If you don’t sign on day 1 of UFA, your chances of getting max term and big money gradually decrease every day after. Teams make other plans. Either Klingberg’s agent gave him bad advice, or Klingberg thought he was much more valuable than he is. Everyone knows he’s on the Seabrook/Subban path. No team wants to be saddled with one of those contracts with 3-4 years remaining. They almost always go bad. The list is a mile long. He’s gonna be kicking himself for passing on 5x6 if it was even on the table.

Great signing by the Ducks. Bad signing by the player.

But…. How does this effect Toronto?

Not really, he gets to live in Southern California until March then go to a contender

So Anaheim basically traded Hampus Lindholm for:

- 2017 1st round pick (#18 - Urho Vaakanainen)
- 2022 1st round pick (#22 - Nathan Gaucher)
- 2023 2nd round pick
- 2024 2nd round pick
- John Klingberg

Not a bad outcome for the Mallards.

The perception on Hall had taken a nose dive by the time he hit free agency.

The pandemic hurt everybody who was a UFA, but if he was perceived as a superstar, someone would have found a way to give him a big 7 year 60-70 million dollar contract. Which is what Vegas did for Pietrangelo, and Vegas was one of the teams with the least cap flexibility in the league.

It's similar to Gaudreau this year. We're Gaudreau's options more limited due to the cap that they would otherwise be if we were at 90-100 million for the cap? Yes, of course. But Gaudreau is seen as a superstar so more than one team made a play for him at superstar money.

Hall and Klingberg weren't seen as superstars anymore. Hall hit free agency 2 years too late, and it likely cost him 10s of millions of dollars since he effectively got 6.4M over 5 seasons when he probably expected at worst 8M x 7 and at best 11.5 x 7 ala Panarin.

Both are seen as top 6/top 4 but peaked at the wrong time to cash in as a UFA, and signed a 1 year deal in hopes of having a bounce back season. Odds are, whatever Klingberg signs for next year will be worse than what he could have got long term from Dallas or this off season.

Pretty solid overall.

Both parts are true. People thought Hall and Pietro were both going to get 10-11 for 7-8 years. Hall's value dropped, Pietro's didn't. Hall got 8 mil x1 year and Pietro got 8.8*7.

Without the pandemic Pietro would have gotten another mil. Hall it's hard to say, but I think both his play and the pandemic contributed

The ol’ Taylor Hall maneuver. Nice.

Good signing on a one year flyer.

that no trade list provision makes this deal worse for the team. Even with 50% retained at the TDL..if he doesnt have a good year- there might not be many bidders.

He’s probably getting flipped at the deadline since it’s only a one year deal

Normally I just answer these based on whether or not I think the player will deliver more in value to the team than the cap hit costs them. I would say that is a fair for any deal where the player is very likely to be worth more than they are being paid. There is very little argument to where it can be a bad idea to sign a player who is willing to accept less than they are worth, so that works pretty cleanly in those cases. However I do think in cases where it's borderline or possibly unlikely the player is worth the value, I think it's fair to consider the context and overall strategy of the team, and this is one of those cases.

I think it's actually pretty likely John Klingberg isn't a top pairing D anymore, so there is a good chance he doesn't deliver $7M in value to Anaheim next year, since you expect top pairing quality for $7M. However Anaheim wants to make a bit of a push toward playoff contention, and wants to insulate their young stars. If Klingberg helps this team get to the playoffs, then regardless of whether or not he was worth $7M, it's worthwhile since Anaheim had nothing better to do with that cap space for just 1 year. If they don't, and they flip him at the deadline for any asset what so ever, they basically just bought a pick or prospect for nothing but cash, while getting a veteran presence to help mentor some of their younger players for part of the season. The risk is virtually 0, and the rewards, while likely modest, are still worth the gamble, and they literally had nothing else they could really do with that cap space for just a year. They probably couldn't commit to using the space to take on multi-year cap dumps, so I think this is a good bet.

Even when this type of gamble doesn't work, similar to Hall in Buffalo, it still kind of worked because Buffalo managed to get a Hall for part of a year and a 2nd, which is still better than just sitting on the cap space.

So it's an easy win for a team still working its way out of a rebuild, and the player gets paid well and a chance to prove he is worthy of a longer commitment. I am honestly not sure why we don't see more of this in the NHL.

He's probably the best of those four, but having him as your most defensively responsible blue liner is far from ideal.