I don’t think that Ben Chiarot is a “bad” defenseman–I think he’s actually gotten better over the course of his tenure with the Red Wings. That being said, I’m not certain whether he’s the ideal partner for Moritz Seider on the Red Wings’ first defensive pairing, and Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz seems to agree in deeming Chiarot to be the Red Wings’ “worst contract”;
Detroit Red Wings: Ben Chiarot
Chiarot is the type of defenseman who has an intense hold on the NHL’s general managers. He got traded for big returns and then signed a four-year, $19 million contract in Detroit a couple of years ago.
There was a time when he was a pretty capable defender, but those days are gone. Now he tends to get too many minutes in too many big roles. In Detroit, he has spent way too much time on the team’s top pairing next to Moritz Seider over the past two seasons, a partnership that only limited one of the team’s best young players. This signing was a big miss by general manager Steve Yzerman.
Continued; again, he’s not an ideal defenseman by any means, but I don’t think that he’s been awful…And the Andrew Copp deal seems worse to me, honestly.
Justin Holl is definitely the worst contract!