It’s hard to think of a more perfectly timed, out-of-nowhere season than the one Darren Raddysh just managed.The undrafted defenseman didn’t make his NHL debut until he was 25, didn’t play a full season until he was 27, when he was a perfectly cromulent No. 4/5 next to Victor Hedman for two seasons. Then, at 29, he randomly exploded with 22 goals and 70 points in 73 games. Not only that, but he earned tough top-four usage where he crushed his minutes with 57 percent of the expected goals and 59 percent of the goals — right near the team lead. And he wasn’t a passenger either; according to tracking data from Corey Sznajder, Raddysh was elite at breaking the puck out and facilitating offense in-zone.Put that all together and his profile screams No. 1 defenseman and that’s exactly how he was valued in 2025-26 with a Net Rating of plus-16.8, 10th among defensemen. Raddysh even got some spare Norris votes despite an extremely deep crop of competition. He was unbelievable in every sense of the word.All of that lined up perfectly with Raddysh’s contract expiring and now comes the complicated question: How much should Raddysh be paid on July 1?Truthfully, I have no idea what a comfortable number is, given how wide the range of outcomes has been over the last two seasons. Raddysh is the ultimate high-risk, high-reward UFA. He’s an extreme boom-or-bust player; if he can consistently repeat what he did last season to a reasonable extent, Raddysh may sign one of the league’s most valuable contracts. If he immediately wilts back to his previous level, it could end up as one of the league’s worst.The best way to illustrate that is to show what Raddysh’s projected market value was before last season and what it is now. The difference between the two numbers is $7.6 million. What we have here is a Three Bears situation.A $12.4 million valuation is too high. The model recognizes the massive leap and assigns a pretty steep penalty, dropping Raddysh’s projected value from plus-11.3 to plus-9.4. Given his per-82 pace of plus-18.8 last year, the model is literally cutting that value in half, expecting Raddysh to fall back to earth in some capacity (as expected from a defenseman who quadrupled his goal output in one season). Even with that, a plus-9.4 defenseman is still very good and Raddysh is expected to maintain a high level in his 30s. Too high, but if you knew you were getting a No. 1 defenseman, $12.4 million is going to become the going rate.