Go Habs Go
Rejoint: mars 2017
Messages: 10,667
Mentions "j'aime": 4,091
It's not that simple. You should have a limit to spending on an individual goaltender, but you must always have a solid starter even if that means going over budget.
You can't simply let your starter go if they are looking for more money/term than you are comfortable with unless you already have a succession plan or are not planning to contend.
There are also differences from other positions you have to take into account. (Using rough numbers to make a point.)
If all spending is equal, teams are splitting their budget roughly 60% forwards, 30% defense, 10% goaltending.
For goaltending, that's roughly $8.25M with the current cap. That's roughly where you want to limit your goaltending budget.
That's fine internally.
The top 10 forwards represent 4% of players at that position
For defense, that's 8%. For goaltending, it's 24%.
So for every goaltender making $7M, there should be 3D and 6F at that mark.
The league currently sits at 57F, 25D, 3G under that criteria.
Forwards and Defense are close enough at a 2:1 ratio.
Goaltending is actually out of line with only 3 current contracts over $7M, which is about 36% of the 8(ish) you'd expect.
So NHL teams have already seemed to get the message and are not spending as much on goaltending at the top end of the scale, with Price and Bobrovsky providing cautionary tales.
If you have 2 goaltenders below that $8.25M mark, the money spent is justified, it just may be spent on the wrong individuals.
Obviously everything isn't quite that neat and tidy, as there are a lot of other factors to consider, but that is enough to serve as a baseline.
Goaltenders are justified to seek contracts in that area and of course they are going to want term like any other player. They most often take longer in their career to even begin earning substantial money, and are going to want to maximize their earning potential.
The real issue is that the position is a lot different than that of a skater and not enough is considered to account for that.
Team performance strongly influences individual results, they don't play every game, and they are more susceptible to injury due to the nature of the position and how central they are to the action with players and pucks flying at them continuously.
All of that makes the position significantly more of a risk and susceptible to fluctuations in performance and injury.
Contractually, they are under the same umbrella as players at other positions, but their job and elements associated with it, are very different.
It would level the playing field and allow for more flexibility if they were treated differently.
Maybe they don't count completely against the cap and can therefore earn more on shorter terms while still having a similar earning potential as skaters.
Maybe they use a different Injury Relief system and/or have better coverage for long term injuries which affect their performance but not their ability to play.
Maybe they can have contracts with more performance bonuses and/or cap not applying to those bonuses.
There's nothing inherently wrong with most goaltending contracts, but they do have a lot more risk of ending up as bad deals simply because they need a lot to go right on a consistent basis in order to have a chance to perform well. Injuries and poor defense are beyond their control. If they aren't making big saves, the first question is "why were they in a position where they needed to make a big save?". You can't just judge them on stats, you have to look at their actual performance and abilities.