Yup, Kopitar has been the best player on a team that up until last season hadn't made the playoffs over the entire length of his contract. That is extremely Cammalleri-esqe, and definitely worth $10M a season while tying up the 1C roster spot for eight seasons.
Colonel Nathan Jessup for GM!
They also got 1 and 0 winning seasons with the Quick and Brown deals. Since re-signing Quick to a 10 year contract, not one significant extension has resulted in playoff success. It's not just Kopitar. It was also Deano's brilliant idea of giving Gaborik a 7 year deal too.
Nobody, no team, is letting their 2 time Cup winning 1C get away, when on the day he re-signed, the team was 1st in the division, and top 5 overall. To keep harping on the worthiness of $10m a year is missing the point. Nothing else was going to happen in that scenario. Obviously DL had no plans to trade him in the summer of 2015 either, so, nothing else was going to happen.
Complain about Kopitar's ice time today, absolutely. Why he's still playing 29min every game, when you bring in Danault, and have at least one top 5 pick at C to pick from, it's a decent mystery.
No team or GM would've not re-signed Kopitar in 2016 under the conditions that existed at the time though. He wanted to stay. The owner was willing to spend money. He had had success. The team was good. That people still go on about, wow, that $10m sure was well spent money, is as big of a stubborn mystery as to why TM still plays him 37min a night. I don't get either stance.
This is not what i tried to say.
If i rephrase it, it makes more sense
If your 1st line center is a 60 point player, you will find yourself at the bottom of the league.
Especially if nobody else on the team is close to his point production
This is more a general approach to the top 6, regardless the player name.
It's just a bad mix, that our 60 point player asks for $10 mill per year
He had exactly 70pts in 13-14, and didn't score a goal after Game 7 against Anaheim.
But again, Kopitar leading in scoring isn't why they sucked. Everyone began crapping the bed after June 2014. Even before then, considering how close they were to not winning the Cup that year.
But you pin it on Kopitar, because he got $10m. Sure, in a hard cap league that number contributes, but it's far from the only reason. It's $3.2m more than his previous deal. If he had signed for $8m, would that $2m have prevented the Kings from falling apart? I highly doubt it. Know how much cap space was being wasted on Penner during the vast majority of his time here? Or Gagne? What did they get for that $3.5m?
