As usual, the readers here never cease to amaze me with their knowledge and passion for the game. There were many great comments and I received quite a few interesting e-mails in regards to
Part One.
Last I checked we were up to
739 voters. I know the suspense is killing you so let’s see how you did and below you can find my extensive thoughts on the topic. Here’s how the players ranked:
Player B – 231 votes
Player H – 182 votes
Player D – 128 votes
Player G – 114 votes
Player E – 65 votes
Player F – 64 votes
Player J – 63 votes
Player A – 62 votes
Player C – 58 votes
Player I – 44 votes
If you said you would sign Player A to a 13-year extension, I couldn’t blame you.
Pavel Bure was one of the most talented and most explosive snipers I have ever seen. And how can you question a contract after back-to-back 60-goal seasons by the age of 22?
Unfortunately though, that deal wouldn’t have worked out so well. As we all know Bure struggled to stay healthy and while he did score at an incredible pace, Pavel would play just 478 games over the next nine seasons before retiring. He never did reach the 60-goal or 100-point marks after signing that huge extension although he did get close on three occasions (50+ goals, 90+ points). In five of those nine years Bure wouldn’t even reach 30-goals or 60-points.
Money well spent? Nope, even if you were able to insure those final years of the deal.
Next up was Player B. This should have been a no-brainer. With 161 goals, 357 points and a Hart Trophy to start his career, who wouldn’t have signed
Eric Lindros to a thirteen-year extension?
Once again though injuries played a huge factor here and the Lindros saga has been well documented. After starting his career with three 40+ goal seasons and 29-goals in the shortened year, Lindros would crack the 40-goal mark just once the rest of his career. That 98-99 season was also the only year that he would top 80-points. In five of the final six seasons he would play, Eric scored under 60-points and he potted less than 20-goals in each of his last four years.
Worth the thirteen-year extension? Absolutely not.
Now to Player C, a true competitor who was often called the best player in the world. If you signed
Peter Forsberg to a thirteen-year deal after his third season, you surely would have gotten some fantastic seasons out of him. He would miss major chunks of time early in the contract, including half of year three and all of year five, but when healthy he certainly did not disappoint. In years 1, 2, 4 and 6 he put up 89+ points. But since then Peter the Great has missed significant time due to injuries, hasn’t hit 20-goals in a season and put up 55, 75 and 55 points in three injury-riddled years. He may or may not come back for what would be year twelve of the lucrative contract.
Thirteen-years for Forsberg would have seemed like a fantastic idea back when he was in his third year but due to injuries you would have only gotten four seasons of over 60-games played and you’d still be paying him for this year and next at top dollar, until he actually decides to retire.
Player D is a fascinating one. If you would have signed a 22-year old
Jaromir Jagr to a thirteen-year contract you would have gotten eight seasons of 90+ points including four more Art Ross Trophies. Clearly you’d be thrilled with his eleven consecutive thirty-goal seasons after the deal was signed, including six years of forty-plus.
All-in-all, you couldn’t really ask for much more out of a player after signing a huge extension. But if memory serves correct, the Capitals actually signed Jaromir Jagr to the largest contract in NHL history at one time – 7-years, $77-million with an option for an eighth year – and they’re still paying him to this day, so I guess you really have to think about whether you would have still wanted Jagr after the age of 28 – up until that point he really was dominant. Also, under the current CBA you cannot take on salary from another team so it would have been interesting to see what would have happened to Jagr had he been stuck in Washington with an untradable contract.
Player E is
Alexander Ovechkin. His stats for this year were pro-rated to 82-games. We’ll talk in 2021 to see how well this deal truly worked out for Mr. Leonsis and the Washington Capitals. See below for my thoughts.
Player F also had his career knocked off track by injuries and never became as good as we all thought he was going to be. I think some people forget that
Paul Kariya had 50-goals in his second year and 44 in just 69 games in year three. He would go on to post just one more forty-goal season and he topped 86-points just once.
Kariya went on to have a very good career but not the elite-level, Hall of Fame career that he was on track to have. A thirteen year contract for Paul Kariya back in 1997 would have been a horrible deal, especially considering he’d go on to score just 9 more playoff goals after potting 7 in 11 games in the ’97 playoffs.
Player G is another star Russian – this one peaked in his fourth year before settling into more of a second-line center role.
Sergei Fedorov won the Hart Trophy with 56 goals and 120 points and surely would have been a candidate for a lifetime contract. But following that season Fedorov would never again hit 40 goals and only twice did he even break 80-points.
Fedorov certainly seemed like he was becoming a franchise player but he just never became one. Instead he would go on to be a consistent 30-goal, 65-point player – surely not the player that you envisioned when you offered him the thirteen-year extension.
