NHL Contracts: 6 NHL Players Not Nearly Worth What They Earn

Casting aside the notion that all major league athletes are technically overpaid, a much more selective smattering of NHL players have logged performances that do not exactly match their expectations and salaries.

Sizing them up with their peers, it is quite painstaking to single out these players and separate them from those who appropriately earn the most while getting the most sparkling results on the league’s scoring or goaltending charts

It is equally tough to set them apart from the many who, one could argue, ought to be higher on the payment leaderboard based on some of their recent seasons.

But still, there are some players could patently stand to shed a million or two off their annual paychecks, unless they pick up their production in a hurry. In fact, there are just enough to create a whole starting lineup.

On that note, based on their projected earnings for 2011-12 and their performances in recent seasons, here are the NHL’s top six most overcompensated players.

Forward: Nikita Filatov

A first-round draft choice by Columbus in 2008, Filatov spent the better part of his first three professional seasons in the AHL or his native Moscow. He mustered only 44 games and 13 points with the Blue Jackets in that time.

Now his rights have gone to the Ottawa Senators, where he will cause a cap hit of $2,195,833, plus a bonus of $1,350,000 over the next year.

That all stems from an entry-level contract, which makes his transfer to Ottawa all the more appropriate. After all, the Senators are also offering seven figures to the unripe likes of Bobby Butler, Stephane De Costa and Erik Karlsson.

Kind of hard to justify, especially when the likes of New York Ranger Derek Stepan and Buffalo’s Tyler Ennis will both draw only $875,000 in the coming season.

Forward: Scott Gomez

Granted, he has still been a decently prolific playmaker in recent years, but in his first season with the Montreal Canadiens in 2009-10, Gomez hit a career low with only 12 goals.

He lowered that bar further last season with seven strikes in 80 games, marking the first time the veteran has finished with single digits in his goal column in 11 NHL seasons.

To make matters worse, nine of his teammates hit double digits in that category and Gomez’s two-way proficiency also hit a nadir with a team-worst minus-15 rating.

All this, and yet he figures to draw $7.5 million in the coming year and to keep leading the team with a $7,357,143 cap hit over each of the next three seasons.

At the rate Gomez is going, a sizable slice of that money would be better spent rewarding the likes of captain Brian Gionta or youngsters like Lars Eller and Max Pacioretty.

Forward: Vincent Lecavalier

Lecavalier is indubitably valuable to the Tampa Bay Lightning, just as he has been since he hit his stride and helped them to a Stanley Cup in 2004.

But is he worth as much as the $10 million he will make over the next five seasons—making him this year’s highest-grossing player in the entire NHL?

Not when you consider the fact that youngster Steven Stamkos and longtime teammate Martin St. Louis (who will only reel in $5.5 million this year) have both eclipsed him in the scoring department each of the last two seasons.

And not when you consider Lecavalier’s defense. He has finished with a negative plus/minus rating in each of the last four seasons, even while multiple Tampa Bay mainstays have improved in that department since the advent of head coach Guy Boucher.

Defense: Jay Bouwmeester

For three seasons (2006-09), Bouwmeester was a double-digit goal scorer and among the top six point-getters on a Florida Panthers team that perennially missed the playoffs.

In the two years since, he has labored for a similarly helpless Calgary Flames team. Even with the change of environment, he still has yet to see playoff action. But unlike in Florida, he is not even playing a "big fish in a small pond"-type role anymore.

This coming season, and in the two that follow, Bouwmeester will claim $6.6 million, a salary that is second only to Jarome Iginla on the team.

This despite the fact that he has scored a cumulative seven goals and 49 points in 164 games with the Flames—quite a substantial downturn from his productivity in Florida.

Defense: Brian Campbell

Over each of the past four seasons―one split between Buffalo and San Jose and the last three in Chicago―Campbell's offensive numbers have steadily slimmed down.

He went from 54 assists and 62 points in 2007-08 to 52, 38 and 27 points over three years, respectively, with the Blackhawks.

He can still perform his day job on defense well enough. And with his new employers in Florida, he might even turn his productivity back around along with a team that has not seen playoff action since 2000.

But there's a stark difference between potential and fulfillment. At the moment, there is no apparent reason why the Panthers should be paying Campbell as much as $7,142,875 per year for the next five seasons for his services.

There is no reason why he should be the sixth-highest grossing NHL defenseman in 2011-12.

Goalie: Niklas Backstrom

Among NHL goaltenders, only Henrik Lundqvist will cost his team a higher cap hit than Backstrom in 2011-12.

Among all rostered Minnesota Wild players, only the newly acquired Dany Heatley and scoring mainstay Mikko Koivu will have a salary exceeding Backstrom’s $6 million.

Backstrom’s position on Minnesota’s money-making leaderboard might make a little sense considering the Wild’s longtime emphasis on defense, but it doesn’t make sense for him to log as much dough as he does considering 15 other NHL stoppers had a higher save percentage last season.

In addition, 25 other goalies bested him in terms of goals-against average.

It was a similar story in 2009-10, when 24 goalies had a superior GAA and 33 had a better save percentage than Backstrom.

In short, ever since he won the William Jennings Trophy and the Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award in 2007, Backstrom has done little to defy the notion that he is a one-year wonder in terms of goaltending stardom.

Accordingly, he has done little to justify being among the league’s most handsomely compensated stoppers.