Let's take a little trip into the not-so-way-back machine. The year is 2006, a few weeks before the start of the '06-'07 season, and goaltender Rick DiPietro is entering into a pact with Garth Snow and the New York Islanders that would pay him $4.5 million per year. Doesn't sound too crazy does it? He had been playing with the big club since 2000 and was steadily becoming a serviceable netminder at 25 years of age. One figures the Islanders wanted to pay him what they felt he was worth to the organisation and solidify him as the present and future of the team's crease.
But wait! While a $4.5 million cap hit doesn't make you bat an eyelash, the 15-year term to the deal might seem a little strange. It was certainly the first of this magnitude and especially unheard of for a goaltender. Even Evgeni Nabakov, unquestioned elite starter in San Jose, and Martin-freaking-Brodeur, both of whom had signed the same year, couldn't wrangle more than 4 and 6 years, respectively, from their owners.
In fact by the time 2008 rolled around, DiPietro (who was about to be beaten senseless by the chronic injury stick) and Brodeur were two of four goaltenders, joining Henrik Lundqvist and Marc-Andre Fleury, with contracts longer than four years. 2008 was also the same year that contracts across the league started to cross over from reasonable to ridiculous as Mike Richards' 12-year dandy from the Flyers was about to kick in and Alex Ovechkin was toe-deep with Washington for 13 years. Still, while top-flight forwards were settling in to life-long deals, goaltenders remained absent on the longest-term list save for the current company.
And then it happened. Pretty much as soon as he could, Roberto Luongo put his signature on a 12-year, $64 million extension with Vancouver that would start with a $10 million salary in 2010-11 and significantly taper off in real dollars by its conclusion in 2021-22. This was all occurring as DiPietro's deal was turning into a cautionary tale seeing as he played 5 games in 2008-09 and would prove to see only 45 more NHL games in 4 seasons before his buyout this past summer. Suffice it to say Bobby Lu would see his fair share of controversy every time a puck trickled past him.
Back to the matter at hand, however, I would offer that it is the Luongo contract that really started to alter the market for goaltenders in coming years. While the ink had long-dried on Ryan Miller's 5-year deal with Buffalo and Cam Ward was about to get a 6-year vote of confidence from Carolina the same month as Luongo, any other signing in net didn't venture outside the 4-year gold standard for number 1's around the league.
No, no, this was on the horizon. Ilya Bryzgalov hit free-agency in the 2011 offseason and pulled in a 9-year, $51 million award with Philadelphia. To start 2012, Pekka Rinne of Nashville was looking at a 7-year, $7 million per deal, Carey Price of Montreal hit the 6-year, $6.5 million per mark, and Ondrej Pavelec bafflingly would backstop Winnipeg for 5 years to the tune of $3.9 million per. The crown jewel of this offseason by far, however, was Jonathan Quick's 10-year, $58 million extension, which would kick in for 2013-14 following his Stanley Cup- and Conn Smythe-winning season.
The new Collective Bargaining Agreement changed things up a bit for contracts inked moving forward. To eliminate cap-circumvention, teams are only allowed to sign players for a maximum of 8 years if they resign their own player and 7 years if acquired through free-agency. As an added stipulation, contracts may not vary by more than 35% of the first-year's salary and the lowest year's salary may not be less than 50% of the highest year's salary.
Which brings us to why the next two offseasons could have major implications on the goaltender market in the following seasons. As it stands now, 9 established starters, 21 backups, and 2 players in what can be considered "time-shares" will see their contracts expire by the end of 2013-14. At the conclusion of 2014-15, 7 starters, 7 backups, and the complementary 2 timeshares will be seeking new contracts. Boston, Carolina, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Montreal, Minnesota, Nashville, Phoenix, Vancouver, and Winnipeg are presently the teams with futures certain in the crease beyond those years.
The names entering free-agency are probably the most fascinating aspect of these next few years. This year will see Henrik Lundqvist, Jonas Hiller, Jaroslav Halak, Ryan Miller, Semyon Varlamov, Steve Mason, James Reimer, and Devan Dubnyk expire. Next year eyes will turn to Antti Niemi, Craig Anderson, Marc-Andre Fleury, Sergei Bobrovsky, Ben Bishop, Cory Schneider, Braden Holtby, and Jonathan Bernier. We can expect many of these goaltenders to resign with their current clubs rather than test the market but with such high-profile names in the mix you can be sure that a good chunk of these will warrant long- to mid-length terms coupled with healthy dollar amounts.
