What's with all the 5-year deals being signed?

Answer 1

Well, as much as the excitment of free agency keeps us fans tuned in during the off season, uncertainty sucks. A business, which is what pro hockey is, needs to have a solid plan to work from. Keeping your top guys happy and playing hockey instead of worrying about contracts certainly helps. The security everyone speaks of is for both sides. Changes lead to turmoil and anxiety, things good managers try to avoid for themselves and their players. Under the cap system it makes sense to make a solid idea of your pay out numbers well into thefuture so you don't run the risk of what happened to the devils last year. That made Leaping Lou look like a dummy.

Answer 2

Teams are trying to avoid annual salary escalation and players are looking to secure financial certainty.

Just look at the example of Scott Gomez. A year ago, he was awarded $5M through arbitration and the Devils begrudgingly accepted the terms due to a lack of alternatives at the time. Had NJ proactively put forth a multiple year (3-5) offer for $6M in front of Gomez at that time, he might still be in a Devil uniform as opposed to pulling $7M from their cross-tunnel rivals 12 months later.

The same can be said about Briere's situation in Buffalo. The Sabres waited too long to see how their asset would pan out after arbitration and the gamble to 'wait and see' clearly failed.

Without the use of long-term enticement, teams would have to run their clubs like collegiate squads, expecting an annual roster turnover of 20% or more. That would cause too much roster instability across the league and would also result in untenable annual leaps in payroll numbers.

By the same token, players and agents, particularly ones in free agency, are not going to foolishly risk re-entering the FA pool in 2-3 years when given the option to lock down lucrative deals that span 5 or more years. The financial security and stability is too great to walk from in those circumstances.

Answer 3

With the salary cap, the maximum salary can only go so high. You don't want one player to be earning 25 percent of the entire cap. So teams have to be creative to attract players. A long-term deal is one way to do that.

Daniel Briere, for example, agreed to an eighth year on his deal in order to spread out the salary cap hit. Each year will cost as $6.5 million, although the contract is said to be more front-loaded than that. So if the Flyers want to buy out the last couple of years, it will cost them two-thirds of a much smaller number (the actual salary, and not the cap figure) to do that.

Answer 4

Job security is a concern of every person in the world, including athletes. They don't want to be moving around every couple of years. They want big bucks and a place to go home to, not a hotel or cheap apartment because they never know when they're heading to a new team.

All the analysts were saying that teams were not fighting over the amount they were willing to pay the free agents, but for how long. Job security means more than bucks sometimes.

Answer 5

with the salary cap, the teams try to extend the contracts, then they back load them to get under the cap this year and hope it keeps going up every year so they can stay under it or they will have to trade the player to get rid of the last year or two of the contract

Answer 6

For the player it is security.

For the team its smart cause in 2 or 3 years the same player will cost even more. So its smart for them.