I'm sure Petro wanted $11m last year.. obviously players get to understand (through their agents) as to what they are worth in a given market, and it seems that the $8m x 8 years that was supposedly offered, or translate that to a little more than $8m at 7 years.
As for the bolded, you're absolutely correct. Pietrangelo was not going to compromise on a full NMC, and while Doug Armstrong indicated that he would be willing to talk about some NMC years, or partial NMCs, and some bonus money -- he was never going to give Pietrangelo that.
This is simply a case where both sides refused to budge from their intrenched position and belief.
The Blues demanded some flexibility to move him. AP demanded full protection.
There was an anonymous comment over the weekend from someone in Pietrangelo's camp that I found interesting and certainly relevant. Given the volume of information coming from Carlo Colaiacovo in the last week, I suspect it was him, but with the condition of anonymity, but there is no way to know for sure.
The quote was something to the effect of 'he is looking to get everything he wants'. I mean, who wouldn't? The implication was that he was not being flexible on any of the elements of his requirements - term, AAV, signing bonus, NMC - and that he was making demands rather than negotiating. Army was certainly not being fully flexible from his end, but if this statement has any truth to it I can't really blame him for not going further than he did when the other side won't budge.
The last offer the Blues made to the player was said to have been 8 years x $8M AAV with "some signing bonus and a partial NMC" in the final year, specifically to address his desire to have his contract "buyout proof". Who can say exactly what it looked like, but my sense was that if Army had offered $9M AAV without the full NMC he would have turned it down, just as he would have if Army offered $8M AAV with a full NMC and the same deal structure as VGK signed him to. In other words, he wanted it all. He can say that he wanted to stay in STL until he's blue in the face, but when it came time to make a decision he certainly valued staying in STL
less than he did the things that he got in his VGK deal that Army wasn't offering. Maybe he regrets that now and was hoping to be able to take a market deal back to STL for one last shot, but the Krug signing pretty much made that a no-go. It happens, especially when a GM apparently feels more like they're being held hostage to a player's demands than they are negotiating.