My apologies, Dekes, you had called them two of the best players in the world, and then I thought you had called them generational, but it was me. However, when I had replied to your post, I wanted to know where you would rank them in terms of being two of the best in the world, and how their previous contracts compared to other similar players‘ contracts at that time. I believe you will see quite a difference.
Matthews and Marner had the 5th and 6th best periods leading up to their post-ELC signing in cap era history. They received the 6th and 10th highest value post-ELC contracts, term considered. There was nothing abnormal about the contracts they got, and while them being so good so young and providing so much surplus value on their ELCs may have limited their surplus potential on their 2nd contracts relative to some others who broke out post-signing, they continue to be among the best players in the league, and outperform their contracts relative to the average value of cap space.
You keep blaming their inability to win in the playoffs on the pandemic. Did not every team have to deal with the pandemic? Why did it only have such a damaging effect on the Leafs?
I'm not blaming our lack of playoff success on the pandemic, but it was something that significantly affected us, and it does nobody any good to ignore it. The pandemic affected everybody, but it affected everybody very differently, depending on their unique situation and phase of competitiveness. Being a competitive cap team with a fairly depleted internal pool that had just had the majority of their core come due for new contracts directly prior to the pandemic meant that we were among the teams most negatively impacted. But the bigger point is that the pandemic that hadn't happened yet was obviously not a consideration in the path chosen at the time.
Of course, as I previously mentioned, some team will eventually win while paying three forwards at least $10 million, when the cap rises accordingly. And when that happens, you can be sure the defence will also be paid more.
You don't know that. If they have 6 Makars on ELCs, does that mean their defense sucks? Evaluating aspects of a team strictly by cap allocation is inaccurate. The point is that you can't declare that you can't win a cup with X, just because it hasn't happened yet. There is no formula to winning a cup. You can win with all sorts of different configurations. I'm sure before Vegas won, you would have said that maybe a team with a 10m center will win sometime, but you can be sure that their starting goalie will make more than 2.2m.
Every season, not just one or two, they underachieved in the playoffs either due to their lack of killer instinct, no clutch scoring, not enough secondary scoring, lack of scoring from our backend, amongst other things.
That's just multiple different ways of saying the same thing, and it's also not true. We've had a variety of different expectations over the years, and we've lost for a variety of different reasons. And the reasons you're pointing to aren't really about what you're attributing the cause to.
Will management feel they will need another #1/2 center to pay at least $11 million to once JT’s contract expires? I mean, they, as well as you and others on here, thought that was something that needed to be done before, so I’m assuming they will again.
Our team situations and options during these moments 7 years apart wouldn't be the same, so I'm not sure why you'd be expecting identical pathways.
Also, if Matthews and Marner continue to take up as much of the cap space as they have been doing, it won’t matter how much the cap goes up. You say that they “deserved” the contracts they got last time, when what actually happened is they got the contracts that “they” thought they deserved. Big difference! Did Crosby or MacKinnon always get what they “deserved”, just to name a few?
Of course it matters how much the cap goes up. That literally decides the percentage of the cap Matthews and Marner take up, and available space. What actually happened last time is that Matthews and Marner got contracts that were less than they deserved (like pretty much all top tier players), but contracts that they factually deserved relative to how other top tier players get paid in this league.
Discounts on normal contract valuation are extremely rare. Crosby is one of the rare outliers who took less than he deserved due to a weird fascination with the number 87, a career threatening injury, and the ability to use a now illegal contract term to lock in guaranteed money with that uncertainty moving forward. That's not a reasonable thing to demand out of your players. If we're saying that Mackinnon's contract is a discount, then you should have no issue with the contracts our players are going to sign, because it's looking like they'll be consistent with his contract.