Player H has had a stellar career and had you been patient with him
Teemu Selanne would have certainly bounced back strong at the end of the deal. After scoring 76, Selanne scored 47 over the next two years in 96 games. Very good stats but not quite what you had expected. Over the next four years he did not disappoint, scoring 190 goals and breaking 100-points three times, but I can’t imagine a General Manager would have been patient as his production slid, averaging just over 60 pts per year over a five-year period.
If you signed Teemu Selanne to a thirteen-year deal you would have gotten your money’s worth for about half of that contract and would have been quite disappointed through the other half.
Player I was on the verge of superstardom but ended up just a notch below.
Mats Sundin is probably as consistent is they come. After scoring 114 points, Mats would top 90-points just once. In every other year Sundin was between 72 and 85 points – 85, 47 (in 47 gms), 83, 74, 83, 73, 74, 80, 72, 75, 78 and 76.
If you would have signed Sundin after his huge season you would have been quite unhappy to learn that he’d never again reach those heights. Mats is a very good leader and a player that any team would want, even today at age 36. But he wouldn’t have been worth the weight of a huge 13-year deal paying him top dollar to produce 75-points a year.
Last on the list is another Russian sniper. Player J scored 76-goals at age 23, but
Alexander Mogilny had one fifty-goal year, one forty-goal year and three thirty-goal years in the next twelve. Six years he failed to even break 50-points.
If you would have signed Alexander Mogilny for thirteen-years after that season you would have been devastated (and currently unemployed).
So now that you know the names, how many of those guys would have been a smart investment for thirteen years?
Player B – 231 votes = Eric Lindros
Player H – 182 votes = Teemu Selanne
Player D – 128 votes = Jaromir Jagr
Player G – 114 votes = Sergei Fedorov
Player E – 65 votes = Alexander Ovechkin
Player F – 64 votes = Paul Kariya
Player J – 63 votes = Alexander Mogilny
Player A – 62 votes = Pavel Bure
Player C – 58 votes = Peter Forsberg
Player I – 44 votes = Mats Sundin
Here’s how each player's career progressed:
Might be a little hard to read so here’s a link to the full-sized chart:
NINE COMPARABLES
Age of last 80-point season:
Bure – 29
Lindros – 25
Forsberg – 29
Jagr – 34*
Kariya – 31*
Fedorov – 33*
Selanne – 36
Sundin – 30*
Mogilny - 31
Of these nine superstars, Only Jagr and Selanne had a 90-point season after the age of 29.
And herein lies this issue with this contract. This was originally a six-year, $54 million deal that became a 13-year, $124 million deal. Ted Leonsis was quoted in Pierre LeBrun’s column on sportsnet.ca explaining how it became a (much) longer deal:
"So the question was would you sign Alex Ovechkin for seven years for $10 million a year six years from now? And the answer is yes. So that's how we came to six years at $9 million and seven years at $10 million. That was the thought process."
In the summer of 2014, Ovechkin will be turning 29 and will have had nine years of experience in the league. Would I sign a 29-year player to a 7-year, $70 million deal? Absolutely not, and the stats back me up here.
Don’t forget this chart from the summer when I
looked at the top 100 goal scorers and point producers of all-time – a player’s production inevitably will decline quite drastically after the age of 29:
Wayne Gretzky had scored 60.7% of his career goals by age 25, while Mario had scored 52.7%.
Remember that all the players I’ve compared Ovechkin to were true superstars and many will inevitably end up in the Hall of Fame. We’re not talking about the Yashins of the world or the one-hit wonders. I strongly believe that he’s going to have a fantastic career and may end up in the Hall himself one day, say in 2028.
But at 29 Ovechkin will be past his prime, at least offensively. Let’s take a huge leap of faith and assume that AO will end up with career stats on par with Jari Kurri, putting up 600 goals in his career and landing in the top twenty all-time. That would give him more goals than players like Maurice Richard, Mike Bossy and Guy Lafleur. So let’s work through the numbers, making a couple more assumptions:
* To date #8 has 131 goals. Let’s assume he gets 60 this year, bringing him up to 158.
* Now over the next six years, say he averages 45-goals a season. There may be another year or two at 60-plus and a year or two with injuries, slumps, etc. That brings his total up to 428, very close to Kurri’s 441 at age 28 after nine seasons.
* So that takes us to 2014 and the final seven years on the deal. To get to 600 goals, Ovechkin only needs to average 25-goals a season – which is realistic when looking at the stats of the other superstars above towards the downside of their careers.
Would you pay $10 million a year for seven years for a player who will likely average (best-case scenario) 25-goals and 65-70 points?
Is it realistic to expect anything significantly better than those numbers over the term of the second leg of the contract?
Not in my opinion.
