbert 2.8M
Those are the right handed players who have signed a contract that only included their UFA years who even come close to playing in a comparable role.
Are some of those contracts better? Sure, do any of those players also play against who Girardi does? Maybe a couple. Do those who excel at it have higher cap hits? Mostly. Those who have lower cap hits, have they proven to be able to play the same amount of minutes against the same competition?
If people know of lefties who play the right side and would like to add them to the list, be my guest, but my point is that the list of players who are truly apples to apples comparisons is not very large, nor are there a whole bunch of players who are both better and do not carry a significantly higher cap hit. It's not like Girardi, where he is in terms of cap hit on that list sticks out like a sore thumb.
Don't like the contract, disagree that a defender should mostly concentrate on D, or one who does not move the puck brilliantly has no place in the league, think the Rangers could have gone a different direction, whatever, I'd probably agree with some of that but that he is not on the same level compared to his direct peers, that is where the debate in my opinion starts to fall apart.