So we are just going to ignore the Panarin contract?
Since 2015...
Anders Lee 24.4 GAR
Artemi Panarin 46.5 GAR
Jeff Skinner 51.7 GAR
Anders Lee is not a comparable for Skinner
Last 5 seasons:
Lee:
401 games, 142 goals, 100 Assists, 242 points
Skinner: 402 games, 147 goals, 110 Assists, 257 points
And for fun, even though he's on a entire different plane of existence than the other two:
The last 4 seasons
Panarin, 322 Games, 116 Goals, 204 Assists, 320 points (more points in 4 seasons than either had in 5....thus why he's getting paid significantly more)
Looking at the applicable comparison (Lee vs Skinner) per season the last five years
Lee: 28.4 Goals, 20 assists, 48.4 points
Skinner: 29.4 goals, 22 assist, 51.4 points
Given each teams situations are different, from a pure stats perspective, they are about as comparable as two players can be.
Sure, I'll agree to that they are different players, and Skinner might be effective a little longer into the contract, however, does that justify:
23M more over the life of the contract
AND
A full NMC vs a NTC with limitations the last two years
AND
15M in signing bonuses vs 3M in signing bonuses
The answer is. It doesn't. The Skinner deal, before he plays game 1 of his contract, is a bad, desperate deal signed by a GM desperate to keep his job.
By year 5 it'll be an anchor and we'll be unable to get rid of.
It's literally a the bobby ryan contract again. A player had a team in a bad situation and took advantage.
Except we're on the hook for 8 years vs 7 years. And a full NMC.
Bobby Ryan is 4 years into his contract and they couldn't move it if they wanted to.
I can't put into words how dumb and short sighted this contract was. Lou L understood the market and offered Lee and market rate deal, which he signed.
J-Botts let the Skinner put him in a bad spot. It would have been so easy to let Skinner go to the woo-ing period and then offer the 8th year for more money than he'd be offered anywhere.
That's all he had to do. We could have signed Skinner for 1-2M LESS a season and with LESS trade protections, giving us flexibility when it was time to get rid of this contract.