Just for fun, let us assume that each of these goaltenders finds a home starting somewhere for a conservative 5 years. Also, let us assume for the sake of argument that Reimer and Bernier sort their situation out in Toronto and one goes on to ply his trade elsewhere. That makes 23 teams attached at the hip to their starting goaltender through the 2018-19 season.
Of course this won't be exactly how this scenario plays out but it does give an idea of how the market in goal will certainly be shrinking in a very short amount of time.
Part of what makes this a compelling scenario is how the cap ceiling will increase in the coming seasons. James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail ran projections of cap growth using 5% and 6% increases per season and, while we won't be making significant jumps in the near future, by 2016-17 we figure to be hitting the $70 million range, up from $64.3 million this year.
Of the 18 teams without a goaltender on the books long-term, 11 have less than $2 million in cap space through the end of this season. If Mirtle's numbers are accurate, I see many teams taking one of two options. The first would be signing a goaltender on for a short deal with the implication that they will get paid once there is more wiggle room under the cap. The second would be offering a contract worth 6, 7, or 8 years in order to keep the annual salary manageable.
Coming up, General Managers will need to strike a balance between rewarding past performance versus paying for potential. Of the 15 goaltenders with the top cap hits to start this year, only four have won the Stanley Cup(Corey Crawford's extension doesn't kick in until 2014-15 but he will likely take Brodeur's place on the list when the calendar turns over), another two have reached the Cup Final, and four have won the Vezina Trophy. The hardware helps bolster the resume but one thing that drives up the cost for a netminder is the body of work. For the 2012-13 season, the healthy majority of these players saw well over 30 starts or 62.5% of the season's games. Most can expect to see, if healthy, between 60 to 70 starts per 82 game season, a range of 73.17% to 85.37% of a team's games. With how contracts are starting to trend, $5 million per year on a 4-year deal isn't suitable for a reliable workhorse in the crease.
If this is where the market is headed for starters than one has to wonder what this means for second and third options. Backups are easily acquired for shorter contracts at smaller bounties and rarely have trouble finding work if they can keep the team they play for in the Win column. The delicate matter here is what kind of effect that can have on the development of younger players in the system.
Forwards and defencemen can quickly be inserted into the lineup once drafted because their minutes and matchups can be tailored to their individual skill-sets. But goaltenders are either in the crease until the game is over or until the ice crew shovels them from the rink balled up in the fetal position. Goaltenders need NHL starts to gain experience and confidence but with how psychologically invested the position is, cracking the lineup takes a lot of trust from the organisation.
Not all organisations have NHL-ready prospects in net but this season and last we are starting to see what the future holds for some. Jake Allen shined in St. Louis when former William Jennings trophy tandem Jaroslav Halak and Brian Elliot battled injuries and statistical regression. Robin Lehner's strong performances in Ottawa during Craig Andersen's injury helped make Ben Bishop expendable. Viktor Fasth's great start to his career coupled with Frederik Andersen's solid relief efforts in Anaheim, while also keeping in mind John Gibson waiting in the wings, might make incumbent Jonas Hiller a spare part as the season goes on. Eddie Lack in Vancouver and Alex Stalock in San Jose have assumed backup duties full-time while Jeff Zatkoff in Pittsburgh and Petr Mrazek in Detroit have received some looks due to injuries higher up.
So this is what we are looking at in the next few years and I assure you each and every GM has a plan for what they want to do. Things tend to be quiet in the early going of the season but I expect to see the moves starting to be made by the time 2014 comes into view. Miller's days are numbered in Buffalo and Hiller also proves to be an attractive target on the trade block. Lundqvist's lack of agreement with the Rangers raises some eyebrows and the Oilers will probably know whether Bryzgalov was a bust or if Dubnyk is the one to receive his walking papers.
Locking up a goaltender long-term gives a team foundation to build off of and, while it's not where every team is headed right now, the economics of the league are suggesting we will see more and more as time marches forward.
All contract information collected from www.capgeek.com.
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