The issue really in all of this, as it compares to the hossa and luongo contracts, is essentially the devils signed hossa to a 7 year contract worth 7 million at the end. This has never been done before, and never will. the lunogo contracts and hossa contracts include 2-3 years of smaller payments, which is not uncommon for nhl players to sign.
I personally feel that we have regressed. while i do not support what he did, i felt Sutter had this team playing with more emotion. we were rarely the better team in this series, which was not the case last year (and even the year before when we lost to the rangers, played well the majority of time). We need to get back to that relentless "try and stop us" forcheck we have seen in years past.