Do Elias Pettersson and Jusse Saros have bad contracts? NHL Cap Court returns

Let’s do another round of Cap Court. You know the drill by now: Five players, five dicey contracts (from a team perspective), and five arguments over whether the deal is actually bad enough to be “bad”.

Today, we’ll cover a perplexing goaltender, a one-time sure thing who may have peaked as a rookie, and two players recently traded away by the Senators. But we’ll start with what I believe may be the single biggest contract in terms of total dollars that we’ve ever tackled in this column…

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Puck Soup: Almost there

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- One last tour around the league before the season begins on (checks notes) Friday?
- Mathew Barzal signs, Jason Robertson doesn't, Alex DeBrincat maybe does?
- The ads on the boards are animated now
- The Leafs experiment with Marner on defense
- Which 2022 draft picks might make opening night rosters?
- Over/unders on this year's top goal-scorers
- More nonsense from Hockey Canada, Cam Talbot is hurt, Who He Play For? and more...

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No, contracts won’t just expire in the middle of the playoffs. But what if they did?

Any chance of the NHL finishing the 2019-20 season revolves around the playoffs extending further into the summer than ever before. Some of the proposals being kicked around would go into August or even September, and even the best-case scenarios extend well into July.

That’s led to some fans asking a question: What happens to all those contracts that are set to expire on July 1?

After all, everyone knows that July 1 is the key date of the offseason; when expiring contracts officially terminate, multi-season deals roll over to the next year and the free agency market opens. What if all that happens while the NHL is still in the middle of the playoffs?

Well, as it turns out the answer isn’t all that exciting. Yes, the CBA defines the start of the league year as being July 1. But it also allows for a different date to be used, as long as the NHL and NHLPA agree. It’s right there on one of the agreement’s very first pages, where “league year” is defined as “July 1 of one calendar year to and including June 30 of the following calendar year or such other one year period to which the NHL and the NHLPA may agree.”

That makes it pretty clear that the actual year-end date is flexible. Having the two sides agree to push back the date presumably wouldn’t be all that hard, nor would it be unprecedented; it’s happened before due to lockouts, most recently in 2013 when free agency didn’t open until July 5.

So there you have it. Sorry for anyone who was rooting for Team Chaos, but this one is actually pretty simple. It’s even kind of boring. The NHL and NHLPA would just pick a new date in September or October or whenever made sense, and the new league year would start then.

(Editor’s note: Wow, it took you a month but you finally wrote something like a normal person. It’s a little bit shorter than usual, but otherwise nice work.)

BUT … WHAT IF THEY DIDN’T?

(Editor’s note: Oh lord.)

Look, I promised you things were going to get weird around here. Today, let’s ask the question: What if the NHL playoffs resumed, but the league and players didn’t push back the July 1 date? What if they decided not to or couldn’t agree or, with everything else going on, they just forgot? What kind of madness might ensue if the league year rolled over in the middle of a postseason?

Let’s figure it out, for all 18 teams still in the running for a playoff spot based on points or points percentage. We’ll imagine a world where the NHL regular season is declared over, and the playoffs start sometime in June. Then July 1 rolls around and … whoops.

This is so stupid. Let’s do it.

Teams in good shape

Tampa Bay Lightning

While they have nine players lining up for new deals, none of them are key pieces beyond Anthony Cirelli and maybe Kevin Shattenkirk. The timing for Cirelli will be tricky since tradition dictates that young Lightning stars play hardball for weeks or months before caving and signing an embarrassingly team-friendly deal.

They’ll have the cap room to get something done, though, and can pick and choose which other pieces they feel they need based on how the playoffs are going. This whole forgotten contract deadline even makes Julien BriseBois look smart, since both of his big deadline pickups were signed through 2021.

Colorado Avalanche

They’ve got a dozen guys on expiring deals, which looks bad at first glance, but the only one who jumps out as a problem is Andre Burakovsky. He was their second-leading scorer among forwards this year, and he’d become a UFA. They’d definitely want to re-sign him, and they’d need to bring back most of their restricted free agents just so they could ice a full roster. But with lots of cap room already on the books and bad deals like Vladislav Namestnikov going away, they’d have more than enough space to get it all done.

Dallas Stars

All their key guys are locked in, and they have a ton of cap room to clean up any loose ends. Roope Hintz would need a new deal and Miro Heiskanen would want to talk extension, but that’s about it. Veteran Corey Perry would see his contract expire, but it’s the middle of the playoffs so he’d probably be suspended anyway, so no rush there.

