willy702
Registered User
- Jul 3, 2016
- 3,791
- 2,123
I would be willing to give him term because of his age. Last summer the Wild were in a similar position with Granlund. RFA with 1 year remaining. I think they made a mistake by giving him a 3 year "prove it" contract, because he has proved it and now he's going to be 28 year of old UFA who's worth a big contract. Wild could have signed him to a 8 year deal from age 25-33 (only prime years) with a reasonable cap hit. Instead they will probably have to sign him from 28-36 for a higher cap hit with couple of seasons where he is "old".
Same thing could happen with Karlsson. If you sign him to a short contract and he repeats this year he's going to be worth 9-10M and his contract is going to take him to "old" age. If you sign him to 8 years now it's only going to be prime years (25-33) and you can still sign him to a reasonable cap hit of 6-7M. Salary cap next year is going to be 80M, so 6M is only 7.5%. Relatively that is less than Clarkson got from Toronto. It's less than 32 yo 20 goal scorer Backes signed for with Boston. 6M is nothing these days, in 8 years it's even less when the cap is 110M.
If you gamble now you might get Karlsson signed for long term with a "low" cap hit. This is what Poile does and because of that Predators are a powerhouse. He has signed Josi for 7 years 4M cap hit, Ekholm 6 years 3.75M cap hit, Ellis 5 years 2.5M cap hit, Arvidsson 7 years 4.25M cap hit and Järnkrok 6 years 2M cap hit. They basically have 10M+ extra cap space, because Poile wasn't afraid to commit.
I'm sure they would agree to deals like the Preds have in a heartbeat. We'll see what his agent comes back with, many do exactly what Grandlund did and say we want to gamble on his ability to get a real payday once he's in UFA territory. As for "losing" him, if you have to pay 9-10m then I don't think you are really losing. You don't have him on the roster, but you also don't have that sort of commitment which prevents signing other players or other cap management opportunities. Only a handful of premium players deserve that pay and when you pay that you usually recognize the back end of the deal is not going to be worth it. Look at the Hawks, do you think they wish they could trade Toews right now? Sure the pay was worth it for the success they had but now his contract and Hossa's are total roster killers.