while i think there's a very old school thinking way to justify lowballing a player like Z (on a bridge deal, no less), anyone being truthful with themselves has to admit that the current thinking, league-wide, is that players are getting paid more prospectively than they have in the past, and on that new metric, Z's market value is much higher than what's rumored to be the AAV offered by the Ducks.
if you want to pick at his defensive numbers from last season... then the conversation opens up to player concerns as well, such as: when are you going to field a team that'll take advantage of my offensive skills? if the answer is "we aren't," then 1) what are we even doing? and 2) i guess that means trade.
i keep hearing that Z has no leverage. maybe that's true for a team like Boston or the Avs or some other team that has a bevy of established and still-performing veterans who will take a pay cut to be on a contending team in a huge market (you could even argue the Kings are that, even during a rebuild), but for a relatively small market team that is literally having to adjust their draft pics to acquire prospects who won't jultz them? a team that has to overpay just to get mid to low-mid tier UFAs to sign for a few seasons?
he who fools himself is the most irredeemable fool.
maybe Beek thinks he's still in Detroit or Tampa. i mean, he doesn't have to cave to every player, and i'm sure there's perfectly respectable looking excel sheet reasoning justifying lowballing Z..., but last year's stats aren't what we're paying Z for, and that kind of limited thinking isn't what we're paying Beek for.
well, unless we're going to end up running the Ducks like Sterling ran the Clippers for decades. if that's the case, i certainly don't want to subsidize that business with season tickets.