I've worried he'll be another Zucker too - hot start, subpar continuation - and I also don't like what we paid for him. Can live with it, but don't like it.
But what was the alternative? Any guy can go sour, particularly if they have Zucker's luck. We needed another top six forward. He got the price we'd have paid for such a guy in UFA unless we'd waited and waited and won the "underpay Niederreiter" lotto. The team could have targeted cap casualties but all the cap casualties I like came from our division and wouldn't have been offered here.
I'd say it's a good rule of thumb that teams pretty much never want to be in the position where they're doing this contract for this player. They want a steady stream of undercosted RFAs who they wave goodbye to when they hit this period of their career unless they bring something unique or are willing to take big discounts. We don't have those RFAs though.
So now to hope it works and the team can have enough RFAs and wriggle out of enough cap next season to chase some serious mofos.
