Long-term free agent contracts usually end poorly: Part 2

Sign a player in unrestricted free agency for more than five years at your own risk. It usually goes poorly.

The NHL’s free agent signing period officially opens on Wednesday, and it is an especially grim collection of players hitting the open market. Even by NHL free agency standards.

That lack of top-end talent, combined with a rapidly increasing salary cap, is going to make the next week a potential minefield for teams and general managers to navigate, and there’s a good chance a lot of bad mistakes are going to get made.

That may have already started with the Toronto Maple Leafs trading for Darren Raddysh’s free agent rights and signing him to an eight-year contract extension, and the Washington Capitals doing the same with forward Alex Tuch.

They were supposed to be the two best players remaining on the open market, and now they are already off of it.

In the short-term, I don’t hate either deal for either team because they both fill big needs and should at least give their new teams a few years of strong hockey. I’m not sure Raddysh is going to move the needle a ton for Toronto, and neither contract is likely to age well over the duration of them, but I can see the vision in both spots.

The Capitals needed more goal-scoring in their top-six. The Maple Leafs needed a top-four defenseman and somebody that can help the power play.

For now, both teams got it.

It’s just matter of whether or not those contracts age like milk or wine.

Given the recent history of long-term contracts in free agency, there’s a good chance it’s the former.

Back when I was covering the NHL for NBC Sports, I wrote this about long-term free agent contracts and how they typically result in a trade or a buyout. Because that article was written SEVEN YEARS AGO (what in the actual the hell) I thought it would be worth revisiting with some more recent free agent signings.

They did not turn out much better.

For this date range I looked at UFA contracts between the 2018 and 2022 offseasons that were five years or more in length, and what happened with the player by the end of that contract. Did they stay with the team the entire time? Did they get traded? Did they get bought out? Are they still currently with the team?

This is only looking at UFA signings. It is not taking into account RFA contracts or players re-signing with their teams.

In total, there were 26 contracts that fit the criteria.

Out of that group, only six players played out the entire contract with the team that signed it (so far), and only four still remain with the team that signed it. And that number could still drop.

At best it would only a 38 percent success rate of the player actually finishing the contract with the same team.

That is not great, though it is a little bit higher than the original look I did several years back.

Let’s look into it a little more and talk a little more about it.