The other day I speculated on what the hot starts for Dubinsky, Callahan and Anisimov would mean in terms of their contracts this summer and now we have another piece to the equation in that Claude Giroux the excellent 3rd year forward for the hated Philadelphia Flyers. The extension Giroux agreed to was 3 years 11.25 million or an average cap hit of 3.75 million. On talent alone I clearly take Giroux over any of the Rangers three especially Dubinsky and Callahan, but what does the cap hit Giroux got mean for the Ranger trio?
In a quick twitter conversation with Dave of Blue Seat Blogs, whose opinion I greatly respect, he speculated that it set a sort of ceiling for Dubinsky and Callahan and pegged Anisimov’s value into the range where Dubi and Cally’s current deal are. In my discussion of the topic the other day I said there was a point at which the Ranger players were not worth the salary investment and I drew that line at 5 million hoping to collect both Cally and Dubi for closer to 4 and unless Anisimov was willing to go long term he would be around 2 mil.
In each case the extenuating circumstances come into play when talking contracts and for Giroux the Flyers did not buy into his free agent years so the cost was less than if they had while for the Rangers anything over two years will be buying into the free agent years for both Dubinsky and Callahan. Obviously in their case whether they can keep up their current production or anything near it will have a great impact on where their number ends up but if they put up 60+ points like it or not someone will pay them 4-4.5 million a season. If they end up only making it to the 50 point range if the Rangers pay them near the Giroux amount it will unfortunately be an overpayment again because with this type of start it would mean they basically had the same 40 point year the rest of the way and to me that is not worthy of over 3 million dollars. It is a box the Rangers have in many ways painted themselves in because of prior bad contracts forcing them to go short on Dubi and Callahan two years ago.
Either way I have a feeling I will be jealous that Philly got Giroux for that number over the next 3 years. To me this is another example of Philly getting a slight discount by locking up their young guys longer before the huge breakout year as opposed to the Rangers who because of their cap situation usually do the short term deal to limit the hit and end up paying more per year down the road. This leads me back to Anisimov who as I said the other day I hope they go more of the Staal type route and go longer hopefully as many as 4-5 years even if it costs more per year as they will save in the long term.
