For quite some time now, the New York Rangers and Henrik Lundqvist (more specifically, his representatives) have been working on a contract extension. Earlier today, the announcement came down that indeed, a contract extension had been agreed upon.
The official details are seven more years after this one, totalling $8.5 million per year as a cap hit.
The timing of this, of course, comes in relative proximity to the new NHL-Rogers Communications deal that will see $5.2-billion go to the NHL from Rogers, over 12 years, for exclusive broadcasting rights in Canada beginning with the 2014 season. The sudden influx of a large, guaranteed stream of revenue to the NHL and its teams means that the salary cap will rise more sharply in the coming years than previously anticipated.
From James Mirtle, a national hockey columnist, back in January:
| Season | Revenue* | Players’ share | Salary cap | Salary floor | Range |
| 2012-13 | $2,275 | $1,138 | $70.2 | $44.0 | $26.2 |
| 2013-14 | $3,303 | $1,652 | $64.3 | $44.0 | $20.3 |
| 2014-15 | $3,468 | $1,734 | $64.3 | $46.4 | $17.9 |
| 2015-16 | $3,642 | $1,821 | $66.1 | $48.8 | $17.2 |
(*in millions)
Essentially, the original estimates of the salary cap for the start of the 2015-2016 season would be about $2 million higher than it is for this 2013-2014 campaign.
Of course, this additional revenue means that all those numbers are going to change. A lot.
Again from Mr. Mirtle, this time after the Rogers deal was announced at the end of November (HRR=Hockey Related Revenue):
| Season |
Previous Projected HRR* |
Floor | |
| 2014-15 (no impact from deal) |
3564 |
50.0 | 67.7 |
| 2015-16 (w/o new TV deal) |
3742 |
52.7 | 71.3 |
| 2015-16 (with TV deal boost) |
3918 |
55.3 | 74.8 |
(* in millions)
The missing part is the salary cap. Under the old projections, the salary cap would have been around $66-million at the start of the 2015 season. With the infusion of cash coming from the broadcasting deal, the new estimate is about $74-million for the start of the 2015 season.
All this is to say that teams are going to have a lot more room to spend on players down the road than they had initially thought. This means two things.
First, the salary cap going up means that teams who spend to the cap (and the Rangers are certainly among them), will have more flexibility with roster decisions because they’ll have more money than expected. Have you ever bought a slightly more expensive bottle of wine because your paycheck was a little bigger than expected?
Second, the relative value of contracts is going to decline compared to what we thought they were going to be. A contract with an Average Annual Value (AAV) of $8.5-million a year is a lot easier to swallow when it’s possibly an $85-million cap in five years time than roughly the $76-million cap that had been previously thought. Essentially, the Rogers deal just bought the Rangers a free Henrik Lundqvist (or the room to do so, at least).
So in terms of dollars today, and dollars expected in the next few years, it’s not a bad contract for the best goaltender on the planet.
The only question that remains is how good will he be in, say, four years’ time?
There’s not much doubt as to how good he’s been. Since the start of 2009, only Tuukka Rask (.928) has a higher save percentage among goalies that have played 150 games, and Lundqvist leads all goalies that have played at least 200. Also, he’s put up a .933 save percentage over his last two playoff runs (32 games). He’s also kept this team afloat better than any goalie in recent memory and it’s not close at all.
The decline of goaltenders as they age is well-documented. After the age of 35, goaltenders that start at a young age pretty much uniformly fall off a cliff, as if they were Lemmings falling down a hole and off your screen forever. That’s very pertinent information.
The best hope I can provide for Rangers fans is that King Henrik didn’t become a regular goalie in the NHL until the age of 23 and a fulltime starter at the age of 24. At the end of this season, Lundqvist will have played roughly 565 regular season NHL games. In four years, he’ll be close to 800 career regular season games. How do goalies fair after that mark? Not too poorly, actually.
There were three goalies who cracked the NHL in the 90s and played at least 800 regular season games: Martin Brodeur, Curtis Joseph and Ed Belfour.
- Martin Brodeur had played about 800 games going into the 2008-2009 season. He suffered an injury that season, but managed to post a .916 save percentage, which put him in a tie for 11th in the NHL in that category. The next year, he set a five-year high in wins with 45 (and another .916 SV%) and was part of the Eastern Conference champion team in 2011-2012.
- Curtis Joseph came into the 2003-2004 season with about 800 games under his belt. He finished that year saving 90.9-percent of shots, which was the average of his previous two years. So, he was essentially the same goalie. He then lost a year to the lockout and was never really the same after.
- Ed Belfour also went into the 2003-2004 campaign with about 800 games played, and posted a very stellar .918 save percentage, which put him in a tie for 10th in the NHL. He, too, lost a year to the lockout after and by the time the NHL was back, he was 40 years old and that was about all she wrote.
There will be enough revenues generated to make this a sensible contract, and the window for the Rangers to win is in the next few years anyway. The hope is that he can hang on somewhat as he ages, and there is precedent for elite goaltenders to continue having good seasons after they reach the 800 game mark.
