Yesterday, the Los Angeles Kings announced that they've re-signed defenseman Sean Walker to a four-year contract extension, with an AAV of $2.65 million.
Without question, I really like this deal for the Kings. For starters, the term is pretty much ideal. Four years gives the Kings a long enough period of time that they can factor him into their future and pencil him in for a spot on the right side for quite a few years. Considering he’s 25 years old, this term will also carry Walker through what could certainly end up being the best years of his career.
However, it’s also not so long that if something was to happen and for whatever reason, Walker was to regress, it wouldn’t be a disaster. It also means that if the Kings were to develop another right-handed defenseman and needed to make room for him, Walker wouldn’t have so much term on his deal that he’d be hard to move.
In terms of the money, $2.65 million per year is a steal, as far as I’m concerned and if he was going to sign a four-year deal, I would’ve guessed the AAV would have been quite a bit higher. The Kings are getting great value for what they’re paying and assuming Walker performs at least as well as he did this season, this is a pretty huge win for the Kings.
I’ve said this before but next season, I’d like to see Walker get a chance to take on a larger role. If it doesn’t work out and if he ends up back in the same role as this season, the contract is still a win. But we don’t really know what his ceiling is and if he’s able perform well against tougher competition, this could go down as a great deal for the Kings.
***NOTE: We've launched a HockeyBuzz Kings Twitter account! For anyone interested, you can follow @HB_LAKings for updates on articles, Kings news, etc. We're starting right from scratch, so any followers would be appreciated!***
Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
Los Angeles Kings Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»