The Carolina Hurricanes made some news Friday, inking veteran defenseman Jake Gardiner to a four-year contract, with Canes GM Don Waddell calling Gardiner "a solid veteran blueliner with a proven history of contributing offensively."
But does the deal make sense for the Canes, in the context of everything else that happened this summer? Let's get to the grade:
The player: Jake Gardiner, 29, D
The terms: 4 years, $4.05 million average annual value
Does the deal make sense?
Whether or not this contract makes sense depends entirely on from which perspective we're judging it.
From the Carolina Hurricanes' perspective ... boy does this make sense. As a unit, the Canes boast one of the deepest defensive corps in the NHL, and adding Gardiner only deepens it. The trade earlier this summer that sent Calvin de Haan to the Chicago Blackhawks made a lot more sense in context now: Gardiner, like de Haan, plays the left side; Gardiner's contract runs through 2023 and at a lower cap number than that of de Haan, who had a $4.55 million AAV; and Gardiner is demonstrably the better all-around defenseman, and he has played more significant minutes during his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
But looking at the Hurricanes' blue line, one thing becomes immediately clear: There are four key players locked up through 2021, plus one guy who goes unrestricted next summer: Justin Faulk. His 15-team no-trade list might hamper the Canes in what they could end up doing with him, but with Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce on the right and Jaccob Slavin and Gardiner on the left, expect trade chatter about Faulk to continue to amplify.
From a Jake Gardiner perspective, it's very much an early-September contract. Whether he misplayed the market or the market played him, this can't be the contract he envisioned for himself on July 1. To wit, he said on a conference call Friday that he was offered some one-year deals but didn't have an appetite for going through this again.
But this summer's peculiar financial forces -- the salary cap not rising as much as anticipated, plus the wrenched-up gears of the restricted-free-agent negotiations -- had a dramatic impact on the unrestricted-free-agent market, and particularly on defensemen.
Do you know how many UFA defensemen ended up signing contracts for four or more seasons before Gardiner this summer? One: Tyler Myers, who was given a still-amazing five years from the Vancouver Canucks at $6 million annually; it was a laughable amount then, and it's hilarious in the context of Gardiner's contract.
Could he have gotten more money had he signed earlier this summer? One assumes yes, given that Anton Stralman is pulling down $5.5 million annually with the Florida Panthers on a deal signed July 1. But that contract was for only three years, and if it was term Gardiner wanted, he had to wait it out.
From an NHL defenseman market perspective, Cap Friendly notes that Gardiner's contract is similar to those signed by Kris Russell with the Edmonton Oilers in 2017 (at 30 years old) and Dmitry Kulikov with the Winnipeg Jets, also in 2017 (at 26).
Gardiner is better than those two players. He's better than a lot of defensemen in this league. But what separates those signings from this one, besides the power of hindsight? Logic, which the Hurricanes apply to their roster moves in a way that should make the rest of the NHL envious, and patience, which they exhibited here in waiting out the market for a defenseman who would have improved any number of teams.
(We'll also note the timing of this signing, in the same week in which Justin Williams said he was "stepping away" from the NHL before the season. He made $4.5 million against the cap last season. We heard all summer that Gardiner's camp was waiting for certain situations to resolve themselves before signing with a team. And here we thought they were talking about Mitch Marner...)
Overall Grade: A