The worst contract in the NHL

This is not about one player. It is about a type of player.

When I say “worst contract” in the NHL I am not talking about any one individual player. At least not in this context for this article.

It is about a type of player. A mindset. An idea. An investment.

It is, more specifically, about the mid-level starting goalie on the mid-level contract.

You know exactly who I am talking about.

The goalie that has looked pretty good at times, and maybe had a few above average seasons throughout their career. Maybe at some random point they have had one truly outstanding season.

Not a game-stealer overall, but also not somebody that has really lost you a bunch of games. Just a capable goalie that is still a tier or two below the truly elite players at the position, and not somebody that you are sure is going to be a true difference-maker for your team.

They always end up with the exact same general type of contract: Five or six years at $20-30 million total (with about $4-6 million against the cap).

On the surface, it might not be a huge investment against the cap. Maybe you can talk yourself into it because there is nobody else really available that seems better. But there is arguably no more damaging contract in the NHL that is almost certain to let you down more than that player on that contract.

There are roughly 12 goalies that have signed contracts exactly like that over the past few years, and most of them have become a major problem for the team that signed them. So much so that several of them have already been dumped by the signing team in one way or another, or have left them stuck in no-win situations.

The goalies that have signed those deals: Jacob Markstrom, Jordan Binnington, Philipp Grubauer, Elviz Merzlikins, Tristan Jarry, Darcy Kuemper, Thatcher Demko, Robin Lehner, Jack Campbell, Joey Daccord, Ukko Pekka-Luukkonen and Joonas Korpisalo.

All of those goalies signed contracts that are either five or six years in length, and also had salary cap hits between $4 and $6 million per season. They were mostly mid-tier goalies in terms of performance and signed mid-tier contracts.

But how many goalies on that list are you particularly excited about? How many would you want on your team right now or into the future? How many of them actually continued that mid-tier level of play after signing those contracts?

The answer to all of those questions is not many.

This subject became an issue this week when the Pittsburgh Penguins placed one of the goalies on that list — Jarry — on waivers just two years into his contract.

I crunched some numbers and dug into it all a little further.

Let’s talk about it.