Ryan Ellis won't be hitting the open market. The Nashville Predators announced Tuesday they have signed the 27-year-old to an eight-year deal worth $6.25-million per season.
No one would have batted an eye if standout defenseman Ryan Ellis used his status as a pending unrestricted free agent to earn himself an extension with the Nashville Predators worth somewhere in the $7-million range. Truth be told, given the way contracts have gone for blueliners in recent seasons – with Brent Burns, John Carlson, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and $11-million-man Drew Doughty signing big-money deals – even an $8-million cap hit wouldn’t have been all that unjustifiable for a 27-year-old rearguard with first-pairing quality who has enjoyed breakout success in recent seasons.
But this is the Nashville Predators we’re talking about.
These are the same Predators who managed to get Filip Forsberg locked in at a more-than-reasonable $6 million per season following brilliant rookie and sophomore campaigns. The same Predators who signed breakout 30-goal scorer Viktor Arvidsson to a seven-year deal that carried a $4.25-million cap hit. The same Predators who have landed on tremendous value contracts with the likes of Roman Josi, Mattias Ekholm, Juuse Saros and Calle Jarnkrok. So, it should come as no surprise that Nashville GM David Poile was able to work out a steal of a deal with Ellis, who signed an eight-year contract with the Predators on Tuesday that carries a $6.25-million cap hit and will pay the blueliner a total of $50 million over the lifetime of the deal.
To give the dollars and cents of the contract some context, where does Ellis’ deal rank? Well, when his extension kicks in, he won't rank among the 20 highest-paid defensemen in the league. He will out-earn the following defensemen by $500,000 or less: Dougie Hamilton, Matt Niskanen, Johnny Boychuk, Matt Dumba and Erik Johnson. And plucking from the group of defensemen who will be paid a higher salary than Ellis, some of the head-scratchers include Kevin Shattenkirk, Brent Seabrook and Dion Phaneuf. Here’s where we should note, also, that Ellis’ contract comes with incredible flexibility. Not a single season is covered by no-movement or no-trade clauses.
To say the contract stands to be cost-effective for the Predators would be an understatement, particularly given the growth Ellis has shown in recent years. Offensively, Ellis has grown into one of the most consistent point producers on the Nashville blueline, scoring 35 goals and 102 points in 194 games over the past three seasons, and since the arrival of P.K. Subban two seasons ago, only he and Roman Josi have outscored Ellis. More impressive, though, is where Ellis’ production ranks among rearguards league-wide in the past two campaigns. Despite missing nearly half of the 2017-18 campaign, Ellis is tied for 12th in goals and 35th in points among blueliners since the beginning of 2016-17, and his 0.61 points-per-game rate is the 17th-best mark among blueliners to skate in at least 41 games over the past two seasons.
But Ellis’ value goes far beyond his offensive capabilities. Over the past three campaigns, Ellis’ ice time, and the faith Predators coach Peter Laviolette has in the rearguard, has grown by leaps and bounds. In 2015-16, Ellis eclipsed a 20-minute average ice time for the first time in his career and his 23:44 average ice time over the past two campaigns ranks 23rd among all blueliners. Included in that is the 49th-highest average power-play ice time over the past two seasons, 2:12 per game, and an average of 2:39 per game on the penalty kill, which ranks 29th among defensemen over the past two seasons.
While heavy minutes and successful minutes aren’t necessarily one and the same, Ellis has more than proven his mettle as a top-tier blueliner, as well. Despite having an almost level amount of offensive and defensive zone starts over the past two campaigns, Ellis ranks top-40 in Corsi for percentage (52.1) among the 161 blueliners who have played at least 1,500 minutes at 5-on-5, as well as ranking top-50 shots for percentage (51.3) and top-40 expected goals for percentage (52.3). But it’s in actual goal-scoring and goal prevention where Ellis has really stood head and shoulders above many of his counterparts. He ranks eighth among the 1,500-minute grouping of blueliners with a 58.2 goals for percentage.
The incredible thing about Ellis, too, is that he probably still hasn’t reached the pinnacle of his game. While he’s set to turn 28 mid-season, he’s really only three seasons into his career as a top-four rearguard and he lost an entire half of a season to injury. If he were to produce at even close to the rate he did last season — he scored nine goals and 32 points in 44 games, which would work out to 17 goals and 60 points across 82 games played — over the long haul, Ellis would be a surefire Norris Trophy candidate based on offensive production alone. Add in his defensive contributions and penalty-killing acumen and you’re looking at an all-around talent who has potential to remain in the "best defenseman" conversation for the next three or four campaigns, at least.
And none of this is to mention what the deal itself means for Nashville in terms of financial flexibility and cost certainty. With Ellis now locked in for the next nine seasons — his extension plus the final season of his current five-year, $12.5-million contract — the Predators will be able to keep their arguably league-best defense corps together for the next two seasons at a shade over $21 million this coming campaign and a shade under $25 million in 2019-20. Come next summer, that would give Nashville the flexibility of $15 million-plus to hand out extensions to Kevin Fiala, Colton Sissons and Ryan Hartman without so much as a single concern. It even gives the Predators the ability to retain the services of veteran netminder Pekka Rinne without running into much, if any, cap trouble.
Ellis’ contract doesn’t make the long-term outlook for Nashville at all foreboding, either. At present, the Predators have an additional $12 million opening up by the time franchise fixtures Josi and Craig Smith see their current deals expire in 2020-21. And by the time Subban and Ekholm see their deals expire in 2022-23, the same season that Forsberg will need a new pact, the Predators should have more than enough financial wiggle room to pick and choose who they keep in town.
So, while the rest of the league may be tired of hearing about it, the Predators appear to have pulled off another masterstroke with Ellis, and with money to spare and a roster stacked with talent, Nashville has all but ensured that their Stanley Cup window will remain wide open for the next several seasons.