And remember that is the best-case scenario. When you look at the career arcs of players like Bure, Forsberg, Fedorov, Kariya, and most of the other players we’ve examined it’s easy to see how unlikely it is for a supremely talented player to challenge for 500 - let alone 600 goals - and how difficult it is to score consistently over a long period of time after the age of 29.
Injuries typically play a huge factor in a player’s career, especially one who plays a physical game like Ovechkin. Insurance will cover a career-ending injury (assuming the team insures the final seven years on the deal) but it won’t help with a career-altering injury. Five of the nine players that I looked at suffered significant injuries that prevented them from achieving their true potential. There are many other examples – guys like Mike Bossy and Cam Neely who were superstars that just couldn’t stay healthy. What are the odds that Ovechkin is healthy through most of this deal and scoring goals at the beginning, middle and end of the thirteen years? Of course we hope for the best but you can't simply expect it.
And I’m not buying the argument that due to a rising cap this deal will inevitably seem like a steal at some point, as players will rapidly exceed $9.5 mil per. Remember we’ve already come from the days when teams like Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Toronto were spending $60 mil+ - up to just under $80 mil for the Wings and Rangers just prior to the lockout. Even in those days the $10 million players were extremely rare. Going back ten seasons (disregarding front-loaded offer sheets to Sakic, Fedorov and Gratton) the highest paid players were Kariya and Lindros at $8.5 mil. The next season Kariya and Jagr jumped above $10 mil and Forsberg, Bure, Tkachuk and Lidstrom would be the league’s only other true $10 mil men. This season Gomez, Briere and Vanek will take home $10 mil (less taxes and escrow) but their averages over the term of their deals are substantially less.
Sure it’s quite possibly that the cap could go up to $60 mil in the next few years but even then it’s unlikely you’ll see many players eclipse Ovechkin’s $9.5 per over a long-term deal. Look no further than recent deals signed by Crosby, Iginla and Thornton who all left money on the table and signed for significantly less than the $10 mil per max that they could have demanded. This isn’t football, baseball or basketball – the days of the $12 mil player unlikely at best. As for the $15 mil player, well under the current CBA that would mean a cap of $75 mil, and a corresponding $59 mil floor and when that day comes we’ll be talking about a ten to twelve team league because the economics simply don’t add up – most markets couldn’t survive with a $59 mil floor today or ten years from now.
Lastly, a long-term deal like this extends far beyond the term of the next collective bargaining agreement. Is it really worth locking your team into an extraordinarily high contract in an environment of uncertainty? It’s not as if the team is getting a bargain on the dollar value in return for the lengthy term, as was the case with the widely criticized Dipietro deal. And if Ovechkin really does love Washington enough to sign a 13-year deal and if Washington really loves him enough to give him $124 million guaranteed, couldn’t the team and player continually work-out extensions/new deals like others have done in the past (Sakic, Brodeur, Yzerman, Modano, etc) after a long-term deal spanning six-to-eight years? What was the urgency to rush into a deal that simply didn’t make long-term financial sense for the franchise?
There are only two ways that this ends up being a good deal. The first is if the Capitals win the Stanley Cup sometime between now and 2021. If they do, there really is no price that you can put on that – although as it’s been well documented elsewhere OV will need a ton of help and a huge deal like this could make it difficult to add or retain the right pieces. The second way is if Alexander Ovechkin ends up being one of or close to the top 10 forwards of all time – a Gretzky, Lemieux, Messier, Howe, Yzerman, Bossy, Richard, Esposito or Sakic-type player whose value really can’t be measured. Of course the reason those players are so revered is that they not only produced like few in history have, but also because they were winners. So really this deal comes down to can Ovechkin win in Washington?
When Crosby signed, he agreed to a deal worth $8.7 mil per year, to match his jersey number.
For Ovechkin the maximum length contract I would have gone would be to match his number.
Eight years would have been good for both sides. Thirteen was far too much for the Caps.
Now this shouldn’t overshadow the fact that Alexander Ovechkin will now in all likelihood be in Washington for a very long time - and not in LA, New York, Toronto or Montreal. Like I said, that is great news for the city of Washington and Caps fans and I give a lot of credit to Ted Leonsis and George McPhee for convincing their superstar to stick around long-term. Let's be honest - the average fan could care less about how this deal will look in 2015. OV is staying and they are and should be thrilled.
Hockey isn’t a sport that relies very heavily on stats/trends/analysis in comparison to other professional sports. I don’t think we’re ever going to see a team commit to a ‘Moneypuck’ philosophy – and probably rightfully so.
But as long as teams continue to ignore the past and rely on emotion in making moves to appease their fans, they will inevitably continue to make deals that will hurt them in the future.
Danny –
[email protected] 
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