NHL 2015-16 Season Thread

Apparently there's rumors floating around of a bizarre three way trade involving Tyson Barrie, Landeskog, Trouba, RNH and god knows who else.

Yea Mirtle is reporting on it now as well, I wouldn't put it past Sakic to take the title of "Dumbest Trade Ever" from Bergevin either

Eomer_sl said:

Apparently there's rumors floating around of a bizarre three way trade involving Tyson Barrie, Landeskog, Trouba, RNH and god knows who else.

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Best offseason ever. I actually wanted the Caps to look at Barrie when rumors were he might get moved.

Lucic 7 years, $42M to Edmonton. Lol at that term. Selling it as he'll protect McDavid.

Ladd signs 7 year deal with Isles, and Eriksson 6 years to Vancouver. Those...will not end well.

Backes to Boston, 5 years $30M. Man lol at some of these deals. GM's are fucking stupid as shit. Nielsen 6 years, $5.25M a year.

Holy fuck, Okposo to Buffalo 7 years, $42M. Like the player, but again the term these GM's are giving out is insane. That deal is going to hurt so much by like year 5.

Neilson dollars are fine term is probably 2 years to long. Helms contract is worse.

Radulov 1 year to Montreal 5.75m

A lot of the dollars aren't...too terrible, although some I really feel are getting overpaid. But it's the term that is just killer. These 6 and 7 year deals a lot of them are going to look shitty by year 4 or 5.

Of course then there's Tampa who locks up Hedman at a very fair price for that term for a guy who is truly elite.

Merrith_sl said:

A lot of the dollars aren't...too terrible, although some I really feel are getting overpaid. But it's the term that is just killer. These 6 and 7 year deals a lot of them are going to look shitty by year 4 or 5.

Of course then there's Tampa who locks up Hedman at a very fair price for that term for a guy who is truly elite.

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Don't worry. The next lockout will reduce max contract length again.

Ishad_sl said:

Don't worry. The next lockout will reduce max contract length again.

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They're literally setting up next lockout with these contracts.

Merrith_sl said:

They're literally setting up next lockout with these contracts.

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If your a top 6 forward or top 4 d the average nhl trajectory is going to be elc, bridge deal, crazy 7 year contract.

Ishad_sl said:

If your a top 6 forward or top 4 d the average nhl trajectory is going to be elc, bridge deal, crazy 7 year contract.

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This.

Merrith_sl said:

Backes to Boston, 5 years $30M. Man lol at some of these deals. GM's are fucking stupid as shit. Nielsen 6 years, $5.25M a year.

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Just glad Boston didn't sign Eriksson. How old is Backes? 31? 32? You MIGHT get 3 good years out of him. He won't score 20 goals, but he does bring everything else to the table.

Basically if all of these deals were 2-3 year shorter, most of them would be mostly fine. The terms are just unreal, especially given some of the ages of the players.

Valderen_sl said:

The money on a lot of those deals isn't that bad, but fuck the terms are horrible for the age of some of these guys. Lucic doesn't have 7 good years left in his body. 3, maybe 4 max.

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I agree that the term for Lucic is 2 years too long. But I'm curious why you think he only has 3 or 4 good years left in his body? The guy has missed like 10 games in the past 6 seasons, and apparently is very good about keeping himself in shape etc. He could well perform at a high level for another 4-5 years. He's 4 years younger than Backes, for example, who has only started to slow down at 32 and plays a similar game. Scott Hartnell has also had some pretty good seasons in his early 30's, although he's looking not far from the end at 34 now, even with 49 points last season. No question that there is a lot of risk in the back third of the Lucic contract. But I'd say it's a pretty safe bet for the first 4-5 years.

I really doubt the NHL is going to reduce maximum terms for contracts in the next CBA. That's going to be a non-starter for the NHLPA. What I'll be curious to see is if they address some of the shenanigans that teams and players agents are doing to make deals mostly signing bonuses. Apparently many if not most of the new, long term contracts are structured that way. Basically it makes the contract buyout proof. There's so little salary left the last couple years of the deal that the team would get basically no cap relief from it, or something to that extent. So the deals are basically structured to potentially be traded to a cap floor, budget team in the last year or two. It's not as ridiculous as the previous backdiving contracts, but it seems to be in violation of the spirit of the cap as well.

Valderen_sl said:

I was reading something interesting about a lot of the new contracts being signed.

They are lockout proof, they are structured with a large part being signing bonuses and these signing bonuses need to paid even if there is a lock out.

So if there is a lockout when the new CBA arrives, a lot of players will get anywhere from 50-75% of their salaries anyways from those signing bonuses.

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That shit will make it a lot tougher if there is a lockout for the owners to try to strong arm the players into coming back to work.