Overpaid and underwhelming. (Insider).

General managers, agents and players set the market for a player's salary. Sometimes, the market gets a little ahead of itself and a player is given a high-priced contract that he has a hard time living up to. Here are three players who have had trouble justifying their pay so far this season.

Paul Kariya, LW, Mighty Ducks, $10 million. If a player is going to make this much--one-quarter of his team's total payroll he should not only lead his team but be among the top wingers in the league, anecdotally and statistically. Kariya is not. Entering the week, he wasn't in the top 25 in scoring. And a $10 million man should get his team close to the playoffs, if not in them. The Ducks have missed the postseason four seasons in a row. Kariya needs to make sure that total doesn't become five.

Pavel Bure, RW, Rangers, $10 million. Being the highest-paid player on the team with the highest payroll brings its own sort of expectations. But Bure has the potential to warrant being near the top of the pay scale. He has scored more than 50 goals three times, but he needs to make it four and end questions about his effort to earn his pay. That includes playing at both ends of the ice. Two seasons ago, he led the NHL with 59 goals, but be was minus-2. He probably has lost a little because of knee injuries, but that should equate to a lower salary, not a higher one.

Martin Lapointe, RW, Bruins, $5.25 million. It was a strange free-agent signing two summers ago and an unusual setting of the market by the usually tight-fisted Bruins. Is a healthy Lapointe really worth more than the Devils' Patrik Elias ($4.472 million) or the Flyers' Mark Recchi ($5 million), more than twice as much as the Flames' Chris Drury ($2.5 million) and $250,000 less than the Leafs' Alexander Mogilny? The fact that Lapointe had 17 goals as a third-liner last season and has had little to do with the Bruins success--he has been injured for all but four games--this season leads us to say no.