from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,

Many of the more prominent free agents to change teams Friday – David Backes going to Boston, Kyle Okposo to Buffalo, Andrew Ladd signing with the New York Islanders – will all get big chunks of their compensation in signing bonuses, which not only makes those contracts harder to buy out, it means they’ll get paid the vast majority of their money, even if there’s another lockout in 2020.

Those are the sorts of commitments that can backfire on teams in a meaningful way. Most, naturally, were willing to roll the dice, on the grounds that the only thing that really matters is the race to get competitive in the present.

In some ways, the opening day of free agency was like a giant game of musical chairs. The Islanders lost Okposo and Frans Nielsen (to the Detroit Red Wings), so they replaced them with Ladd and Jason Chimera. The Blues lost Backes and Brouwer, so they replaced them with David Perron, who they originally drafted in 2007. The cash-strapped Anaheim Ducks lost three players – Perron, Jamie McGinn to the Arizona Coyotes and Chris Stewart to the Minnesota Wild, preferring to save their dollars to sign their own restricted free agents.

It was a strategy adopted by both Florida and Tampa, which signed their cornerstone young defencemen, Aaron Ekblad and Victor Hedman, respectively, to massive eight-year extensions that will make them among the highest-paid defencemen in the league when their new deals kick in.

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