A good indication that you have
signed a player to a bad contract is that outside your organization,
there is basically no one, in their right mind or otherwise, who is
willing to defend the deal.
Ryan Kesler
is, for some reason, now signed in Anaheim until 2022, when he will be
37 years old, and receiving $6.875 million per season against the cap.
The future of the ceiling is of course unknowable for a litany of
reasons, but it's a safe bet to say that in 2022 — which oh my god
that's still seven years from now, because Kesler still has one year
left on his current contract — $6.875 million will probably still be a
decent chunk of the total limit. Even if the cap goes up to $90 million
in that time, an AAV of that size would be worth what about a $5.5
million deal is today.
You do not want to have 37-year-olds making 7.7 percent of your cap. That's just a general rule.
When talking about how forwards
age, and what it takes to get to the point where someone thinks you can
still play as a 37-year-old. Most of those who do are either fading
superstars or bottom-six grinder types whose game doesn't in any way
rely upon them having the ability to skate even somewhat competitively.
And the attrition for guys in their mid-to-late 30s is massive; over the
last eight seasons, 41 percent of forwards who were in the league at 35
were gone by 37.
So what you need to know is the
number of forwards who have started the season as 37-year-olds in the
past seven seasons is just 51. And it is, frankly, a bizarre mix of
guys; Sergei Fedorov, Jeremy Roenick, Teemu Selanne, Alex Kovalev (high-talent guys) mix with Craig Conroy, Tomas Holmstrom, Martin Gelinas, and Jamal Mayers (not so much). As a composite, this is what those the average of those guys looks like:
So, not great.
The good news for the Ducks is
that they will, as a few people have pointed out at this point, almost
certainly buy out Kesler before the end of this contract, and I'd be
surprised if he makes it all the way to 2020 before he's given a bunch
of money to no longer play for the Ducks. The funny thing is that Kesler
himself told the media on Wednesday, “This isn't my last contract.” He
meant it in terms of, “I'm playing the full six years of this one and
beyond,” but c'mon.
Some might say that reason alone
is why Anaheim wasn't completely foolhardy to sign this deal —
basically, they'd be giving Kesler all this money when he's more or less
worth-it, but then dumping the contract and carrying a much smaller cap
hit for four or six years beyond that (and oh yeah there's also another
potential lockout coming up before then, so who knows what happens
next. The wisdom of purposely signing a guy knowing that you would buy
him out before the end of the contract seems crazy, but then the
likelihood is that such a move would probably be among Murray's last as a
general manager, or perhaps among his successor's first.
Anyway, the idea that signing a
guy at more or less what is market value right now for the remainder of
his early 30s (and beyond, wink nudge) would be a good idea is nominally
true. You can say what you want about Kesler, but he helped make Matt Beleskey
rich this summer, and if you're running a guy of his current quality
out there as a No. 2, you're going to be in business. And if Getzlaf is
your No. 1, that's about as good a 1-2 punch as there is in the Western
Conference.
But the fact is that the Ducks probably have a window to be truly competitive because at some point Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry
will lose their fastball and become non-elite players. When that
happens, the Ducks' chance of winning Cup is effectively over. And
whaddaya know: Getzlaf, Kesler, and Perry are all 30 right this second
(though Kesler will be 31 in August). So we're really talking about a
window that'll be open for, at the very most, the first four years of
this contract. Five if they're extremely lucky.
The good news for the Ducks is
that right now, those three guys are the only ones signed beyond
2017-18. So that gives them a lot of flexibility, and if they understand
their Cup competitiveness is ending, then let the great contract
sell-off begin. Retain some salary, buy Kesler out, and you're looking
at a team that's probably heading into a rebuild and holding onto some
veteran contracts for which it has no use anyway.
Currently, Kesler has a bit of a
reputation as not being very durable, but that's really not fair to
him. Since becoming an NHL regular in 2005-06, he's missed 77 games,
though 31 of them came in the lockout-shortened 2013 season. That's
really not that bad, so any concerns there are at least a little
overblown. But at the same time, it's very fair to ask whether Kesler
has already begun his decline by any measure.
And I guess if you're going to
decline, being a guy who can still reliably post 45 or so points a
season is a good way to do it. Kesler averages that many over the last
two seasons. But he's soon to be 31 and going into a contract year, so
the question is why extend him now, and for this long? The price point
is inarguable: That's frankly less than what he'd be paid on the open
market. But at the same time, it's the highest AAV he's ever gotten, and
Anaheim is paying for it after years of him being worse than he's ever
been in a number of ways.
But it does perhaps create unreasonable expectations that aren't dissimilar to what Chris Drury faced when he moved to Broadway from Buffalo.
Obviously the Drury contract was for considerably more money ($7.05 million in 2007-08, worth an insane 14 percent of the cap), so expectations in New York were even greater, but they are fairly similar players. We only have “advanced” stats going back to 2002 (and even those aren't great when you get beyond 2007-08), but the numbers show that while Drury had a better peak, the decline hit real hard right around his age-31 season.
Which, again, it happens, but
the real warning signs here are that Kesler had a difficult season by
his own standards despite the fact that he was facing some of the
easiest competition of his career. He wasn't used in the way that most
teams use their good-quality No. 2 center: To take on the heavyweights
on the other team and allow the more creative and offensively talented
players to play weaker competition (Boston, for example, does this with
Patrice Bergeron so David Krejci gets an easier ride).
Nope, Ryan Getzlaf plays the
really tough competition — and still annihilates them, because Getzlaf
is incredible — and gets the easier zone starts. Kesler gets the tougher
zone starts against weaker opponents. But his handling this season was
an outlier in comparison with his normal requirements.
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