(Re-signed) Pernell Karl Subban

[Big Ev]

Of course it's not a steal, but it's not a major overpayment by any stretch. Just because the Sens have an amazing deal with Karlsson, does't make this one overpayment, different time different reality.

Great deal for the other teams in the division? Wait till Subban has one of those games against the Sens when he notches 4 points, runs over a few of your young forwards, and strikes fear in the heart of Anderson (or Lehner) with his bombs from the point, then we'll talk. Other teams in the division are UNANIMOUSLY upset that Subban is still in the division and they'll have to face him many times, over a long schedule, over the next 8 years. If you think otherwise, well, let's just say we agree to disagree...

His bombs from the point got him a whopping ten goals last year. Over a full season I have never seen subban dominate to be considered one of the best in the game. Last playoffs he was great for one series out of three. Last year, in his contract year, showed he was a good dman but not worth is kind of money IMO.

hes a fantastic dman but I wouldn't terrified to play him every shift because his game is a little more selfish than most #1 dmen. Not a problem, he just got paid. I would never ever give him one million less than a toews or Kane but that's just me. The reason I said the division would love the deal is because this could cripple montreals ability to accumulate depth, which is more important than having one great player.

Again in this goes back to not being good enough for team canada. I don't consider subban in the same sentence as a weber or doughty or Keith. We saw the true superstar dmen in that tourney.

people keep talking about the cap, well I think it could go down as well in either future as tv is not guaranteed to drive revenue forever in today's age.

[Big Ev]

You sound like either a hater or an idiot.
Have you ever seen him play? Besides taking some chances and occaisionally caughing the puck up just as much or less than Erik Karlsson, he does everything ELITE.
Strongest skater in the league meaning he is difficult to knock off the puck...has the craziest shot in the league...
Anyone who says Doughty is miles better than PK should take a step back...he isn't under the microscope as is PK so no one gets to see Doughty's bad games.

I think the money is ridiculous but if anyone is worth it, its PK and Carey. Two of the elite young players in the game.

disagree with everything but not gonna go there. Please have a civil discussion and not call role haters or idiots. People who say the word hater, that immediately turns me away from a discussion. We can disagree, no need to call people haters when they are valuing if a guy is worn the money he just got.

I think you'll find the majority think doughty is better than PK by a good margin.

[MarmotKing]

Big money. Glad he signed 8 more years with the Habs.

[metaldude26]

For comparison, Doughty's eight year $56 million deal was signed when the cap was $64.3 million so that was good for 10.9% of the cap. At present PK's contract will take up 13.0% of the cap this season so this isn't a huge leap, especially when you consider that PK's deal bought out more UFA years than Doughty's. I'm not saying Doughty isn't better because he definitely is but if you think PK is close to that level then this deal is reasonable.

[MXHockey]

Just a few thoughts on this:

1) How does this impact the dressing room? Price has four years left on a deal that pays him 6.5m/year. MaxPac has five years left on a deal that pays him 4.5m/year. I bet Bergevin is nervous about how this is going to play out among the core players on the team, especially looking at the fact that Pacioretty makes half of what Subban now makes. The deal makes sense IMO overall, but that doesn't mean his teammates won't be bitter. Price must be like WTF, PK makes 2.5m/year more than me!

2) The first two years of this deal are an overpayment, the next three will be close to fair market value give or take, the last three will likely be seen as an underpayment. The fact that Niskanen (5.75m/year) and Orpik (5.5m/year) signed the deals they did only helped PK's case. Sure you can argue RFA vs UFA, but those two can't even hold Subban's jock and look at what they got paid. Brian Campbell makes 7.1m/year for goodness sakes.

3) Pride - Subban lost the last war by signing the bridge contract, there was no way he and his agent were going to lose this battle. The fact that the organization was coming in around 5-5.5m/year leading up to arbitration was insulting. Subban held all of the power here - sure the Habs and Subban could have gone the route of the arbitrator which would have been around 7.5m-8m/year over the next two seasons. But guaranteed, Subban would have walked afterwards. The team had to overpay him and give him what he wanted, or else they risked losing him for good once he reached UFA status. Giving him an extra 1m/year during the first two years (his final RFA years) of this long term contract will seem like nothing in the end.

If anything they bought years on the back end to even this out. The biggest disaster would have been a four year deal at 9m/year - because four years from now with an increasing cap, Subban would sign for an estimated 11-12m on the open market. The player wins on the front end of this deal, the team wins on the back end.


Look at these players who signed long term deals who are probably kicking themselves now:

Duncan Keith 5.5m/year
Karlsson 6.5m/year
Pietrangelo 6.5m/year

It's unbelievable to think that Keith (a two time Norris winner) will make around half as much as Toews/Kane..............

[Kofax]

This really looks like ownership intervened and looks very poor on Bergevin. The uproar from the fans after arbitration was significant and seems to have resulted in them giving subban what he wanted, which they should have done from the beginning. Never should have been allowed to make it to arbitration. You have to lock a guy like this up. I haven't been impressed with Bergevin to date and this looks like another knock against him.

[doulos]

Very good question. Cap ceiling in 2011-2012 (the first year of Doughty's new contract) was 64.3 and his cap hit is 7M per season, or 10.89%.

Subban @ 9M represents 13% of his teams salary.

I'll agree though, Doughty is totally different. He signed in 2011, he was fresh out of his ELC and had already been a Norris finalist.

Like I said, long term, 9M will be great for PK, but today 9 feels high.

