You're 100% right correct post-ELC & 2nd cost controllable RFA contracts are not like 3rd UFA contracts. That does remain true.
Only problem YOU and more importantly Leafs own GM Dubas don't understand what a RFA contract is either.
I do. GMs like Dubas do. You don't. If you did, you would know what the landscape of post-ELC contracts actually looks like, and understand what has been proven to you time and time again - that Marner's contract (10th biggest post-ELC in cap era after 6th best pre-signing period, with a pay gap matching the production gaps of his closest historical comparables) is consistent with the history of post-ELC contracts, and does not correlate with Tavares or UFA contracts in any way.
If you wanted to discuss the actual reasons he got that amount, you wouldn't be altering quotes and extrapolating things that weren't even said in an attempt to fit the narrative that you want to be true. If you actually cared about a proper evaluation, you wouldn't be equating bridge and non-bridge contracts, looking exclusively at single-season raw production, and ignoring all other context like how that production was generated and who and what is driving that production - the player in question, or the 128 point MVP line driver with a 40 point gap over them. Maintainable underlying numbers, or shooting 40% on the PP. It's not exactly a surprise that Point fell back to 0.9 P/GP on his contract, and Marner has improved to 1.24 P/GP through his.
Point's contract was in fact historically very good, and cap hell forcing Tampa into a bridge ended up being beneficial to them with the covid stagnated cap, but searching for the best cherry picked contracts and then presenting them in misleading ways does not make another contract bad/UFA or the signing the wrong choice. If anything, Point is the one to take a more abnormal contract path and amount, and things would not have gone any better for us with a different GM. It likely would have gone much worse, especially if Lou "take time if you have it" Lam had stayed and negotiated with the player he lied and stole bonus money from.
You spend all this time rallying against the best GM we've had in decades, that gave us the best teams we've had in decades, because he *gasp* signed his 21-year old core to contracts that have been outperformed, and were consistent with the history of the same type of contract. And yet when the next GM - with all of the additional information -
actually overpays a core member to a contract that will be more difficult to outperform, while wasting millions elsewhere and making us worse, you praise him.
The most interesting piece of information in that article was actually the claim that Nylander's holdout was a result of yet another offer sheet threat.
