Jordan Binnington is sticking around St. Louis for a while after signing a six-year, six-million-dollar contract. It carries a full no movement clause during the first three years of the deal and a modified no trade clause in the last three. For those salary cap leagues that use real salary versus average the deal pyramids from four million in years one and six to 7.5 million in years three and four. With the structure of the contract being a rare all salary contract – zero bonuses – it does give St. Louis a favourable buy-out option even after two years.

Coming off a two-year 4.4-million-dollar contract the increase in salary is not a massive one. Most owners can adjust to 1.6 million without too much difficulty.

One thing that has become apparent over recent years with the Blues: they have an internal cap model they will not detour from for anyone. We saw this with Alex Pietrangelo last year. The numbers did not work so they moved on.

As we saw a couple weeks ago when Alex MacLean rolled out his salary projection list for this year's crop of unrestricted free agents, Binnington signed for less than expected. He projected Binnington at $8.243 million. Personally, I didn't see St. Louis signing him for that much. Had he gone to free agency I think we would have seen his salary come in around $7.5 million to $7.9 million.  At six million, St. Louis has done well.

Binnington now carries the eighth largest cap hit amongst goalies in the NHL. Connor Hellebyuck sits at seventh with a hit of $6.167 million. Arguably the closest comparable on the current salary list for goalies is Matt Murray in Ottawa at $6.25 million for four years. Outside of his magical rookie run to the Stanley Cup championship Binnington has been an average goalie. Over the past two seasons he has had a goals against average of 2.81 and a save percentage of.906 this year and 2.56, .912 in 2019-20.

In other words, this isn't a contract to get excited about. In the same breath it's not a contract to get choked up about either. Recent contracts of Lehner, Murray and even Jacob Markstrom put this one in the ballpark of average. In large part, more teams are shifting to a tandem approach and running two goalies at lower cap hits, which makes this cap hit stand out a bit more than years past. It does tell us St. Louis believes Binnington is their number one goalie for the foreseeable future. Overall, it is a decent deal for everyone  – Binnington, Blues and fantasy owners alike. There is little doubt who will receive the majority of starts in St. Louis over the next few years.

Erik Karlsson

With trade deadlines approaching Erik Karlsson is likely on more trade blocks than any other. It seems a good time to take a closer look at him and what to do with the albatross of a contract.

Let's start with a bold statement – I am not convinced Karlsson is done. Call it intuition, a gut feeling, or stupidity, but I think there is more there.  I will qualify this by saying I do not believe we will see Karlsson return to that elitist offensive defenceman again. Those days are done. His cap hit of 11.5 million for the next six years (after this season) is a tragic pill to swallow for any fantasy owners for anything short of his most elite seasons which aren't coming back.

Here is one example of why you should not give up entirely, Claude Giroux. In 2013-14 he put up 86 points. The next three years his point totals steadily dropped, 73 to 67, down to 58 points. Along with his declining point totals we saw his SOGs, hits and shooting percentage all see significant drops. Yours truly was trumpeting loudly Giroux was done. Then, alas he came back in 2017-18 and dropped 104 points out of the sky. Out of nowhere it seemed Giroux was reborn. This was the season Giroux moved to left wing for the first time as well.  Karlsson doesn't exactly have that luxury but Giroux does illustrate the potential to return to previous successes.

I do believe Karlsson has at least one more 60-point season in him (I think this puts me on a very lonely island). The problem, though, isn't all him. The San Jose Sharks have a lot of problems that only enhance Karlsson's declining play. From the Evander Kane saga to the ongoing subpar goaltending of Martin Jones, there are large holes on the roster that turn Karlson's deficiencies into craters. Just think, the Sharks have 26.5 million in cap tied up in Karlsson, Brent Burns and Edward Vlasic until 2024-25.

The youngest of the three is Karlsson at 30 years old, three years younger than Vlasic. His style of play lends itself to an extended career with solid production. The problem are the injuries he has sustained, the severed achilles artery, an ankle injury that resulted in surgically removing half of his ankle bone, and most recently a groin injury requiring surgery. Any one of these three injuries is enough to detour a player's career, let alone three. 

One thing I have noticed over the past few months writing articles for DobberHockey is that players who suffer large injuries usually require at least a full season – beyond the season the injury took place to recover. Karlsson makes this hypothesis trickier because his achillies and ankle injuries were quite severe. He never really seemed to regain full confidence in the previous injury before the next one took him down. The struggle of owning Karlsson is going to continue at least in the short term.

There is another factor concerning his production in San Jose that got a lot of attention at the time of the trade but has been washed over since. He never wanted to leave Ottawa. In fact, he still has his off-season home there. Personal adjustments and transitioning to a new team, new city, new environment is the most overlooked factor affecting a player's production when they go to a new team. We too easily forget even the best players are human.  If you go back and watch some of those interviews Karlsson was as devastated in leaving Ottawa as Ryan Smyth was when he was traded from Edmonton.

In the meantime, Karlsson owners are stuck with 11.5 million on the books. Trading Karlsson is difficult. I tried trading him with Ilya Samsonov tied to him in a goalie hungry pool without success. That would be the easiest way to trade him in a cap pool though – attach a high-end, highly sought-after player, prospect or pick to him as incentive. Kind of sounds like Patrick Marleau and Toronto's first rounder to Carolina doesn't it? That is one solution.

Another solution, which takes some strategy, planning and research to make work is a cap philosophy I first saw posted on the Dobber Forums by long time member Pengwin7.  

The Coles Notes goes something like this:  if your team salary is 100 million for 25 players, your average player salary is four million. If you break this into five quadrants of five players you now have $20 million for five players. When you account for Karlsson's $11.5 million it leaves you with $8.5 million to spend on the other four players. It makes things tight, but manageable. It also limits your panic or stress to a five player block rather than an entire roster. 

If you're in a dynasty and own Karlsson, you can still utilize this methodology to figure out next steps and contain your panic. When you break it down like this having Karlsson becomes slightly more liveable. His cap- hit now directly impacts that quadrant of players, not your entire roster. You will still have room for a Sidney Crosby or Jack Eichel.

With 19 shots and five points in his last nine games there remains hope he has something to give owners this year.  He really needs an extended period of play without injury to give himself a chance of finding his former self. I don't think he trusts his ankle or groin fully yet. His game is largely built on his skating and having that limited has been hard to adjust to.

He does have an elite hockey-IQ.  When he finally becomes comfortable with his mobility limits, we'll see his IQ move to the forefront and hopefully that translates into stabilized production and a healthy climb back over 50 points.  In the meantime, he's still a top-30 point producing defenceman and will land in a 40- to 45-point pace for this season. Hopefully this helps you survive owning Karlsson.

Good luck and may the pucks bounce your way. Until next week.

(all stats from FrozenTools, all salaries from capfriendly)

Follow me on Twitter @doylelb