Quoting: Leafs_and_Sens_Fan
I don't understand why people keep signing Graves for under 3M a season. He's clearly better than Dermott and he has arbitration rights. That would be like signing Dermott for under 2M for 3 years.
Dermott: 157 games played (171 if you include playoffs)
Graves:.... 95 games played
Graves' games are also split across two seasons (26 games + 69 games), with no playoff games yet.
I think he's a very good player so don't get me wrong here, but the fact is that when it comes to contract talks he simply doesn't have a big sample size for arbitrators to go off of. Nor does he have draft pedigree or other intangibles.
Also worth noting that Graves also loves it in Colorado, where he gets to play top line minutes on a contender with a legit superstar. That being the case I would be
shocked if he takes the team to arbitration and risks getting traded away.
And let's not pretend like $2.75m x 3 years isn't a lot of money... That's $8.25 million dollars, and would set the guy up for life. That's a pretty good deal considering that 12 months ago he wasn't even sure if he'd play in the NHL again.