Quoting: Hurricanes73
Tavares is the 45th highest point producing forward in the league. If he was being paid what the 45th highest paid forward in the league is currently getting he would be getting 7.25m. On a purely linear metric, where the top point producing forward should paid the most out of forwards and the 45th should be paid the 45th. If you want to get into advanced stats like WAR and xWAR then I’m all ears but it doesn’t improve Tavares’ case for being grossly overpaid.
under this logic you'd need to put guys like kopitar and wheeler on here as well since they were under tavares in point producing
if fact if we're looking at point production and nothing else, here's a list of players who costed more per point than tavares: tatar, palmeri, lee, w karlsson, josh anderson, pacioretty, kotkaniemi, oshie, tanev, schwartz, mantha, couturier, stone, zucker
one would assume that none of these contracts were signed in a vaccum, that the status of the player on signing varies and often for players signing as free agents, they are paid with a significant focus on past performance rather than expected production. a good majority of players you've listed are in this category since their production and over play as dramatically fallen off since they've signed their respective contracts, but tavares in a bad year was almost point per game. he's clearly a cut above the rest of these guys.
is tavares overpaid? sure, there's an argument there. is his contract among the twenty worst in league? not a chance.