The Florida Panthers perfect summer continues. It started with hoisting Lord Stanley for the second straight year, and the team will enter free agency with their three biggest stars under contract. The second of the three to sign was one of the NHL’s best defenseman, Aaron Ekblad.
Ekblad accepted a maximum extension at a massive hometown discount. The deal was announced at 3:30 PM just a few hours before free agency begins, and it is an eight-year, 6.1 million AAV contract that keeps the 29-year-old in Sunrise for a long, long time.
Here’s How Much Money Ekblad Left On The Table
Aaron Ekblad was drafted by the Florida Panthers in 2014. At just 18-years-old he began his career and has been in Sunrise ever since.
It is perhaps for this reason that Ekblad left millions on the table to stay with the team that drafted him.
“Ekblad’s passionate rant about what it meant to him to be a Florida Panther during the Stanley Cup Final foreshadowed his willingness to take a sweetheart discount,” wrote The Athletic’s Harman Dayal. “The 29-year-old’s $6.1 million cap hit is a notable decrease from the $7.5 million AAV on his expiring contract. $6.1 million for a top-pairing right-shot defender is a very team-friendly number, especially in a skyrocketing cap climate where player salaries are rapidly inflating. It’s only $600,000 higher than what Nic Hague, a 17-minute per game No. 4/5 defenseman, signed for in Nashville yesterday. It’s less than what Alex Romanov re-signed for with the Islanders.”
But just how much did Ekblad really cost himself?
“The win here for Ekblad was securing eight years of term, which no other team could have offered,” Dayal continued. “That security is significant considering all the injuries he’s suffered in his career. Ekblad is guaranteed $48.8 million of total compensation on this contract. AFP Analytics projected that he would have gotten $7.8 million annually on a seven-year deal in free agency, which equates to a total of $54.6 million. That’s an extra $5.8 million in total value compared to what Ekblad actually signed for…”
The only problem with this hypothetical is that it ignores a desperate team willing to over pay for an elite blue liner. Regardless, we can conclude that Ekblad left at least $5.8 million on the table to come back home.
Was It A Good Signing?
If I told you last week that the Panthers would resign Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, and Brad Marchand before June ends, you would tell me I’m lying.
With limited contract space and three super stars to retain, it looked nearly impossible for Florida to keep all three in Sunrise. However thanks to Marchand and Ekblad taking discounts that kept them on contract for a combined $11 million a year, the Panthers pulled off the impossible.
Good organizations get rewarded with these kinds of deals. For that reason, this Ekblad signing gets an A.
Could the 29-year-old show signs of regression towards the latter end of the deal? Of course. Could the Panthers have allocated these funds down the lineup? I guess you could say that.
But keeping the back-to-back core together with the best goalie in the world in the crease makes it hard to criticize the Florida Panthers.
Ekblad’s Hometown Discount Cost Him Millions In Maximum Contract Extension