QUESTION: What do you think of the four-year, $15 million contract that the Blues’ gave to goaltender Jaroslav Halak? Has Halak proven himself enough to get that dollar amount and number of years, or do you think the Blues got a bargain?

JEREMY RUTHERFORD

The top goalies in the NHL today are being paid around $6 million per year. Buffalo’s Ryan Miller, who might be the best, is making $6.2 million annually. So with that being the ceiling, I think Halak’s $3.75 million average is fair for both him and the Blues. He was one of the better goalies in the NHL last season, particularly in the playoffs, but he hasn’t proven himself year-after-year yet. He has a lot to live up to, but if Halak continues to progress the way he has recently, the Blues could have a real steal by Years 3 and 4 in the deal.

DAN O’NEILL

I am not a big fan of the Halak trade. I think the Blues had a capable goaltender and outstanding clubhouse presence in Chris Mason. He is not as dominant as a handful of the goalies in the league can be, but he took the Blues to the playoffs in 2009 and he was mostly dependable last season.

 

At the same time, the Blues have two young goalies in their system – Ben Bishop and Jake Allen – who are supposed to be prospects, so I did not understand the need to get younger at the position.

 

Also, the Blues need scoring help and they gave up Lars Eller for Halak, with Eller being a promising forward who one might have expected to help offensively this season.

 

That said, if Halak is a difference-maker, then he makes the trade look good and he makes the contract a bargain. If he is ordinary – as he has been at times in the past – he makes the trade, and the contract, a mistake.

TOM TIMMERMANN

Rolling the dice on any goalie is a risk. They seem  to move in and out of form at a moment’s notice. Remember Chris Mason? Remember All-Star goalie Manny Legace? Rolling the dice on a young goalie is even trickier. The streets of the NHL are paved with goalies who had brief – all-to-brief for the teams that were banking on them – shining moments and then suddenly became just another guy. Or worse. It may turn out that the Blues got a bargain on Halak, or it may turn out in three years the Blues are hoping someone takes him off their hands. Unless you’re dealing for Patrick Roy or Martin Brodeur, finding a goalie is tricky. That Halak played as well as he did this year is better than giving that money to someone who didn’t do that well. But as your investment counselor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. And that’s especially the case with goalies.

KEVIN WHEELER (Host of “Sports Open Line” on KMOX)

Seems like a pretty fair deal for a 25 year-old goalie who is just reaching the prime of his career. I certainly wouldn’t call him a bargain but it’s not like the Blues are getting fleeced here. They paid really good money over four years for a guy who was one of the best goalies on the planet the last 12 months and he was pretty good in 2008-2009 too.

How often does a team like the Blues get a chance to snag a guy who just led an 8th seed into the Conference Finals on the heels of taking a significant underdog like Slovakia to a 4th-place finish in the Olympics? In both cases, Halak was the driving force behind his team’s run. Winning in the playoffs often comes down to the hot goalie factor and this player has proven he can be “That Guy” when it counts.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume that we’ll always see from him what we saw during those two amazing stretches of hockey, but even in regular season play the past two years he’s had a better save percentage than Chris Mason did. Heck, his .924 was tied for 4th best in the league last year. Halak is more than just a guy who got hot. He’s a really, really good goaltender who has shown he can be dominant for significant periods of time in key spots.

ANDY STRICKLAND (Hockeybuzz.com, KFNS)

Like all contracts, time will tell whether or not the Blues got a bargain or are locked into a bad contract with Jaroslav Halak. The Blues believe in this kid based on what’s he’s shown in his limited time spent playing in the NHL. This will be new territory for him this coming year as he’s never entered an NHL season as his club’s undisputed number one goaltender.

I’m not concerned with his ability to handle pressure. The pressure he’ll face here in St. Louis doesn’t come close to what he dealt with on a daily basis in Montreal. He was an underdog who found a way to get a major portion of the fan base behind him. As I wrote on hockeybuzz.com, the last two years of his deal reflects his unrestricted free agent years. Anaheim goaltender Jonas Hiller’s recent contract extension set the bar for what Halak could expect to earn in the last two years of his deal. He had arbitration rights and both sides likely came to a conclusion that he would have been awarded a two year salary in the $3 million range by an arbitrator, which is what he’ll be paid in the first two years of his contract. The contract is completely on par with not only what he wanted, but for what was expected.