The Coyotes have signed centre Nick Schmaltz to a seven year contract extension worth $5.85 million annually.
The 23 year old former 2014 20th overall pick was acquired from the Blackhawks earlier in the year for Dylan Strome and Brandan Perlini.
The trade sucked.
The Coyotes were not giving Dylan Strome any chance to play - they had him in on the fourth line, playing with losers, and despite that, he was putting up half-decent numbers anyway.
Rick Tocchet wouldn't give Strome the time of day, for whatever reason. Then Coyotes GM John Chayka made the classic mistake of choosing a coach over a talented player, and he traded him to Chicago.
Strome has gone on to find instant chemistry with Alex Debrincat, and has scored 45 points in 54 games since the trade.
6'3 #1 centres don't grow on trees. This was a bad trade, made for bad reasons and it will haunt the Coyotes for years.
He scored 14 points in 17 games when he was acquired, before going down with a season ending injury.
A lot of people are going to say this is too long and too much money.
Those people are wrong, because they don't understand how contracts work in a salary cap league.
You cannot build a winning team by paying players what they are worth. In the NHL, for years and years, players were overpaid based on their previous accomplishments.
After a decade with a salary cap, teams have learned that it is smarter to give players term, and more money than they may currently be worth, in a gamble to eventually get them on value contacts.
If you're a team like the Coyotes, who may always have an internal salary cap lower than the actual one, this becomes doubly important.
The Coyotes have already done this with Christian Dvorak. He isn't worth $4.5 right now, but they are betting he will be, and they've locked him up for his entire prime.
It's a bet you only have to win half the time to pay off, because NHL GMs are generally so incompetent that almost no contract is unmovable.
The crazy thing about Dvorak is that with gambling and expansion coming, the NHL's salary cap is going to skyrocket, and he's going to be dirt-cheap.
Same thing with Schmaltz. If he's anything close to a point per game player, this is going to be a massive bargain. Even if it is technically an overpayment today.
If you give Schmaltz a two-year extension worth $3 million each year, it's more in line with his value. The problem is, if he scores 90 point next year, you now have to extend him for $8 or $9 million annually.
But if Schmaltz comes anywhere close to being what a $6 million dollar contract is worth right now, it will be a bargain when the cap goes up. All he really has to do to be worth this contract is be a half-decent #2 centre, and anything beyond that will represent huge savings for the Coyotes.
This contract will take him until his age 30 season. It encompasses his entire prime, if he scores at the .9 ppg rate that he did this season it is already a fairly reasonable deal and has a very good chance of being the kind of super-value deal that the Leafs currently have Nazem Kadri on.
There is no real down side to this deal, because in three years, $6 million will be a figure that players who score less than Schmaltz did this year will sign.
This is a great move for the Coyotes because there's little to no risk and the potential for a high reward.