There are plenty of cases where bridge deals worked well for the NHL club.
Kadri is a recent example for us... Giroux, Tanev, Couture, etc are all good examples of bridges that works...
Not only that, for every Subban or Kucherov there are two or three Draisatls, Eberles, Ekblads, Phaneufs, etc.
I'd argue, if we sign Nylander higher to a 6.5 mil cap hit, "we're stupid".
I think we should aim for a 4-6 year contract with Marner and Nylander, kinda like Kane and Toews.
Kadri had an insanely unlucky season in his contract year that resulted in this contract, completely irrelevant to the Nylander discussion unless you're placing your bets on Nylander having insanely low luck in a 48 game season in his next contract year.
Giroux signed for a bridge deal and then put up a 93 point season the year after, how are you using him as a beneficial view of bridge contracts?
Again with Couture, you're just listing good players that did bridge deals instead of thinking whether they would've been better off with an 8 year deal. Can't comment on Tanev since I don't know when he broke out, but a 1 year deal for 1.5M before getting his 4.45M deal seems also irrelevant to Nylander as there's no way a potential Nylander bridge deal is anywhere close to that since he's a 60 point player vs a dman that's worth 1.5M.
Draisaitl is market value right now so it's not a bad deal, they're just not saving any money on the value they're getting out of it. And it was an overpayment on day 1 anyways, they should've gotten him for less but they had an idiot GM negotiating (same with McDavid's 12.5M that he wrote on a blank cheque). Eberle has consistently put up market value as well.
Ekblad would be a loved contract if it wasn't for the 2-4 concussions he got after, which makes him totally irrelevant in this discussion as well as you can't predict the player gets a couple concussions to seriously deteriorate his game.
Phaneuf wasn't even that bad of a deal I'd say. And Calgary was smart on betting 6.5M on having a guy who was in Norris talks in his rookie year.
Really poor choices to comment on to use as evidence of your argument IMO.