Yeah, I think that's where I'm coming from. This deal for Dermott seems more borne out of cap compliance than it does anything else; it's hard to look at the 2 yr deal Engvall at the same age was given last year on a relatively short sample, and feel good about how Dermott got forced into a "show me" deal.
Sure but I think people need to come around on the fact that this is what a hard cap is meant to do. Even if people think the Marner or Matthews or Nylander contracts are overpayments the cap isn't designed to only be difficult to manage if you slightly overpay stars. Any good team that pays their better players some semblance of market value will have to make moves that are unmistakably going to be seen as "bad hockey moves" in order to be cap compliant.
NFL fans know that teams have to cut good, in their prime players and replace them with cheap younger alternatives through no fault of their own. The way the cap stagnated this year just accelerated that process for some teams like the Leafs who haven't had the playoff success that, to date, we would associate with having cap problems.
