A little earlier today, a friend of mine texted me the news that Leon Draisaitl was about to sign an 8-year, $14 million per year contract with the Oilers. It wasn’t too long before the confirmation of that rumor hit the internet. I guess I am beginning to get desensitized to obscenely excessive dollars and terms contracts being thrown about that at first, I didn’t blink an eye. However, as I had time to ruminate on the latest long-term, big-money contract I began to realize how lucky we were here in Pittsburgh. For nearly two decades now, we Penguins’ fans have been treated to not one but two generational talents, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and one other almost certain Hall of Famer, Kris Letang, who always cared more about the team than their own dollar-driven egos.
These three amigos always negotiated their way to team friendly deals that allowed their GMs plenty of Cap Space to build a team around them. Not all the GMs took advantage of the wiggle room afforded them by those mega stars. All too often, they squandered the Cap space with no help fossils.
