When the NHL's hard salary cap was put in place after the mother of all professional sports labor stoppages, the gravy train was supposed to be shortened for players.
That hasn't been true. You had $98 million contracts signed by Ryan Suter and Zach Parise this summer....and it goes right on down the list to the Red Wings, who just signed Kyle Quincey to a two-year  $7.75 million deal even though his play was, to be kind, subpar after the team dealt for him near the trade deadline last season.
While it is an inflated market for the majority of players, there are a precious few worth the money. One of them is Shea Weber. The length of the contract he was offered by Philadelphia, which is the loophole in the salary cap, is ridiculous, but he is worth the $100 million - and reported $56 million for the first five years of the deal. There is a high probability Weber is a Hall of Fame player and will play on a Stanley Cup winner at some point of his career. It's rare a player of his caliber does not, and he is just moving to the point he is the best defenseman of this generation now that Nicklas Lidstrom has retired and Zdeno Chara aged. Weber will play next season at 27. He is built like Clay Matthews, skates better than most defensemen 40 pounds lighter and four inches shorter, shoots the puck like a cannon and doesn't hesitate to beat somebody up. In other words, he is hockey's version of gold.
The Flyers must solve their longstanding goaltending issues, but fitting in Weber with Claude Giroux, who I thought was the best all-around forward in the league last year and deserved the Hart Trophy over Evgeni Malkin, would put the Flyers ahead of anybody else in the Eastern Conference. But I do expect the Predators to match and retain Weber. How can they not and claim to be a viable NHL entity?
Why weren't the Red Wings involved here? They were - in a trade attempt, which was unlikely to transpire given the Red Wings and Predators are intense division rivals. The Red Wings have money, but their theory  with restricted free agents is teams are essentially bidding against themselves - because the other team can always match. We'll see if the theory holds if the Predators don't match Weber's contract. He is one of the players in the league worth that kind of money and four first-round draft picks (if Kyle Quincey is worth one first-round draft choice, than Weber is surely worth four).
In addition to Weber, there are few NHL players worth that kind of money. One other is Steven Stamkos, who is 22 and has four years remaining on his current contract. He is by far the best pure goal scorer in hockey now that Alexander Ovechkin has nose-dived, and Sidney Crosby had concussion issues. Malkin is up there, but while the list of solid playmakers and all-around forwards is long, the one with true snipers is short. Same with elite defensemen. The next on the list after Weber is Alex Pietrangelo of the Blues, who like Stamkos is far from restricted free agency. He is very skilled and has size, but isn't as menacing a force physically as Weber.
The Red Wings are going after Rick Nash, but so is everybody else with cash and cap space It's intriguing because it's been awhile since Nash has lived up to his lofty reputation - which he deserves in many ways. But it can't be easy be in the midst of the perpetual malaise in Columbus.
I wonder how much that has tarnished him? We'll only know if he escapes Columbus.