Peter D. said:
As for the comparable aspect, people were concerned that those three would do great things during their ELC and would jump to $8-9 million salaries. Whereas guys like MacK and Barkov are signed to $6 millionish contracts and if even two of the Leafs' studs reach their level we should be thrilled.
It's probably pretty fair to say that nobody wants to re-litigate the Stamkos stuff but to me these contracts kind of show the opposite and I think you're kind of conflating two separate issues from that thread.
Mackinnon, Barkov and Schiefle have all become very good young players but they're also a case in point of how even exceptionally talented young players tend to have gradual development curves. In the nine combined seasons they've played they have just two 60+ point seasons between the three of them(Mackinnon's first and Schiefle's last) and three if you want to give Barkov credit for just missing that mark in 66 games last year.
If Nylander, Matthews and Marner have a roughly similar development curve then, yes, it would be reasonable to think that the Leafs could sign them to roughly similar extensions.
The issue there, though, wasn't whether or not Stamkos could then fit under the cap it was that if these guys have a roughly similar development curve(and that's to Schiefle/Barkov and not Mackinnon's weird stop and start one) then realistically the Leafs wouldn't be very competitive until year 3 at the earliest at which point you've burned the most valuable years of the Stamkos deal on a not very good team.
The idea that Marner/Nylander/Matthews might get substantially higher extensions was connected to the proposed(although not very popular) idea that they would form the basis of a competitive team immediately and produce results more similar to Toews/Kane in their early years.
(Kane and Toews, let's not forget, produced at a significantly higher rate than any of these three guys in their first three years. The least productive year either of them had pre-extension was roughly comparable to the most productive year Schiefle/Mackinnon/Barkov have ever had.)
So like I said, you're confusing two different points. Either the Leafs wouldn't get Toews/Kane like production from those guys in their first few years in which case the timeframe didn't make a ton of sense or they would get that production and then it would be unreasonable to expect them to sign these sorts of extensions.
The Kane/Toews extensions were for 10.6% of a 59.4 million dollar cap(6.3 million). Right now the Cap's at 73 million. If it grows at 5% per year over the next three years then 10.6% of the cap would be just under 9 million per.
