The Anaheim Ducks have signed Corey Perry to a long-term eight year deal. The deal is reported to be worth 69 million with the annual cap hit of 8.625 million each year. The contract expires following the 2020-21 season.
Corey Perry has been one of the best players for the Ducks, as well as the league, for quite some time now. He has scored 50 goals in the 2010-11 season winning the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy and adding the Hart Trophy as league MVP. He has scored more than 27 goals in every year since 2007-08 and has really defined the new era power forward with a little mean in him. He has been suspended a few times already in his short career and is currently serving a four game suspension for a hit on Jason Zucker. At 6’3″ and 210 pounds, Corey Perry is very hard to stop and not only has he re-kindled his scoring touch this year and chemistry with Ryan Getzlaf, but the Ducks are on pace to compete for the President Trophy and just seem purely dominant.
The contract comes on the heals of another massive one signed by Ryan Getzlaf few weeks earlier. Both contracts are fairly similar with Corey Perry’s being worth an extra 3 million over eight years. The two players will eat up almost 17 million next year in cap space for the Ducks.
As we all know, the salary CAP limit will go down next year to 64.3 million. This will mean that the Ducks will have about 10 million to work with to sign about six to eight players. Currently unsigned players include Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, David Steckel, Kyle Palmieri, and Toni Lydman among others.
Perry himself is a franchise player as he is not only a guy who can score goals but has put in plenty of time on the penalty kill as well. With an ability to play in every situation and deliver offense (1 short handed point this year) he is vital to the future of the Ducks organization.
The only issue some may find with this contract is that it is Sidney Crosby money. The thing about it is that while the CAP hit may be similar the actual contracts are not. Crosby has a grandfathered contract that allows his team to pay him only 3 million dollars in the last three years of the deal, this lets the team pay him 12 million dollars right now and still have a CAP hit of only 8.7 million. With the new CBA rules, the Ducks could not perform the same trickery to lower the CAP hit and still pay Perry the money he wanted.
Both players are super important to their teams and whether the Perry and Getzlaf contracts will work out for the best long term for Anaheim, is something we will not know for quite some time.
The only thing is for certain is that the Duck fans can rest easy this off-season knowing that their two best players will not be going anywhere.
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