Justin Schultz is coming up to the end of his first contract in the NHL and will be an RFA in the summer. The question will be how much money should he get? The Cap is going up, he plays a prominent role on the club, and is seen as having a high upper end to his potential development. That said, he is having a worse year offensively in his sophomore season and he is not great in his own zone.
I wanted to first see who he compared to so I ran some numbers through the Player Season Finder and came up with this for the criteria being that the player had to be between 20-24, played between 60-162 games, had a points per game between 0.45-0.55, and played after 1995. This is what I got.
It’s not a bad list of names at all and Schultz has a higher PPG than all but Marcus Ragnarsson who never came close to having a season like his 39 point rookie year ever again in his 9 year career. It is an oddity that half the members of that list played for the Oilers at one time, but that’s no more than an interesting coincidence. Schultz’ agent would look at that list and focus on Mironov, Visnovsky, and Timonen, but the others on the list will no doubt be the focus of the Oiler camp. A good early start does not guarantee success at all.
The warts in Schultz’ game are noticeable and sometimes grotesque. Away from the puck he isn’t exactly shutting anybody down. His traditional +/- numbers are among the worst for the Defense and his Corsi % is behind Belov and Petry. Simply put, not enough good things are happening when he’s on the ice. These are things, however, that you would expect from someone who has played just now the equivalent of a single NHL season. Schultz the Younger has a lot to learn about playing in the NHL.
So what is going to happen with his contract and the upcoming negotiations? Well the Oilers played hardball once before with Petry, locking him up for relatively cheap after a brief time of playing well so it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities that they do it again with Schultz. Despite the fact that he’s a part of the young core group, that 6M deal that was tailor made for Hall, Eberle, and Nuge should be off the table completely for the only Defenseman in the group. Negotiations don’t have to be cruel but they should be realistic. The tough thing with realistic is that Offensive Defensemen will get paid.
But what about PK Subban’s bridge contract (2.87M)? There’s an Offensive Defenseman who was saddled down to an inexpensive contract as an RFA. It’s true, he was. It’s also true that he signed that deal when the Cap was going down after a lockout. If the Cap was going to go up as it is going to do this coming year then I don’t think he would have been forced to accept so little. Add into it the money lost due to a shortened year and Subban had little choice. Of course now he’s likely going to get a mountain of cash anyway. If the Oil gave Schultz the EXACT same contract he would be only 1 year removed from UFA status when it ended, giving up a lot of bargaining power to the player for just 2 years of service.
I think maybe the most recent contract that fits the bill here is Slava Voynov in LA. Voynov spent time in the AHL honing his craft and produced reasonably well in his first couple of seasons with Kings (but didn’t exactly go supernova) and immediately after his ELC ended was given a 6 year deal at 4.1 Million per year. Not too shabby for him, but something within 500K of that in either direction should be expected for Schultz. And given that the Cap is set to rise astronomically over the next few seasons, it’s likely to be on the higher end.
I would love if the Oilers signed Schultz to a shorter deal at less than 4 Million, but if he wants the safety of a long term deal then I expect it to fall closer to 4.5 and maybe even higher. I think it would be a bad idea to commit more than that based on what he has shown so far. That said, I don’t know how hard the Oilers want to fight about a “Bridge” deal for a player who is already clearly part of the core and going to be 24 this summer thus only 3 years removed from Unrestricted Free Agency. At the end of the day, we should all be prepared for Schultz getting paid very well despite all the problems with his game and the very small sample size we have.
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