Quoting: BCAPP
From what I see if he has a ppg season he still signs this deal. Its only if he has 100 pt season he gets more.
Your looking at things the wrong way. The reality is that if they go into next season and let him play it out, there is a very low chance he is getting less than 8 million, so why play it out?
The internal salary structure is a big influence on what players on the same team ask for. It is why Marner wanted so much after Matthews got paid. Josh Norris got a shade under 8 million for 35 goals and 55 points in 66 games. Norris also doesn't have the pedigree and ceiling that Stutzle is projected to have. I'd imagine if Stutzle goes PPG, he is asking for a 5-6 year term, or some sort of consolation to get down to 8.35M. Just based on how internal comparisons are going to effect negotiations, the Senators were never getting him for less than 8 million because he is ahead of Norris in the pecking order. So it makes no sense to risk going into the season, and giving him a chance to increase his value.
You also have to factor in the dynamic of how the Senators team works. They are currently a budget team, with a budget somewhere around 75 million. That means, they only care about the yearly salary, not the cap hit. Stutzle makes an average of 5.75M on the first two years of the extension. That's similar to what he would cost if they bridged him. If the Senators fortunes change, and they become a cap team within the next 3-4 seasons, this contract functions like signing Stutzle to a 2 year 5.75M bridge deal, and then a 6 year 8.35M ARB RFA+UFA year deal. With escrow projected to be paid back within 3 years, if he is a 70+ point first line center, he would get a lot more than 8.35M after a 2 year bridge deal.
This is the kind of contract where everything would have to go wrong for it not to work out for the Senators. The worst realistic scenario is that it is just alright value. The only slight on this contract is that people feel the Senators should have received a greater discount for taking the risk on Stutzle and signing early. The reality is, the player is taking a much greater risk here, and I think he will quickly regret not going with a bridge when 3-4 years from now we see what his contemporaries who didn't get locked in are getting under the new cap ceiling after escrow is paid back.
Salaries are going to escalate dramatically 3-4 years from now, starting with Matthews getting max (probably from Arizona lol) and everybody else getting big deals (relative to their position) as the cap ceiling approaches 100M after escrow is paid back. The projection for the cap before COVID was as high as 88.5M. That was before the new US TV deal. If not for COVID, we'd be close to 100M right now.