Joined: Jul. 2018
Posts: 349
Likes: 246
It's hard to call it a "bad" deal, I don't see Pulock failing to live up to it, it's more that some bad cap management put the Islanders in a position where they couldn't offer the AAV necessary to get some term. They can likely make an appropriate offer to Pulock at the end of this deal, but they took on a significant risk of the player walking away all to save a few dollars now, which is not a good look.
Overall, I still would say this is a "good contract". The Islanders are going to get more than $5M worth of defensemen from Pulock over the next two years, and if a player doesn't want to sign for longer than his RFA term, teams don't have a lot of recourse, so if this was what Pulock wanted, Lou didn't really mess up. That being said, the reality is the Islanders weren't in a position to offer more term and AAV to get him locked up, and putting the team in that position with other bad deals is the real problem here.