It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Ottawa paid a little higher $$$ for a young player coming out of his RFA. This is their MO. White, Chabot, Batherson, now Tkachuk.
Pay them at 21-23. In the early years they may be overpaid (in AAv) but if they meet their potential they will be a bargain by the end of it.
Also - no bonuses. This means that if they in fact do not meet that potential before they can be bought for 1/3 of the remaining contract out before their 26th birthday and the owing bonuses don't sting the team.
Colin White is the best example. He is a useful NHLer, but the team gambled $28.5m on him becoming much more than that - HOWEVER - they didn't actually gamble $28.5m. What they did was gamble $12.75m (what he would receive before turning 26) plus 1/3 of the other $15.75m... at a time when cap hit was meaningless to the team. If Colin White had become has good as they had hoped, they've got a good second line centre for a bargain cap hit. If he (likely now) doesn't, they can choose to buy him out for $5.25m with a negligible cap hit (less than $900k) spread over 6 seasons. It's a win for White because he will have made $18m for playing 3 years, and he will move on and get a cheap deal elsewhere - but the buyout doesn't hamstring the team's cap flexibility.
Ditto for all of these deals - not that anyone expects any of the other three players will be bought out.
- White buyout of final 3 years at 25 costs $5.25m and the highest single season cap hit is $875k
- Batherson buyout final 4 years at 25 costs $7.9m and the highest single season cap hit is $993k
- Tkachuk buyout of final 4 years at 25 costs $8.6m and the highest single season cap hit is $2.65m
- Chabot buyout of final 6 years at 25 costs $17.8m and the highest single season cap hit is $2.69m
Knowing the cost of a buyout, even if the player doesn't meet their potential you have a line in the sand on retention. i.e. Colin White is probably tradable with retention this summer, but it would make very little sense for Ottawa to move him if they had to retain more than $5m across the final 3 years, or take back another contract worth more than $5m. You'd just admit that you struck out on this one, cut a cheque, and move on. The can't all be home runs.
Regardless of how fans from the outside may think the AAv/$$ values are higher than what the market should have paid, Ottawa is cleverly covering their own a$$es for cap management in the event that these contracts don't pan out. In a league where most GMs are playing cap gymnastics, milking LTIR or signing guys to contracts that they know some other mug in the GM chair is going to have to deal with in 5+ years, Ottawa are actually structuring contracts to be team friendly while also paying the players good money... yet for some reason hockey fans criticise them for it - most likely just because it is different to how other teams are operating so therefore "different = bad".
