Quoting: Shibbal18
Eichel was a franchise player and captain
Skinner was coming off a 40g season, similar to Robertson
Thompson is a center coming off a 36g year
All the values are fine, the 1st 2 were also signed by Botterill, who just wasnt a good gm. There is no Buffalo tax. And if there was, its pretty clear Buffalo is loaded with talent, im sure it would nonexistent at this point anyway
Well which is it, was it a bad GM or were the contracts fine?
Eichel was good, but he hadn’t cracked 60 points when he signed the deal, nor had he had a point per game season. An 8x10 was a bit weird, and certainly a buffalo tax.
Everyone knew the skinner deal was an overpay the second it was signed. Sure, he had a 40 goal 63 point season, but prior he also had a lot of 20-something goal seasons, and his career high for points was 63. Does that scream a player that should take up 11.32% of the cap? If so, why doesn’t it indicate the same for Robertson?
It’s the reason that it was so important in the eichel trade to get a guy like tuch that had term. Because it usually cost above market value to get someone to stick around in buffalo beyond their RFA years.
This isn’t about the team, it’s about the city. Nothing personal against buffalo, but it’s just not the place that guys making $5M+ a year want to live. I’ve always enjoyed going to buffalo, but if I’m taking home $5M+ after taxes, I want to live either in a major city like chicago, New York, toronto or boston, or some place nice and warm like florida, California, nashville, Raleigh, dallas etc.