Quoting: Islesforthecup
My point with those contracts wasnt whether it was a good idea to give it to them, it was as you said so well, at one point all those players played well enough to earn it. Yet now i dont think anyone would say any of them are even in the same rink as those contracts. So just bc they played well enough to earn them at some point doesnt mean they are good players.
Lets be clear about this because you are comparing apples to oranges.
you want to compare aging guys some with injury histories to a guy who's 27 and has a reasonable contract and say "they aren't good players".
4.8 million for a 2LD, is not 9 million for a winger, or 7 mill/11 million for a defense man, or 10 million for a goalie. So lets Just start there. Matheson is in an average range for a 2LD. None of those guys are in an average like that. None. They all got paid like the top of their position.
B. All of those guys but skinner, are 32+ or injury history that has wrecked them guys. That's not Matheson. He's 27. Perfectly healthy.
C. "mean they are good players", dude, you haven't watched him on the ice. That is clear. Which is half the point here. "good player". Having 1 bad year doesn't make you a "bad player" either. You seem to have trouble figuring that part out. His year last year in FL was not "bad" it was average. His year this year is better. So you got a guy taking 2LD minutes, playing at least average, on a basically average salary.
None of that says bad contract. The guy has clearly had more good to average years than bad years at this point. And it's not like those years are in his past. Those better years are right now.
D. nor does his contract run till he's like 35+ the some of the other people on this list, if not all of them. His contract ends at 32. You know, just about the time guys start to decline and fall.
It is a much more telling story when you play well enough at 23 or 24 to earn a good contract to have the talent to play well at 27-28, than it is to earn your money at 28 and play well at 32 mid contract.
For a lot of players 26-27 is the age they start to hit their best hockey, up till their early 30s where it drops off. The only guy you listed there in that range is skinner.
so no, those contracts aren't even close comparable. Yes playing well at a young age does mean you have the talent to do it in your mid to late 20s. It's simply a massively different situation to pay a guy when he's hitting peak hockey and then say oh look when he's 32+ he's not good anymore. It must mean that's true for all players when they have 1 down year.