A good indication that you have signed a player to a bad contract is that outside your organization, there is basically no one, in their right mind or otherwise, who is willing to defend the deal.

Ryan Kesler is, for some reason, now signed in Anaheim until 2022, when he will be 37 years old, and receiving $6.875 million per season against the cap. The future of the ceiling is of course unknowable for a litany of reasons, but it's a safe bet to say that in 2022 — which oh my god that's still seven years from now, because Kesler still has one year left on his current contract — $6.875 million will probably still be a decent chunk of the total limit. Even if the cap goes up to $90 million in that time, an AAV of that size would be worth what about a $5.5 million deal is today.

You do not want to have 37-year-olds making 7.7 percent of your cap. That's just a general rule.

When talking about how forwards age, and what it takes to get to the point where someone thinks you can still play as a 37-year-old. Most of those who do are either fading superstars or bottom-six grinder types whose game doesn't in any way rely upon them having the ability to skate even somewhat competitively. And the attrition for guys in their mid-to-late 30s is massive; over the last eight seasons, 41 percent of forwards who were in the league at 35 were gone by 37.

So what you need to know is the number of forwards who have started the season as 37-year-olds in the past seven seasons is just 51. And it is, frankly, a bizarre mix of guys; Sergei Fedorov, Jeremy Roenick, Teemu Selanne, Alex Kovalev (high-talent guys) mix with Craig Conroy, Tomas Holmstrom, Martin Gelinas, and Jamal Mayers (not so much). As a composite, this is what those the average of those guys looks like:

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So, not great.

The good news for the Ducks is that they will, as a few people have pointed out at this point, almost certainly buy out Kesler before the end of this contract, and I'd be surprised if he makes it all the way to 2020 before he's given a bunch of money to no longer play for the Ducks. The funny thing is that Kesler himself told the media on Wednesday, “This isn't my last contract.” He meant it in terms of, “I'm playing the full six years of this one and beyond,” but c'mon.

Some might say that reason alone is why Anaheim wasn't completely foolhardy to sign this deal — basically, they'd be giving Kesler all this money when he's more or less worth-it, but then dumping the contract and carrying a much smaller cap hit for four or six years beyond that (and oh yeah there's also another potential lockout coming up before then, so who knows what happens next. The wisdom of purposely signing a guy knowing that you would buy him out before the end of the contract seems crazy, but then the likelihood is that such a move would probably be among Murray's last as a general manager, or perhaps among his successor's first.

Anyway, the idea that signing a guy at more or less what is market value right now for the remainder of his early 30s (and beyond, wink nudge) would be a good idea is nominally true. You can say what you want about Kesler, but he helped make Matt Beleskey rich this summer, and if you're running a guy of his current quality out there as a No. 2, you're going to be in business. And if Getzlaf is your No. 1, that's about as good a 1-2 punch as there is in the Western Conference.

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