Ted Hoffman
Done
- Dec 15, 2002
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Quick questions that come to mind just reading this: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.
-- What exactly did Pietrangelo want?
-- How flexible had Pietrangelo been on his requirements - term, AAV, signing bonus, NMC - since talks first started?
-- What does "some signing bonus" really mean?
-- What does "partial NMC in the final year" really mean?
-- What would have been considered a "buyout proof" contract to Pietrangelo?
-- What was the structure of the contract Armstrong had in mind when offering 8x8?
Because the answers to those questions, along with several others, are pretty important to understand where both sides were with respect to each other and who was being reasonable and who wasn't.