from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle, the National Hockey League’s trend towards the six-plus-year contract.

Teams sign their best players to deals of six years or longer to keep them off the free agent market. Then 30 GMs look at an ever-depreciating free agent market and say, “Man, there’s nobody here worth signing long-term. I’d better sign my own guy.”...

It’s a trend you can get used to. Three of the top seven players from the 2010 draft class — Hall, Tyler Seguin and Skinner — all received a minimum of six years coming out of their entry-level contracts. So far the top two drafts from 2011 — Nugent-Hopkins and Landeskog — have inked seven-year deals, which kick in this year.

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