Steen Extended

[cardsfan04]

4 years, $23 mil, $5.75 mil AAV. He'll be 37 when it's up. Seems like a pretty decent deal to me.

[cprice12]

I love having him extended another 4 years. He is arguably the most complete player on the team and a huge asset.
However, we probably won't be crazy about the $5.75 million cap hit the last couple years of the deal though.

[cardsfan04]

That cap hit concerns me at the end too. I basically decided that I'd rather have him locked up than not though and that the difference in cap hit might end up being ~negligible. If he's worth $4.5 mil in a few years (which isn't too crazy of a thought), we'd be talking about a difference of around 1-1.5% cap hit. Not that it's something to disregard, but, like you, I'm happy on the whole.

[Oaklandblue]

Steen at 5.75 is the right number. One of the most underrated, under-the-radar, productive players out there. On the right line, he can really amaze you.

[glen a richter]

I had some serious doubts he'd be back after this season. Happy to see this news.

[gaijin]

From Ryan Lambert at Puck Daddy: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/what-we-le ... 55698.html

When Alex Steen signed his current contract in December 2013, he had never scored 25 goals in a season, nor had he cleared 52 points.

That’s not to say he wasn’t a good player, because he very much was one. But the idea that you would lock up a guy for three years when he would be 30, 31, and 32 — and give him $5.8 million AAV — halfway through his career year at 29 seemed dicey.

Steen still is a good player. Over the past five years he’s a strong relative possession player on a really good possession team. Two years into his three-year deal, maybe you say he’s been worth it for them.

But how much longer can that possibly be the case? And how does Doug Armstrong justify giving him four more years at nearly the same freight, which he did on Friday?

Because here’s some iffy news for the Blues: Steen seems to be dropping off in a hurry already, with a full year before his new deal even kicks in.

First and foremost, let’s just point out that Steen is already injured a lot; he’s missed almost half a season’s worth of games since the season in which he signed his current contract, and last year missed 15 games. The likelihood that he somehow straightens his health problems out in his age-33-through-36 seasons seems low.

Moreover, his goals per game has declined by about half in the past three seasons, sliding from 0.49 in his career year — the highest of any season by a wide margin — to just 0.25 this past year. Assist numbers remain more or less in the ballpark, but his primary assists have fallen off while secondaries are on the rise. And secondary assist numbers are less repeatable than primary ones, for obvious reasons.

Then there’s the problem of his possession capabilities. Steen is largely viewed as a high-quality two-way center, right? Well, both his raw and adjusted possession numbers have fallen off from 2013-14 (plus-5.42 percent) to 2014-15 (plus-1.65 percent) to last year (minus-1.65 percent). And most concerning, that comes as Ken Hitchcock has throttled back the difficulty of his usage a little bit.

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Of the 33 goals he scored that one career-best season, 24 — TWENTY-FOUR! — came in the first 34 games of the season. And almost immediately after re-upping (as in, “within three days”) he got a concussion that held him out of the lineup for nearly a month. Since then, apart from the perpetually more underwhelming performances, he’s also racked up a host of upper- and lower-body injuries. In fact, there is speculation that he won’t be ready to start the season on time again this year.

Again, this is all a full season before the new contract kicks in. Back when Steen signed his deal in 2013, I wrote that it seemed a little too based on his insanely hot start to the season but that in the end it would probably be worth it. I’m not really sure that ended up being the case.

As you might expect for any player over the age of 30, his productivity has declined somewhat in terms of goals, though his assist numbers continue to stay strong (one imagines playing a big chunk of the last three seasons with Vladimir Tarasenko helps). And that degradation of his possession numbers is really hurting the Blues at this point. His relative expected-goals-for percentage has dropped from plus-4.4 to minus-2.1 in three seasons. That’s not a trend that’s likely to reverse itself given that he’s hurt all the time and 32 already.

