Barzal 8 yrs $73 million

[Brewin Flames]

New York Islanders, Mathew Barzal have 8-year, $73.2M deal

Mathew Barzal signed an eight-year extension that will keep the star forward with the New York Islanders.

The contract is worth $73.2 million, carrying an average annual value against the NHL salary cap of $9.15 million, his agent confirmed to ESPN's Emily Kaplan.

 

 

In six seasons with the team, Barzal has 311 points in 362 games, including 91 goals. He's a two-time NHL All-Star selection.

 

Barzal, 25, was drafted 16th overall by the Islanders in 2015 and won the Calder Trophy as the rookie of the year in 2017-18. Barzal's 85 points were the third most of any Islanders rookie behind Hall of Famers Bryan Trottier (95 points in 1975-76) and Mike Bossy (91 points in 1977-78).

 

His previous contract with the Islanders was signed in January 2021 and carried a cap hit of $7 million. Barzal was in the last year of that deal and was set to become a restricted free agent next summer before committing to this new contract.

 

With this re-signing, the Islanders now have $71.375 million dedicated to 17 players for the 2023-24 season, according to Cap Friendly. That season's salary cap will be $83.5 million. NHL teams have been guidance by the league that the cap is projected to rise as high as $88 million in 2024-25 and $92 million in 2025-26, as the NHL recovers from its COVID-19 pandemic financial hit.

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Brewin Flames

[radoran]

Remember when we lost a season and a half of hockey so the owners could force the players to stop the owners from making silly offers to the players?

 

That was nice.

 

I like Barzal fine, and "down the line" this $9M could look "fine" as the cap rises.

 

And I get locking young guys up to pay them for their primes.

 

But if every 20/70 guys is going to be making $9M, there were over 70 of them in the league in the last full season. In that same season there were 12 guys with a $9M+ cap hit and 25 with actual earnings of $9M or more.

 

"Fiscal responsibility"

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

9 minutes ago, radoran said:

Remember when we lost a season and a half of hockey so the owners could force the players to stop the owners from making silly offers to the players?

 

That was nice.

 

I like Barzal fine, and "down the line" this $9M could look "fine" as the cap rises.

 

And I get locking young guys up to pay them for their primes.

 

But if every 20/70 guys is going to be making $9M, there were over 70 of them in the league in the last full season. In that same season there were 12 guys with a $9M+ cap hit and 25 with actual earnings of $9M or more.

 

"Fiscal responsibility"

The Isles simply wanted to make sure that Barzal didn’t also end up in Toronto wearing Maple Leave pajamas.

 

They just CANT go through that trauma again…

 

[Math]

If this trend continues, any long-term extensions signed prior to 2020 will look like bargains. 

[thegx.ca]

2 hours ago, Math said:

If this trend continues, any long-term extensions signed prior to 2020 will look like bargains. 

Looks like that's where everything heading...NBA top players making closer to 50M/year...MLB 30M/year...the owners pretend to never be able to afford paying more yet I've never seen any owners doing anything else but keep being rich I got not sympathy for these owner hypocrites wanting salary caps instead of being responsible for their own budgets...

[IllaZilla]

14 hours ago, FireDillabaugh said:

This is Lamoriello overpaying a player, hoping that the coaching change to Lambert allows Barzal to earn his current contract and this raise in the future.  It's what Lou does.  It's bad for the league.  And, it will come back to bite them in the ass at a later date.

 

I could be wrong, but wasn't Lou one of the loudest voices in the room during the salary cap negotiations? And once the salary cap was in place proceeded to continue to offer ridiculous contracts to players (Kovalchuk)?

[J0e Th0rnton]

23 hours ago, radoran said:

Remember when we lost a season and a half of hockey so the owners could force the players to stop the owners from making silly offers to the players?

 

That was nice.

 

I like Barzal fine, and "down the line" this $9M could look "fine" as the cap rises.

 

And I get locking young guys up to pay them for their primes.

 

But if every 20/70 guys is going to be making $9M, there were over 70 of them in the league in the last full season. In that same season there were 12 guys with a $9M+ cap hit and 25 with actual earnings of $9M or more.

 

"Fiscal responsibility"

I'm not terribly worried about it.

 

Salaries in 2005 were back when minimum wage was like $7 here. Now minimum wage is near $14 an hour and the price of everything has doubled or more since 2005.

9 million in 2022 money is like 5 million in 2005 money. 

 

The salary cap more or less forces the frugal teams to meet a cap floor more than anything and hamstrings richer teams from just throwing $20million contracts at UFA's

 

Given that Gretzky was the leagues highest paid player in 1991 at 3 million a year, and less than 8 years later Theo fleury was making 8.5 million a year, I'd say Barzal making near Theo fleury 1999 money isn't the end of the world. All things considered

[radoran]

17 minutes ago, J0e Th0rnton said:

Salaries in 2005 were back when minimum wage was like $7 here. Now minimum wage is near $14 an hour and the price of everything has doubled or more since 2005.

9 million in 2022 money is like 5 million in 2005 money. 

 

The season I was referring to was 2018-19.

 

18 minutes ago, J0e Th0rnton said:

I'd say Barzal making near Theo fleury 1999 money isn't the end of the world. All things considered

 

Theo Fleury making $8.5M in 1999 is a primary reason why we lost a year and a half of hockey over the next decade...

 

And I get the idea of the cap setting a floor and limiting the "rich" teams from dominating free agency, but I'm more looking at the precedent/arbitration point of "this type" of player making $9M. When you're paying "good" players top money (Barzal will be making $600K more than Draisaitl for the next two years and is still ~10% of a $92M cap four years from now) it's not not a potential problem if not for this team rightnow but for the league overall.

 

The flip side argument would be that the Isles don't really have a big money player that they're going to "need" to sign in the next few years. They're pretty much an old bunch and they'll get some space by attrition. It's just that they're eating up that space by raising the price of every other player.

 

The next 25-year-old 20/70 guy is now going to be more to sign than Barzal.