Both Sid & Geno took a lot less to keep their team competitive as they signed their extensions, their first one after the 1st cup. Because of that, it allowed the Penguins to keep adding better talent around Sid & Geno to win more cups, this whole market value thing, yeah sure, but the fact of the matter is Draisaitl could have also taken a little less and given his team a better shot at adding more talent so they can maybe win at least 1 in their career. Because the Oilers were already having cap issues before his extension and they lost 2 players because of it via offer-sheets, this next summer is going to make it even worse and this hope that so and so will sign for dirt cheap, hardly. Adam Henrique didn't really take a discount to stay there, at 3m he's at his market value for his age and production, Skinner is able to take less because of a buyout, Arvidsson is basically just trying to prove to the world he's not made of glass.
Basically hoping the cap hit looks better as the cap goes up, hopefully as much as you hope it does, isn't going to do much. Because Bouchard will get his massive pay day, McDavid will get his new contract that will likely go a couple past Draisaitl's cap hit and then Skinner will need his too, so that cap going up doesn't really offset anything at all.
And don't give me that "projected 97" bullshit, go by the current cap hit or at least what's been reported so far as the potential cap increase to 92, the NHL could also freeze it after that for a year before it goes up again.
Even MacKinnon took less so the Avs could have a better line-up, then he took his pay day after. If MacKinnon didn't do that, they wouldn't win the cup as it would have stopped them from signing and trading for certain players, even with the LTIR to Landeskog. This isn't rocket science, players literally talk about taking less to be competitive to maximize their window. Sid and Geno literally talked about it, so did Mack and others have as well.
