NHL Contracts: Each team’s worst deal

Which hockey players have the worst NHL contracts? Here’s a list of the worst contract on each team. 

The NHL is one of the two major professional sports leagues with a hard salary cap. Because of this, it’s integral to not overpay players if you want to have success. This doesn’t mean a few bad NHL contracts can keep you from winning, but too many of them can complicate things.

Here’s why bad contracts are extremely painful for hockey teams. Every dollar counts. If you overpay someone by $1 million a season, that’s $1 million you can’t spend on someone else. Down the line, this might well cost you the chance to keep or add a player.

That said, it’s at least justifiable to overpay stars. You usually have to overpay to keep them anyway. It’s obviously not optimal to give someone more money than they deserve. But hey, if you do it for a star, you can at least point to them making a huge impact.

Bad contracts tend to turn ugly for several reasons. First of all, anytime you commit long-term to someone who is a role player, that’s usually not a good sign unless their average annual value is low. Lars Eller of the Washington Capitals is a terrific example of how to extend a role player. Sure, five years is questionable. But at under $4 million a year, Eller’s easily worth that.

Secondly, red flags should be blowing like they’re in a hurricane if a player over 30 years old gets a long-term deal. They rarely work out. It’s even worse if, as a fan, you have to say “well, at least he’ll probably still be good for the first [insert number] years of the deal”. That’s basically admitting you believe the deal will, at some point, be a hindrance to the team.

Thirdly, pretty much ANY deal signed on the first day of free agency is a bad one. It’s hard to find signings on the first day that could be considered a great value.

There are some examples of each of these throughout this list. For some teams, this exercise was easy. But for others, it was hard. Though whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. I only included active contracts as of July 2, 2018. So extensions signed since then do not count.

Without further ado, here is the worst contract on each team.

All contract information is from Cap Friendly.