12 isn’t realistic at all, in fact it’s insulting. Those contracts were signed 2 years and 1 year ago and Pasta is a winger.
Read Fourier’s post above detailing the likely future cap based on revenue numbers and you’ll understand that anything under 14M is good business because if he goes to market someone is paying him 15+ based on projected cap in coming years.
Whats your plan? If he won’t take under 13 you trade your second best player or let him walk in the middle of a Cup window over less then a million dollars when he’s already taking below market value? I guess that’s smart, perennial 100 point players are pretty easy to come by these days.
They'll get whatever they want (they being McDavid and Draisaitl). They have to decide how bad they actually want a Cup. Is it a "must have" or is it a "I'd like to have", because there's a difference.
He could do
13.5/13.5/13.5/13.5/13.5/13.5
That would pay him more than Matthews and MacKinnon and Kucherov for the next 6 years and then if he really wants a Cup that bad, do something like
11/7.75 the last two years of the deal (8 year deal in total). That would bring the cap hit down to about 12.5 (just under actually).
To me that's fair if you want to win, but hey he's free to feel differently. When you've made that much money overall in your career getting 7.75 million when you're 37 or whatever isn't going to make that much of a difference versus insisting you get 10+ mill in that year in your quality of life.
Both should accept that they'll take a lot less on that 8th extra year especially to drive the cap hit down.
Leon is going to finish his career with $170 million-ish in career earnings, maybe more if he can continue to play past age 37/38. McDavid will be north of $200 million just from hockey salary alone (probably a good $50-$60+ million from endorsements on top of that). Having $178 million and $210 million instead ... I guess they have to decide whether or not that really impacts the quality of their life that much.
