I hate hearing people talk about a double standard in comparison to some of the other front loaded deals. It’s one thing to take a 35 year old player in good shape and sign them to a 6 or 7 year deal because you can reasonably project their longevity and productivity based on their career thus far. Taking a 27 year old (no matter what kind of shape they’re in or how productive they’ve been) and trying to project that out over 17 years and say that you legitimitely believe they will still be playing at 44 is absurd. If teams want to put themselves at risk by signing dumb deals then fine, let them. But what the NHL really needs to do is take away the easy outs.

Rather than say no front loaded deals allowed, maybe just make any contract over 7-10 years long has to go by the “over 35″ rules so it will count against the cap even if they retire. Or maybe any contract that ends when the player is over 38-40 must play by those rules regardless of length. If the player doesn’t play out his contract then the team should be left paying for him to sit at home or be forced to buy out the contract at a cost relative to the cap hit rather than the money owed.

Obviously someone in NHL management tried to protect against this somewhat by having limits on how much a salary can increase or decrease over the course of a contract but the percentages are just not tight enough to handle a contract that goes this long. I think there might be a place in the NHL for somewhat front loaded contracts but none of this crap where it’s millions up front and league min for 5 years at the end.

How did he not play by the rules? He did what every other team is doing…frontloading a long term contract to lessen the cap hit.

EVERY TEAM is Doing it ????