Quoting: Luguber
Seems like a perfectly reasonable deal to me.
I believe that people who have actually watched Islanders games since Barzal came in to the league tend to vote yes, to a greater extent than people who haven't watched him much, on this beeing a good contract.
In the landscape of the NHL, the deal is too high, but people need to understand that level of importance to the team factors into deals. It's why Brady Tkachuk got what he did, and why Horvat is asking for quite a bit from the Canucks.
Ultimately, Barzal has lead the Islanders in scoring every full season of his career. Even if he has not reached the ceiling set in his rookie year, he has been their best offensive player. He is their biggest star. If he is on a team with a different makeup, where he is the 3rd or 4th star, he gets 8M not 9M. That is where level of importance factors in. Because he is the Islanders best and most important offensive star, he is in a position to get a premium.
I don't think it's a good contract, but letting Barzal walk would be much worse than overpaying by 1M per season to keep him. It's unlikely the contract will ever be that bad, especially with the cap going up. Unless people have some reason to project a major decline in Barzal's play, I wouldn't be too concerned.
People are over dramatic about contracts. Most contracts end up falling in the same ballpark, and just like there aren't that many steals, there aren't that many truly bad contracts. Usually, it's the player who was signed for 3.5M to be a veteran third liner who regresses to an AHL player that hurts teams more than the 70 point forward who maybe should have been paid 500k-1M less, but still brings a 1st liner performance.
There is a pretty clear understanding between the star players and the teams that the cap is going to shoot up over the next 3-4 seasons. We've seen the result, where roughly 8 million seems to be the new floor for stars. No star is signing long term for less, because they know the cap is going to go up big time, so there is more incentive than ever to take a shorter term deal. Teams aren't getting many discounts on stars right now because of that.