Eh, I think its similar to the Hossa situation where it's a 100% real thing, it's just not something he's willing to play through now that the circumstances changed. For Hossa, it was his salary dropping to 1M. For Callahan, It's an injury he'd willing to play through it....for a contending team (the bolts).
I'm sure they asked for his NTC list (16 teams) and told him he would be moved or they could have the doctors put him on LTIR and they could simply move his rights to another team.
I mean, I’m sure that played some factor in Hossa’s decision.
But I think for Hossa the main thing was his condition got way worse and he had to go on this super scary immunosuppressive drug with an FDA black box warning.
He had to go get blood tests every 2 weeks to make sure his organs weren’t failing from this medication, and he also had to have periodic tests to make sure the medication wasn’t causing any tumor growth (cancer is another possible side effect of the med., among many other scary potential side effects).
That he even took that medication for a season to keep playing is crazy.
He said he had a whole bunch of duffel bags stuffed full of boxes of that medication in case the hawks made a playoff run. He came home one day after the season was over and his wife had them all stacked up on the kitchen table and he said it really hit home for him what he was putting his body through and that’s kind of what sealed the deal.
He was taking this terrible medication that wasn’t even fixing the problem. It was just helping barely enough that he could fight through, but he was still miserable, and every day he stayed on the medication was a gamble that it could cause permanent damage to his body.
If you have a subscription to the Athletic and haven’t yet read the interview with Hossa, it’s a good read. I really felt for him after reading everything he was going through, and haven’t doubted his story since.
As far as Callahan goes, his salary is the same as it was last year ($4.7M), and only $1.8M lower than his salary during the highest 2 years of his current deal. So I don’t really know that money is a factor in his decision.
He said he wanted to continue playing after this contract was up, too.
