Quoting: ElectroMan
The cap is going up nearly 20M in that time. Contracts are going to jump like crazy. At that time his deal would be comparable to a 3.5M deal today, which would be pretty close to his bridge amount. Near the end of his deal it would be close to 2.5M for a top 4 defensive d man.
Guys like Cernak already got 5.2M and that's before the cap has even jumped. You will start to see defensive guys getting 6M-7M pretty soon.
He's playing top pair, has strong defensive results, and this contract would put him 71st highest paid d man. Do you think that's an overpay or fair for what he brings currently?
Personally? If he doesn't take a step up, he's overpaid. And his defensive numbers away from the top pair were abysmal - go check out his sub-40% CF/SF and 8-27 GF-GA numbers when he was with Casey Fitzgerald last season if you think I'm just making things up. He put up better numbers with Dahlin, but to me that doesn't scream "top pair guy", it just says he's able to keep up with a superior player while not being able to make a lesser player better. That's fine! There are tons of players like that, and it doesn't mean he's not a top-4 player. I just don't think he's a slam dunk top pair guy that's going to make this deal look like a steal.
If you want a little more to back that up, I think one of his better comps is Jonas Siegenthaler - both defensive LHD, similarly sized players, and Siegenthaler is only 3 years older and signed his extension 10 weeks ago.
Sieganthaler put up better even strength possession numbers (51.2 vs 47.6 CF, 51.0 vs. 47.3 Fenwick) with similar PDOs (so can't say one was bailed out by better goaltending), and was better at preventing goals when he was on the ice shorthanded (7.2 GA/60 vs. 8.1 for Samuelsson), while having a little over 2 seasons worth of NHL games to judge his game on. He just signed for 5x$3.4M - so the Sabres gave more term and more AAV in this deal today.
Again, my point is that it's not that Samuelsson is going to be a bum, or not live up to the deal, or whatever. It's just that it doesn't make a ton of sense to hand out this deal right now when there is very little I could picture Samuelsson doing that would push his value *higher* than this. He's most likely a middle-pair guy going forward and this is a higher-end middle pair AAV.