Gomez will be overpaid
Several years ago, Bobby Holik was a third line center shutdown specialist who helped his devils win the 2000 Stanley Cup. He was impressive enough that the infamously free spending Rangers gave him a gigantic raise and tried using him on the top 2 lines as a scorer as well.
It didn’t work, and he was eventually bought out, his reputation has just now recovered but none will forget. This was one of many scenarios that made the salary cap possible. Holik and many others were deemed as wildly overpaid and something had to be done, Bettman did, and we are now in the third free agent signing period since the cap has been in place, and it seems to be heading right back to where we started.
Case in point is Scott Gomez.
A somewhat consistently productive center for the Devils since 99-00. Hes had 70 points twice, and cracked 80 points just once. Hes played with Alexander Mogilny and this year played between two 40 goal men in Elias and Gionta. It is the general consensus around the league that this guy is gonna go for 5 million at the very least, and with a potential bidding war, he could end up in the 6.5 range. Gomez could potentially go to a new team, score his usual 70 points and be considered an overpaid bust, when he is really doing nothing different than whats made him succesful these last 7 years.
It’s a no win situation and the league will be one step closer to the pre cap era. Hopefully this is just the first few bugs being worked out, and that the GMs around the league will learn as Kevin Lowe did that sometimes, the price is just too high, no matter how popular a player is.
Good luck Scott Gomez, you will need it.