To take a "team friendly" deal while still geting paid a lot of money and not being too obvious about it? Besides that's a sure thing signing that deal, no one knows what happens in the future. Waiting he probably could've got more money but he also could've gotten a career ending injury or something. Everyone wants to win the cup and I'm sure a lot of players would be willing to take ridiculously cheap short term deals at some point during their career if if ensured their team a very good chance at winning the cup. But the problem with that approach is if everyone does that, there's no advantage to any team and the players end up the losers because suddenly everyone get paid less
Don't know how the system works and kind of agreements players have regarding this, but for the sake of the playerbase as a whole (and the whole cap system for that matter), you can't have guys in/entering their prime taking overly team friendly deals because it would push the salaries down for everyone and players would be the biggest losers in that scenario.