Great, that's the info I was looking for. So, I agree, Subban is maybe getting a bit more than a team might be comfortable with. I suspect Habs fans will not care at all very shortly into the season when he's playing he always does. Thanks for digging up that info.

[MXHockey]

This really looks like ownership intervened and looks very poor on Bergevin. The uproar from the fans after arbitration was significant and seems to have resulted in them giving subban what he wanted, which they should have done from the beginning.

This sounds about right to me........

[doulos]

MolsonX,

I bet the dressing room is thrilled to have him locked up and motivated to be a top defenseman in the league on their team for 8 years. I'd kill to have Subban playing on the Oilers. An Olympian, a Norris winner, a point producer, and a great personality. The complete package.

[MXHockey]

MolsonX,

I bet the dressing room is thrilled to have him locked up and motivated to be a top defenseman in the league on their team for 8 years. I'd kill to have Subban playing on the Oilers. An Olympian, a Norris winner, a point producer, and a great personality. The complete package.

Good point!

He played at the Olympics? Everyone kept saying he didn't, and Babcock believes he should have only gotten 4.25m/year?


Seriously, imagine they locked him up last season for six or seven years at 5m/year - which he probably would have jumped on. The team would have an extra 4m/year of cap room. This deal makes them a bit tight with the cap over the next few years. Don't see the Habs competing yet, last season they overachieved.

[MarmotKing]

This really looks like ownership intervened and looks very poor on Bergevin.

I don't like it when owners interfere with hockey related activities, but if they did in this case they were right in doing so. PK's presence as a habs is worth more than just what he does on the ice.

[doulos]

Good point!

He played at the Olympics? Everyone kept saying he didn't, and Babcock believes he should have only gotten 4.25m/year?

The guy owns a gold medal from those Olympics, so that classifies him as an Olympian in my books.

[MXHockey]

The guy owns a gold medal from those Olympics, so that classifies him as an Olympian in my books.

Agreed, was just being sarcastic.......

[havanablast21]

That's insanity. Bergevin caved. Huge risk with this deal,huge

Yep! Glad it's MTL shouldering that risk. Like I said...the team and player are made for each other!

[Maaaasquito]

I'm in 100% agreeance with Ev...

There's a couple of major factors here, if you look at the big picture, and paying him $9 a year, there is pretty much ZERO room for him to falter. This deal is pretty much set up for him to underachieve unless for the next 8 year he wins the Norris year after year. If you look at cap comparables, Ovechkin ($9.5), Malkin ($9.5), Crosby ($8.7), Perry ($8.6), Lundy ($8.5), Giroux ($8.2), Staal ($8.2), Getzlaf ($8.2)... those players play a much more significant role in scoring for their team as major difference makers (well maybe except Staal). They're all essentially 90+ point producers... What impact is PK going to make? He won the Norris posting 53 points... Most top end D will post a high of 65 points (with the except of Karlsson), so how much does it really contribute to a team with a highly paid blue-liner eating up 13% of your cap space? I would think that paying 500k more per season for an Ovechkin/Malkin would be more impactful than paying PK $9 a season... I just see bust written all over this deal, I mean what happens when he has an "off" year and posts 45 points (which is still pretty good by blue-liner standards), which is also not unexpected by blue-liners since they're offensive production is mostly reliant on the offense in front of them, but that's a huge cap hit for just 45 points. Unless he consistently posts 65-70, he will largely be considered overpaid with essentially no room for error.

Another point that I'd like to support Ev on is that everyone keeps throwing the cap hit is going to rise so what will it matter in 8-years when he's at the end of his contract, there is nothing to say that it will rise at the crazy rate that it has over the last 10 years and I think it would be crazy to think that it would continue. The NHL was lucky over the last little while, with the high Canadian dollar, and a few TV contracts kicking in that it helped prop up NHL revenue, the issue is that it won't continue at this growth rate over the course of the next 10 years...

05-06: 39 mil
06-07: 44 mil
07-08: 50.3 mil
08-09: 56.7 mil
09-10: 56.8 mil
10-11: 59.4 mil
11-12: 64.3 mil
12-13: 60 mil
13-14: 64.3 mil
14-15: 69 mil

It's grown at an annual rate of about 7.8%, which is huge... To put it into perspective the salary cap would need to reach $122 mil in 2024-25 to match the growth that it has experienced in the last decade. I don't think it would be fair that the growth would continue to grow at this astronomical rate over the next 10 years. It's not like there's high-end tv contracts floating left right and center at the NHL. I think we'll see more of the 08-11 years where it was around the 1.5-1.6% growth rates moving forward.

I also don't buy into the "let's compare the Doughty contract at the time of signing" to the "Subban contract at the time of signing argument." At the end of the day, they both will head into this season with a cap-hit compared to the overall team cap hit. Who cares what happened, in the past 2 years. Every team will have $69 mil to spend, Doughty will take up $2 mil of cap space less than Subban for this year and the next 4 years... Over the next 5 years, if both players produce at the same rate, LA is in a much better position than Montreal. So comparing it to the "time of signing" is a moot point. For the next 5 seasons, Subban will take up $2 mil per season more than DD. He will also take up $1.2 mil more per season than Weber over the course of his contract, $1.5 mil more per season than Suter, and $1.8 mil more than Letang, $2 mil more than Phaneuf, $2.5 mil more than Pietrangelo and $3.5 more than Keith.

Even then if he repeats these numbers, I would say that it's an underachievement for $9 mil and I'm not getting my bang for the buck. The deal might look great at this point in time, but this could look extremely ugly if he even has a somewhat "off year". I just see albatross of a contract moving forward.