Huge differnce! The Hossa contract is an absolute steal (unless he retires). The guy is a hall of famer...with a deal that was signed with the intent to circumvent the cap. If he retires after this year when his salary drops down to 1m per...guess what...Chicago fans will lose their marbles over it.
And you can't really compare Keith either...he was alreay a Norris trophy winner when they signed him to his long term extension. And Sharp...he signed a decent deal...but Chicago ultimately had to move him because it was too much for their salary structure. Now he did only sign a 5 yr deal at 29. If JVR was willing to sign a 5 year extension...that is definitely reasonable to consider. But he is not the greatest of skaters now...he is only going to get slower as he gets older. Do you really want to risk having a 6.5m 2nd or 3rd line winger when Marner, Matthews, Nylander, and this year's pick are all looking for big raises?
Just imagine all 3 of Marner, Matthews, and Nylander progress as we all hope? What are their next contracts going to be like? All 3 will likely be in the 6-7.5m per year range. That is going to eat up a big chunk of the cap. Might not make a JVR extension possible.
I don't see the conceptual difference, other than the cap structure circumvention. Hossa's cap hit in 2009/10 when he signed the deal is the equivalent of a ~$6.8m cap hit today and more assuming there's a cap rise next year+the year after, so JVR would likely costs less percentage of cap than Hossa did on a significantly shorter deal (I'm speculating that JVR ends up in the $6-6.5m range like Ladd/Okposo/Lucic), Hossa made 9.286% of Chicago's cap in his first year. Hossa is a better player, no doubt, but playing the same role on the team as a supplementary first line winger to the Kane/Toews core - the conceptual symmetry is there
Keith won the Norris the year after they signed Hossa, so for the sake of symmetry we would be talking about a potential norris winner in the 2018-2019 if we're talking about re-signing JVR next season. There's certainly that potential in Rielly
I get that there will be a big chunk of the cap eaten by RFA's and resignings, but they won't be the only big contracts on the books. Try not to think of it in dollar figures because that's misleading across long time spans, percentage of cap makes it apples-to-apples
I think we only consider it if all the stars align: the team's playing well, the kids are all turning out and JVR is still looking very effective. I disagree about his skating, his length/speed combo have always been a major weapon for him. He might slow down over time but should be NHL speed for a long time barring injury
Anyway, the door looks open to me, which is a good position because there's no pressure to do anything
