When an anchor of your team is 37 years old and is forced to log as many minutes as he does, OF COURSE it's forseeable that he's going to get injured at some point and that it's going to crater your team.
This is why it was foolish to "lock up" a player, at that high a cap hit especially, until he's forty-frickin-two years old...
You're not locking him up; you're handcuffing yourself.
If you don't offer multi-year contracts, you don't get talent.
He'll be 41 when his contract expires, and the final year's (2017-2018) hit is $4m, not the $6.9m current cap hit. If anyone wants to critique his contract, that's legit, but I don't think a deal would have gotten done without going out to at least 2016 with him.
I will admit that I've not been a huge Chara supporter in the playoffs the last 2 seasons, and I'll grant you that I'd prefer he wasn't signed for that kind of hit beyond, say, 2016, but the fact remains, he is a huge reason for a cup in 2011 and strong performances in other years.