sportsjabber.net

Nine years was an odd number for Brad Richards. Big free-agent deals seem to go 12 years or 10 years; the New York Rangers‘ $60 million contract with Richards went nine years, bringing him to 2020 when he’ll be 40 years old.

With that projection, the contract doesn’t seem so odd any longer, considering the state of long-term contracts in the NHL.

The Ilya Kovalchuk mess from last summer didn’t kill the front-loaded, cap-circumventing contracts with preposterously low payouts in their later years. No, the agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA merely prohibited contracts as farcical as Kovalchuk’s 17-year deal with the New Jersey Devils, and narrowed the type of contract allowed “in the spirit of the CBA.”

Richards’ contract (via Cap Geek) is a complicated patchwork of signing bonuses and base salary that ends with three years at $1 million apiece, the contract terminating around his 40th birthday. So it fits into the confines of that NHL/NHLPA agreement snugly.

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