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That’s a Great Deal for Justin Williams

Four-year extension for Williams ” LA Kings Insider
Justin Williams has agreed to a four-year contract extension with the Kings, worth $14.6 million. That’s a salary-cap hit of $3.65 million. Williams is currently tied for the team lead with 20 goals and will turn 30 in October.

Seriously. He’s been getting $3.5MM for the last five years. Past injuries obviously keep his price down a bit, but he’s having, if not a career year (he had been on a career-best pace but has tapered off a bit lately), a year that is of a piece with his two best seasons in Carolina. There was really no way Williams was going to get less than that $3.5MM on the open market, and I had been worrying that he might have his sights set on more, especially after his comments back in the fall about this being his contract year.

$3.65MM, therefore, seems about as low as you can go. I’m thinking Lombardi was able to get the number down by offering a longer term, which is something other teams might have been unwilling to do because of Williams’s injury history. But that (the term) doesn’t bother me, because the contract is tradeable. I believe this to be a tenet of Lombardi’s, aside from just being (often-ignored) good common sense. Don’t make deals that you can’t get rid of if they don’t work out.

As we’ve seen, Lombardi just doesn’t do the “I’ve got to have this guy, no matter the cost!” deals. He doesn’t trade for them, he doesn’t sign them.

And, no, I don’t think having Williams, Dustin Brown and Wayne Simmonds on the right side means that there is no room for Oscar Moller (currently playing RW, though he’s a natural center), not to mention Tyler Toffoli. Players can play their off-wing. And, in any case, though that’s a pretty great top three RWs (Williams, Brown, Simmonds), there is still room for another top six RW. At the risk of upsetting people, neither Dustin Brown nor Wayne Simmonds have fully staked their claim to a top six spot. Simmonds has shown the proverbial “flashes.” Brown has played like a top-six about half the time, but spends the other half playing like a third-line energy guy, running people and coughing up the puck. If he is really a third liner, he’s one of the best ever. I’m not down on Brown. But I can see a version of the Kings’ future where, say in three years, the Kings have a real sniper on the right, and only one of Brown or Simmonds remains.

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