The prevailing wisdom on giving a star player a big contract is this: You have to give great players a lot of money to play for you, and not doing so means you won't have great players on your team.

Earlier this summer, the Calgary Flames found out the hard way what happens when you don't do that; Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk left in different fashions, but the end result was the same. Star wingers still in their prime, or close enough to it, out the door within a few days, leaving a team that was very good last season suddenly bereft of top-end offensive talent in the long-term.

That Jonathan Huberdeau was part of the return for Tkachuk made this all a bit easier to swallow, but the long-term uncertainty around a pending UFA some 10 months from his 30th birthday who had never played