In November 2015, Ken Holland made one of his biggest mistakes as General Manager of the Detroit Red Wings. During his time as the GM he has been no stranger to handing out big money, but this time he gave it to the wrong guy. That fall, Holland signed Justin Abdelkader to a seven-year contract extension worth $29.75 million ($4.25M AAV).

Oh you could have afforded it. The 2016-17 season was the first year that the deal kicked in and it was a disastrous year for the 30-year-old winger.

As you can see on Abdelkader’s Hero Chart (by @MimicoHero) Abby played solidified top-6 minutes and produced like a fourth liner. For a player earning $4.25M per season, generating shots at a lower rate than Adam Cracknell is unacceptable. He was signed to be a top-6 player that can contribute at both even strength and on the power-play, but it looked like Abdelkader’s past success was more of a product of playing with the great Pavel Datsyuk than it was Abby being a top-6 hockey player worth of $4-plus million per season.

Gross. After scoring 23 and 19 goals in his previous two seasons, Abdelkader scored just seven goals in 64 games in 2016-17. Abdelkader scored just five more goals than Riley Sheahan, who didn’t score until Game 82 and had a Twitter account created in honour of his nearly historic drought. You can say that Abdelkader was brought in for more than goal scoring, but that’s the ultimate goal in hockey and he earned $607K per goal this season—in comparison the Median base salary for Physician’s in the United States in 2017 is $187,876 or 3.2x less than Abdelkader made per goal scored.

All salary jokes aside, the most concerning part of Abdelkader’s box stats is his two even strength goals. To put that in perspective, Abdelkader was tied for 505th in the NHL in even strength goals in 2016-17  after being tied for 86th in even strength goals (28) in the two previous seasons combined. *whispers* Pavel Datsyuk. 

Abdelkader finished with a 46.01 CorsiFor%, or not good.

He had a -2.63 CF% relative to the Red Wings, which means the Red Wings were much better when Abdelkader was on the bench. His CF% RelTM was third worst among Red Wings’ forwards, better than only fourth liners Luke Glendening and Drew Miller–who started in the defensive zone significantly more than Abdelkader did.

This is where things get fun. In the two season’s prior to 2016-17, Abdelkader played 24.2 percent of his even-strength minutes with Datsyuk. While on the ice with Datsyuk, the duo carried a 60.1 CF% and when Abdelkader wasn’t playing with Pavel that dropped to 50.4 and then of course 46.01 this year.

Of all 12 Red Wings forwards that played at least 15 games, Abdelkader finished dead last with a 32.69 GF% (Goals For%), but a lot of that can obviously be attributed to his two even strength goals. He had the second lowest on-ice shooting percentage (4.82) which is a sign of rough luck and that 2017-18 could have better results, but he will need to improve in a lot of areas to make that a reality.

It can’t get worse than it was in 2016-17. While it’s obvious that losing Datsyuk drastically hurt Abdelkader’s production, it’s hard not to envision him getting back to at least 10 goals and 20 assists. His absurd contract makes him likely to be exposed to the Vegas Golden Knights during this summer’s expansion draft. Vegas will need some high contracts to help them get to the cap floor, so Abdelkader just might be taken, but don’t get your hopes up.

Overall, the Red Wings should improve next season and if Abdelkader is still here he should as well. However, with young players like Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou and Dylan Larkin pushing for more minutes, Abdelkader might be better suited for a third line checking role for the rest of his abomination of a contract.

I don’t think a single Red Wings fan liked the seven-year, $29 million extension, but I don’t think anyone knew it would be this bad in YEAR ONE!

Datsyuk will not be coming back to save him, so Abdelkader will need to find some chemistry with other Red Wings for the next six years. However, he looks like a bottom-6 forward making top-6 money. In 2018, the Red Wings could have a third line that features Abdelkader ($4.25M AAV), Darren Helm ($3.85M AAV) and Sheahan (2.075M AAV) that’s a total of $10.175 million combined—nice work Kenny.

I would be a nice teacher.