Inside the NHL’s Most Shockingly Mismanaged Contracts That Defy Salary Cap Logic
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Moving down the list, Andrei Vasilevskiy was just the Vezina runner-up, Connor Hellebuyck won the Hart and Jake Oettinger’s deal is fine. The first name that at least makes me pause is Jeremy Swayman, coming off a rough first year at $8.25 million, and Juuse Saros at $7.74 million should be even more tempting given I just said it was a bad contract. But while the Saros deal is scary, he’s still a very capable NHL starter at the very least, which means we can do better. Well, worse.
In the end, it came down to three names: Tristan Jarry, Elvis Merzlikins and Philipp Grubauer, all of whom have contracts well over $5 million that run for multiple years to come. Of the three, Grubauer is the oldest, the most expensive and has the worst recent numbers, so he’s in. The other two feel like a coin flip with virtually identical contracts, but Jarry wasn’t awful the year before last, while Merzlikins hasn’t had a save percentage over .900 since 2021-22 and costs just a bit more. I’ll go with him, meaning my two goalies are Philipp Grubauer ($5.9 million through 2027) and Elvis Merzlikins ($5.4 million through 2027).
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