How long will Shea Weber play?

One critical question when evaluating a 14-year deal is what the player's career will look like from here. Is it reasonable to expect that Shea Weber will be a top-pairing defenseman for even half of this deal?

Let's take a look after the jump.

On Twitter today, I said there was a reasonably good chance that Weber would still be a top-pairing defenseman at age 35, and that even if he's no longer elite, a $7.8M cap hit will be reasonable for a top-pairing defenseman assuming even minimal cap growth.

I was surprised at the push-back I got on that, and it made me nervous. People do tend to wildly underestimate how steep the aging curve is; had I fallen into that trap?

As a first pass for how elite defensemen aged, I looked at the Norris trophy winners since 1995 and how old they were the last time they were 20+ minute players. Here's what I found:

That doesn't look so bad, really. It seems like a pretty good bet that he'll be a top-pairing guy until at least 35 if you accept this as a list of comparables.

Of course, some people don't. Weber hasn't won a Norris Trophy yet, after all. I'd argue that he's a fair bet to win one eventually and join this list -- after all, Chelios, Blake, MacInnis, Lidstrom, Niedermayer, and Chara were all older than Weber is now when they won their first Norris Trophy. But it's a fair point, so let's compare to a list that Weber does belong on, Norris finalists since 2000:

I have a hard time looking at that list and arguing that someone who has already been a Norris finalist twice won't play on a top pairing until he's 35. And according to Nick Kypreos, at age 38 the salary drops to $1M and it's reasonable to guess he's planning to retire -- which wouldn't count on the cap under the current CBA. So I think it's fair to expect him to be a top-pairing defenseman for whatever fraction of the contract he'll actually play out.