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Scariest contracts in the National Hockey League? Jeff Skinner, Sergei Bobrovsky, Brent Seabrook and Justin Faulk

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Some fans of the Edmonton Oilers like to complain about the extra one or two million paid annually to players like Mike Smith, Mikko Koskinen, Zack Kassian, Alex Chiasson and Kris Russell, money these fans believe is over and above the true value of such players.

Whether these are fair complaints or not (and some of them are and some of aren’t), the fact is that Edmonton fans have little to complain about compared to fans in Buffalo, Florida, Chicago and St. Louis.

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When we look at the scariest contracts in the NHL, no Oilers players is on the 2020 list, save for James Neal, who signed his five-year deal in Calgary. Neal also had something of a bounce back season in 2019-20, scoring at near peak levels. Whether or not Neal can keep that up is another question, which is why he’s on the list. He’s being paid like a winger expected to score like a first or second liner at his peak, but he’s not close to that in terms of his even strength production.

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This year he ranks 16th on the list of scariest contracts in the National Hockey League.

The other Oilers connections here are sixth ranked Milan Lucic, who was a Peter Chiarelli signing in Edmonton on that infamous day of July 1, 2016, when a handful of scary contracts were handed out, with underachievers Lucic, Louie Eriksson, Andrew Ladd, Frans Nielsen, Kyle Okposo and David Backes all inking major deals.

Nielsen was signed in Detroit by current Oilers GM Ken Holland, who we can hope learned his lesson, though there’s a rumour that Holland just offered goalie Jacob Markstrom a seven year, $35 million deal.

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Perhaps the Markstrom deal will work out, of course. Maybe he won’t be on this list in years to come, and neither will big name, big dollar and big term signings like Josh Anderson and Torey Krug.

It should be noted that there’s a difference between a terrible NHLer and an NHLer with a scary contract. An average player with superstar pay and term has a scary contract. A great player paid like a strong or average player has a good-to-great deal. In the world of the hard-capped NHL, players are no longer rated mainly on performance, but on their performance versus their contract. Suddenly what a player gets paid isn’t just a matter between him and his owner, it’s of great interest to all fans worried about the fortunes of his team.

As for the top of the list this year, here’s my take on the very scariest of deals (with all contract numbers courtesy of CapFriendly.com):

  • Jeff Skinner. Fresh off a 40-goal season in 2018-19, as well as a career high 14.9 shooting percentage, Skinner got a new deal in Buffalo for eight years at $9 million per. It was an astonishing amount for an up-and-down sniping winger. This year, in 59 games, Skinner shot 7.7 per cent and scored 14 goals. His points per game slipped from 0.77 to 0.39. He will be 28 this year, still in his shooting prime, so perhaps he can rebound. He’s certainly had bounce back years in the past. But that contract is looking like an absolute killer. It’s already proved to be the death knell for former Buffalo GM Jason Botterill.
  • Sergei Bobrovsky. At age 28, Bobrovsky had a league best .931 save percentage. He followed that up with save percentages of .921 and .913 the following two seasons. And the Florida Panthers followed all that up last July by giving Bobrovsky a seven-year deal at $10 million per. In his first season in Florida, Bobrovsky played 50 games but had just a .900 save percentage, carrying on with the downward trend in his career. Can he again be the Bob of 2016-17? Hmm. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that GM Dale Tallon, like Botterill, lost his job this year.
  • Brent Seabrook. Seabrook’s eight year, $6.8 million per deal kicked in 2016-17. Since that time, his time-on-ice has gone from 21:54, about where it was when he was one of the NHL’s top two-way d-men, to 18:09, roughly third-pairing minutes. Seabrook played just 32 games last year and scored just four points. He’s got four more years on his deal. Ouch.
  • Justin Faulk. Faulk’s new seven year deal at $6.5 million per kicks in this year, but it’s already been a kick in the pants to the St. Louis franchise. It’s not a leap to suggest that when St. Louis signed Faulk in September 2019 to his big new deal, the move triggered a chain of events culminating in star d-man Alex Pietrangelo leaving the Blues for the Vegas Golden Knights. What do the Blues get in Faulk? In his first year in St. Louis, after inking that big deal, he scored 16 points in 69 games, playing 20:34 per game. Maybe his opportunity will increase with Pietrangelo gone. Maybe.
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Also new to the list is P.K. Subban. Why him? Did he not crush it in the first years of his contract? Yes. But he’s paid $9 million per year, superstar money, but for the past two years he’s been just an average player, and he wasn’t even that last season, putting up just 18 points in 68 games for New Jersey and clocking in at -21 goals plus-minus. Injury has taken away much of his dazzle and he’s got two more years left on his contract. Credit to Subban for his good-to-great performance in the first four years of the deal, but woe to the team that has him in the final four years, unless he can somehow regain his health and his “A’ game.

These aren’t the only iffy-to-bad contracts handed out since the 2012 lock-out. Here’s 30 more deals, which have now run their course, that didn’t go well.

Ken Holland is in the middle of two of them, paying far too much for Justin Abdelkader and Stephen Weiss.

At the Cult

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