[asilvermtzion]

Originally Posted by JeffR

First of all, keep in mind that the cap increases significantly in the first offseason, and by lesser amounts thereafter. Going by the guys you're mentioning, these are signed in the summer of 2015 or 16, when the cap is probably up around at least $72-73m. $5m in that environment is about 6.9% of a team's cap, equivalent to $4,4m against the 2013-14 cap. So that has to be considered when evaluating contracts:

Brodin: his deal works out to about $5.8m against the current cap. Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson got similar second contracts in real life. Brodin's game is different than theirs, but they're all former high first-rounders playing on their team's top pair in their contract years.

Girgensons: about $5.75m. High for his production, but Jeff Skinner did get a similar amount coming off a couple of seasons with similar point totals. And I think I was probably a little generous with his potential, that's bumping his price up a bit higher than it should be.

Gallagher: about $4.8m. Seems to have had an off-year, but his his 3-season production would right around where Ryan O'Reilly's was when he held out for $5m on his second deal.

Nichushkin: about $6.9m (maybe a little less, is this from a year later than the others?) Last season's production was about the same as Kopitar's when he got his $6.8m deal (at a time when the cap was only $56.8m, so that'd be equivalent to $7.8m now.)

I'm assuming these are all AI signings, too. The computer is aggressive about retaining it's RFA's now; there were previous complaints about how easily they let them get away, so they now try to get those guys re-signed quickly. A human player, if he's smart, can wait a little longer and let the demands decline a bit. I'm not saying the amounts are perfect, I can probably move the range down slightly, but they're in the right ballpark.

that makes total sense when its explained that way. thanks, jeff.

o'reilly was offer sheeted by the flames, thats the only reason his $ was what it was.