Nashville Predators

Mikael Granlund, Craig Smith and Dan Hamhuis all hit UFA status. Granlund might be asked to take a pay cut from his $5.75 million cap hit, which would be an awkward conversation to have in the middle of a playoff series. Everyone else is locked up, though, and there’s enough cap room to patch up the bottom half of the blue line. And Roman Josi would probably be in a good mood on July 1 after that $11 million signing bonus hits his account. Breakfast is on the captain, boys.

Philadelphia Flyers

They’d have ten guys to re-sign, including UFAs Justin Braun and Brian Elliott, but overall the situation seems manageable. Carter Hart is eligible for an extension, which could be tricky. And I don’t know what you do with Nolan Patrick’s first post-ELC deal, if he’s even available to play.

Still, they could clear Radko Gudas off the books and would have room to bring guys back, and maybe even add somebody. My suggestion: Sign one of the Pittsburgh free agents to a mid-series deal just to get them to spill the Penguins’ game plan.

(Editor’s note: OK, that last part was weird but so far this hasn’t been as dumb as it could be …)

Hold on, I’m still warming up.

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Islander fans think the hockey world isn't giving their team enough credit. Do they have a case?

Islander​ fans don’t seem​ to​ be​ an​ especially​ friendly​ bunch these​ days.

Not all of​ them, of course.​ But​ a lot of them.​​ As they see it, their team isn’t getting enough attention from the rest of the hockey world, and they’re eager to let you know about it. If you happen to cross paths with an Islander fan on social media, or in a hockey forum, or (lord help you) in the comment section of a power rankings post somewhere, there’s a good chance that they’re coming out swinging. The topic doesn’t even have to have anything to do with them. These days, I’m pretty sure you could do a piece about the best moments of the Original Six era and a horde of angry Islander fans would show up demanding to know why they weren’t mentioned.

So what’s going on here? There are a couple of possibilities. The first is that Islander fans are just being typical sports fan babies, sulking because their middle-of-the-road team isn’t getting the credit that their homer-tinted glasses tell them they deserve even as everybody else rolls their eyes.

The second possibility is that, uh, they might be right.

I mean, we can’t rule it out, can we? As best I can tell, Islander fans are mainly mad at some combination of the NHL media, self-professed hockey experts and other fans in general. And let’s face it, those three groups are wrong about things all the time. I know I am. (Seriously, check out this masterpiece.) Therefore, I have to at least consider the possibility that Islander fans are right and the majority of us are wrong.

Still, I’m not sold. Let’s break down both sides of the argument, and see if we can separate the typical hockey homerism from the legitimate complaints. Are the Islander fans right and the hockey world is sleeping on a major story?

Islander fans might be right because: The Islanders have been really good this year. They’d won six straight before the streak was snapped on Tuesday and are on pace for 100 points at the midway mark. That would be up there with the best years the franchise has posted since the glory days of the early 80s, and even factoring in loser-point inflation, it’s an impressive total that has them in the thick of the Metro race.

The Islanders’ story isn’t just about points, either. Last year, they couldn’t keep the puck out of their own net, finishing dead last in goals allowed. This year, they’ve spent time leading the league in that category. That’s a remarkable turnaround that would deserve to be a major story even if it wasn’t being reflected in wins and losses (which it is).

And yet, other teams around them in the standings seem to get more buzz. The Penguins’ recent eight-game winning streak had everyone ready to declare them an elite team again, but the Islanders are right behind them, with games in hand. The Sabres were treated like big news when they were hot earlier in the year, the Canadiens are considered a great turnaround story. While teams like the Jets and Maple Leafs get anointed as Cup contenders even though they’re only a few wins head of New York.

Fair’s fair. Where’s the Islanders love?

Islander fans might be wrong because: Yes, they’ve been good this year. But this is the NHL in the age of parity and just being “good” doesn’t make you some sort of major story. Even after winning six straight, the Islanders are sitting tied for 14th in the overall standings, so they’re firmly in the middle of the pack. They’ve spent most of the streak barely holding down a wildcard spot and the Canadiens knocked them out of that on Tuesday. The Islanders do have games in hand on most of the teams around them, so you could say that they’re still a playoff team based on points percentage, but even then it’s not by much.

And again, that’s after a major winning streak, which we just saw the end of. Even at their apparent peak, the Islanders were merely a reasonably good team in a league clogged with them. That’s a nice story. It’s not something that national media is going to give front-page coverage too.

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