Daily Faceoff’s Scott Maxwell is not a fan of two of the Red Wings’ free agency contracts, suggesting that the signings of J.T. Compher and Justin Holl will age poorly:
J.T. Compher, Detroit Red Wings
Five years, $5.1 million AAV, 10-team no-trade clause
Look, I understand why this contract is what it is. I addressed it last month in my article predicting which players might get overpaid on the market. There weren’t a lot of quality centers in this year’s free agency class. It slightly improved from when I wrote that piece due to some of the buyouts, but even then it was still slim pickings. That alone was going to see Compher get an overpayment, nevermind the fact that he put up a career year and positioned himself as one of the best centers in that weak market. He’s a fine player, and if he can stay at the level he played at this past season, this contract won’t be that bad, although it’s still a big bet.
That almost convinced me to not include this contract, but what keeps it on the list is the fact that it just doesn’t make sense for Detroit. They made a similar signing last season with Andrew Copp, so while that gives them a reliable 1-2-3 punch down the middle with those two behind Dylan Larkin, neither is a strong No. 2 option. The back-and-forth decisions from the Red Wings also have me questioning the Yzerplan, as GM Steve Yzerman jumped the gun signing veterans who weren’t gamebreakers last season for a team not ready to take that next step, backtracked later in the year when it failed, and is now doing it again this season.
Compher is a solid player, but the Wings now have eight forwards who are 26 or older, and only one is a high-end talent in Larkin. The rest are solid players who would help surround a playoff team, not a rebuilding team, and all they do now is just block the young talent they’ve assembled from developing in the NHL and actually getting playing time.
And Justin Holl’s contract earned a (dis)honorable mention:
Credit: Dennis Schneidler-USA TODAY Sports
Free agency has always been looked at as the time for teams to make some adds without having to give up assets in a trade or use the draft picks and in-house resources required to develop prospects. It’s like someone else put all the work into that player for you, and you just have to open the wallet to have them on your team.
Except in a salary cap world, spending money can also cost you. All the trades we’ve seen where a third team is involved to retain some salary for a draft pick, or a team takes on a bad contract along with assets for nothing in return, have proven that cap space is just as big of an asset. That makes it all the more important to spend it wisely, and there are plenty of opportunities for a team to do the exact opposite.
Today I’m looking at those opportunities, listing off some of the worst contracts handed out so far in free agency. Some come at absurdly high cap hits, some come much longer than they should, but all of them are easy to see aging poorly. I did a prediction of which players would get bad contracts this year before free agency started, and four of them ended up on this list, which just goes to show how easy it is to see coming, and how easy it should have been to avoid them.
To start, here’s a few honorable mentions, deals that aren’t quite as bad as other contracts given out but could still cause problems for their teams.
Justin Holl, Detroit Red Wings ($3.4 million x 3 years) – I don’t hate Holl as much as a lot of other people who’ve watched him regularly seem to, but I was surprised to see him get this much considering the playoff performance he was coming off of. He’s a solid defender that can play in a shutdown role with a good defenseman in a pinch, but it just feels like way too much for him at age 31. And as I’ll get into with another Red Wing contract, it feels like it will just get in the way of their incoming young talent.
