Timo Meier's contract is atrocious, and it puts the San Jose Sharks in serious trouble

In 2019, Meier's agent, Claude Lemieux, was able to get the Sharks to agree to an absolutely ridiculous contract structure that has the organization in very serious trouble today, and here's what it looks like:

Basically, it's $24 million for 4 years, which gives a payroll impact of $6 million per season. At first glance there is nothing really bad, except that it is in the distribution of the money that the important problem is hidden.

While the Swiss player received most of his salary in signing bonuses in the first three seasons of his deal, he gets none at all in 2022-2023. In fact, the entire remaining amount of his contract is paid to him in base salary, which is $10 million.

Since he will become a free agent player WITH compensation at the end of this year, the Sharks must make a qualifying offer of $10 MILLION to retain his rights. This is huge!

If the Sharks don't trade him and don't make that insane qualifying offer, he will become a free agent with NO compensation and the Sharks will lose the 26 year old for absolutely nothing!

No need to tell you that this situation is causing major headaches for the management of this team.

The very obvious intentions of the organization are to trade Meier so as not to risk losing him for nothing. However, this greatly frightens other teams, as they don't want to be caught in the position of having to qualify his unreasonable offer either.

To mitigate this, teams are asking for permission to speak directly to his agent, in order to negotiate a contract extension before making a deal, but San Jose is reportedly unwilling to agree.

This could be a very interesting case to follow between now and the trade deadline!

Credit: Balle Courbe