Exactly. Most of the players outside of the NHL couldn't even come close to being competitive in the NHL. In reality those "middle tier" players are among the best players in the world. Sure they don't wow and amaze like Crosby, Malkin, Lundqvist, etc but they are still very skilled players who help lead teams to championships. Do you think the Kings would have won the cup without guys like Mitchell, Stoll, Williams and Scuderi? Probably not. The Blackhawks lost all of their "middle tier" players after their cup win and they struggled to make the playoffs the next 2 years. Meanwhile we see teams made up entirely of "middle tier" players such as the Blues, Preds and Coyotes make the playoffs every year. The fact is teams that are deep with "middle tier" players such as the Flyers and Bruins will continue to be consistently dominant while teams that are top heavy in talent like the Pens will fluctuate between seasons.

Also Kulemin is a very poor example of an overpaid player. He only gets $2.8M (cap hit). For someone who can score like he has in the past that's a very good deal. I think Leino, Carle and Wideman are better examples. Leino being the worst of them. But the reason they got paid the way they did is because of the scarcity of talent available in free agency as well the fact that teams just needed to improve their team whatever the cost. Just a little measure to see where how Kulemin's salary compares to Malkin's in terms of production last year. I took Kulemin's production from last year (28 pts) and divided it by Malkin's production from last year (since he had the most points scored) (109 pts) to get .257 Kpts/Mpts. I then multiplied that number by Malkin's cap hit ($8.7M) and got $2.2M for the amount that Kulemin should have been paid based on Malkin's salary and point production. That's pretty close to what Kulemin got in his deal but we know the Leafs paid a little more because Kulemin scored twice as many points the year before and its reasonable to assume that he will score more than 28 pts in future seasons.

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H2H Each Cat - Yahoo - 14 teams - Cap Hit
Start: 2C 2LW 2RW 4D 2U 2G 7B
Cats: G A +- PIM SOG PPG PPA SHP GWG FW HIT W GAA SV SV% SO
Svalbard Armored Bears:
C: Getz, M Richards(LW), Turdis, Little
LW: Kovy(RW), Moulson, Kunitz, _
RW: Eriksson(LW), Clarkson, _, _
D: Pietrangelo, JJ, Streit, Spurgeon, Brodie, Nikitin
G: Lundqvist, Holtby, Harding
JV: Tarasenko, Bishop, Eakin, Killorn, Grigorgenko, Grimaldi, Collberg, Faksa, Lindholm, Irving