The good news when that contract was first signed was that the Blues avoided going long-term on it. It seemed to take into account that the hot start was unsustainable, but that Steen was a possession juggernaut on par with the very best players in the league, and also that he scored a lot. And over the past two seasons — the first two of the current contract — he’s tied for 38th in the league in scoring, having scored at least 52 points in each year. (But to go from 24 goals to 17 is worrisome, right?)

So it’s entirely possible that, all things considered, the fact that Steen has another year left on his existing deal before this new four-year extension kicks in might end up being a problem.

Again, if the benefit of signing that deal was that you got a very good player in his early 30s at $5.8 million AAV for only three years. In theory, it allowed you to scale back his cap hit for his age-33 season and beyond, if you wanted to keep him. But when you say “scale back” in this context, you typically don’t mean “by $50,000.”

Before signing this contract, you really needed to seriously consider a number of factors. That he can’t stay healthy for a full season already. That his goal production is declining. That he has become a negative relative possession player within two seasons. That he still has one more to go on his current deal. And with all that in mind, the odds that he’s anywhere near the kind of player he’s currently perceived to be — wrongly, I would argue — by the time he’s even 34, when he still has two years remaining, seem very, very low.

When he signed his current deal, I thought it was a little rich but pretty reasonable. This new deal is one of those “could end up being among the worst in the league” bad contracts if he keeps trending in the current direction. The good news is that possession numbers are more sustainable than scoring, and Steen has really only had one bad season in that regard in the past six years. The problem is that bad season was last season, when he was 31 and injured for 15 games, and he’s already a question mark to start the year.

The fact is that very, very few NHLers, regardless of their quality, continue to be meaningful contributors past their age-35 seasons. By that time, Steen will be signed up for two more at basically no discount from his current deal. It’s hard to justify that at all, especially given the diminishing returns that are already coming in.

There are just so many reasons to be skeptical about this deal a year before it starts, especially for a budget team like St. Louis. Because it’s not like Colton Parayko doesn’t need a new contract after this season, because he’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money. And it’s not like they’re going to need to sign somebody to replace Paul Stastny, whose deal is up in 2018.

Steen was an extremely underrated player for a very long time in this league. And it’s very likely he just became one of the most overpaid.

I think Steen will be fine. Staying healthy is the key, though.

[glen a richter]

It may be a lousy deal 4 years from now, the same way Boston will be kicking themselves the last couple years with Backes, but lets realize this is buying some time for guys like Maceachern, Poganski and Gawdin to develop at the AHL level and maybe some spot duty at the NHL level with veteran guidance. I don't disagree with the general premise of what Armstrong is doing. By keeping select veterans for what may be a little too long, he's providing that experience to guide the next group, avoiding the need for a complete rebuild. I look at the forward crop in the pipeline and it's clearly very thin, but there are some guys there who can absolutely be capable of providing Steen-like numbers down the line. I do disagree with some of the choices he's made in terms of which personnel to retain though, thankfully, we don't have to worry about Ott anymore at least.

[ecbm]

I don't love this contract; it's not much smarter than it would have been to give Backes what he was asking for. Steen did a good job of leveraging Army's fear of losing him for nothing a year after losing Backes & Oshie/Brouwer for nothing. But he's a good leader and it's not an Ott-type deal. I do worry about injuries because if Steen tries to be a player who avoids injury he won't be nearly as effective as he can be.

[Toasted Oates]

I don't love this contract; it's not much smarter than it would have been to give Backes what he was asking for. Steen did a good job of leveraging Army's fear of losing him for nothing a year after losing Backes & Oshie/Brouwer for nothing. But he's a good leader and it's not an Ott-type deal. I do worry about injuries because if Steen tries to be a player who avoids injury he won't be nearly as effective as he can be.

Agreed, and the media is fluffing it by saying Backes has some "hard miles," as if 20 doesn't. Whatever, paying a guy like Steen long term is the least of my worries. He's been a good "soldier" and his teammates seem to hold him in high regard.

Staying off the shelf is his biggest obstacle. He handles everything else pretty well.