Quoting: hanson493
Literally almost all of those named above have been injured or have a terrible injury history, okposo, concussions, callahan degenerative back, ladd fell off a little but hes also injured right now, filppula was on dominant lines in tampa. little is injured now but hes producing 40+ points still. hanzal injured, weiss sucks are we really putting him in this category, zajac is still fine. like idk coyles a different animal. i mean coyle had some terrible linemates in minnesota, he isnt having the greatest linemates this year but hes still on pace for 40 points bouncing around the lineup.
Again, this isn't saying Coyle isn't a decent player, but decent players don't make great bets as signings for Term with this percentage of the cap.
Signing a UFA is a bet on what kind of value you think you will get on the contract. When you go with a longer term, you should either be betting that A) the player will either likely stay at their current value, thus creating savings as the cap increases through cost certainty, or B) The additional years got the cap hit down so that the player can out perform their contract early, when the cap savings are more important, in exchange for being undervalued later.
Coyle certainly wasn't underpaid on this deal compared to what this type of player typically commands on the UFA market, so the extra years didn't seem to bring his cap hit down, and it has historically been a bad bet to go longer term on mid roster players unless you are getting a significant cap savings.
The Bruins have a great cap situation at the top of their roster. No team boasts as much value per dollar spent on their top 3 forwards as Boston does, no team is even remotely close. So they can afford this in the shorter term, but personally, I think this is the part of your roster where GMs need to be the most shrewd since this is the type of player that most often turns into the worst contracts in the league.